Tomorrow's Talent Networks - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org - The Diigo Meta page

• 20 Mar 09
  

  Bertrand Duperrin

  Even these questions indicate a dated view of where talent is and how to get the most out of it. Sure, no one disputes the importance of talent, even in a recession. But, as a Deloitte report contends (.pdf link), companies spend entirely too much time focused on attracting and retaining talent. Moreover, as they do, they often lose sight of what appeals to and keeps hold of talent in the first place. (See John's perspectives on the report and on the mindsets that limit firms.)

  talents talentmanagement attraction retention humanresources networks talentnetworks pull

  • Talented workers join companies and stay there because they believe they'll learn faster and better than they would at other employers.

  • Talented workers develop instead by:

    
    
    

    - Trying new things.
    
    - Experimenting with what they do in their jobs and how they do it.
    
    - Tackling real problems with talented people who have different backgrounds and skills.
    
    - Participating in talent networks, the largely invisible matrix structures that run within firms and, with increasing frequency, between and across them.

  • 1 more annotations...
  • • Pull platforms are essential to fostering learning on the job since they can make it easier to access unexpected resources in unexpected ways and thereby encourage participants to try new approaches that simply would not be feasible in more rigid push programs.
• 19 Mar 09
  

  Swarna Srinivasan

  HR HR2.0 talent

  • But how, exactly, does talent get better faster? Formal training programs, we
    would argue, are increasingly marginal to the talent race. And they're expensive
    in a
    recession.

    
    

    Talented workers develop instead by:

    
    

    - Trying new things.
    - Experimenting with what they do in their jobs and
    how they do it.
    - Tackling real problems with talented people who have
    different backgrounds and skills.
    - Participating in talent
    networks, the largely invisible matrix structures that run within firms and,
    with increasing frequency, between and across them.

  • Because talent works at every level of the corporation, the changes necessary to
    develop talent extend into nearly every aspect of the firm's activities.
    Operations, organization, and strategy must all be reconceived through
    the talent lens. They must be re-thought as part of pull platforms that
    treat all workers as capable creators who are continuously improvising in
    response to unanticipated situations. In this view, talent isn't just the highly
    trained and deeply skilled knowledge workers one typically thinks of as talent:
    they're just about everybody.
  • 2 more annotations...

  • • In what remains of this post we'll discuss the pull-based operational changes
      necessary to create the talent-driven firm. In subsequent posts we'll look at
      the implications for strategy, organization, and technology.

      
      

      As we argued before, many big companies have been built
      around the concept of "pushing" resources into the areas of greatest anticipated
      need. Whether it's the shelves of a retail store, the activities of a
      manufacturing plant, or the people of a services firm, push approaches try to
      forecast demand and then deploy the right resources to the right place at the
      right time.

      
      

      Push programs have enabled scalable, cost-effective operations. But they've
      come at a steep price: the rigid standardization and specification of activities
      and tasks they require. What if instead companies were to create more flexible
      pull platforms to help employees access resources whenever and wherever they are
      needed? What if, rather than treating exception handling as a nuisance to be
      eliminated, companies welcomed these problems as opportunities for participants
      to tinker and experiment?

    • Pull platforms are essential to fostering learning on the job since they can
      make it easier to access unexpected resources in unexpected ways and thereby
      encourage participants to try new approaches that simply would not be feasible
      in more rigid push programs.
• 

  raman srinivasan

  print hr2

• 18 Mar 09
  

  Marc Buyens

  It might seem a peculiar time to talk about talent. Aren't most people these days happy just to have their jobs? Aren't employers more concerned about outplacement than recruiting? And what company has the budget to fund expensive training programs?
  
  Even these questions indicate a dated view of where talent is and how to get the most out of it. Sure, no one disputes the importance of talent, even in a recession. But, as a Deloitte report contends (.pdf link), companies spend entirely too much time focused on attracting and retaining talent. Moreover, as they do, they often lose sight of what appeals to and keeps hold of talent in the first place. (See John's perspectives on the report and on the mindsets that limit firms.)
  
  Compensation and benefit packages are surely important. But the opportunity for professional development consistently outranks money in surveys of employee satisfaction. Only by helping employees build their skills and capabilities can companies hope to attract and retain them. Talented workers join companies and stay there because they believe they'll learn faster and better than they would at other employers.

  knowledge workers organisational change harvardbusiness

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