LEADERSHIP - TALENT MANAGEMENT (A DIfferent View)

TALENT MANAGEMENT is today not only one of the most searched for items on the web. It is perhaps the most crucial BUZZ WORD for HR Folks today. For the subject matter I am going to refrain talking about COMPETENCY/ CAPACITY/ CALIBRE/ ATTRIBUTES/ TRAITS etc. which are an important consituent of the whole TALENT MANAGEMENT PROCESS & FRAMEWORK. My take on TALENT is a rather personal view & I can be wrong.

I personally believe that though LEADERSHIP TALENT is long believed to be those LEADERS who are plotted in the HIGH PERFORMANCE & HIGH POTENTIAL category. Before we look into this, let us understand what is POTENTIAL.

POTENTIAL has for long been a subject of evaluation in TALENT FRAMEWORKS/ COMPETENCY MODEL based AC & DC. Let me ask you how can you design a FRAMEWORK & MODEL & stick to that if what you need in an ORGANIZATION changes so fast today.

POTENTIAL is neither hidden, nor tapped fully but instead my definition of POTENTIAL is that which comes to use when needed. What good is a POTENTIAL which does not get utilized but always gets measured. There are perennial flaws in the traditional LEADERSHIP TALENT MANAGEMENT processes thus. We keep measuring, assessing & analysing what we don't get to use. Perhaps the few exceptions I have come to respect in context of REAL TALENT MANAGEMENT is GE, UNILEVER, SKF, HONEYWELL, PHILIPS & yet to a good extent INFOSYS & WIPRO but still the subjective challenges the framework poses to HR folks are umpteen & never ending.

I believe that what gets tested & validated in REAL SURROUNDING is what prevails & endures. Life is no SIMULATION & certainly not just a ROLE PLAY. How many people (POTENTIAL TALENT) you know of who responded to a PSYCHOMETRIC QUESTIONNAIRE in a TALENT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK, to showcase "THE REAL AS IS" & not the "PERCIEVED TO BE" personality. Knowing what is in store people will always create a POSITIVE "TO BE" persona which is away from REALITY & it poses an acute challenge to the ACCURACY of the FRAMEWORK.

Personally, I have had the good fortune of being closely involved & designing or conducting AC & DC for two of my past employers in depth & details & even today when I think or read about TALENT, I feel like a 1st CLASS STUDENT. My personal biggest learning has been that POTENTIAL is a MIS-LEADING factor if we don't have a check on the INTEGRITY & the SPIRIT behind the POTENTIAL. Let me warn you, you can't measure INTEGRITY & SPIRIT. INTEGRITY is not a COMPETENCY & yet to have INTEGRITY you need to be COMPETENT & also aware of where you are IN-COMPETENT. CONFUSED!!!

Let me elaborate further. INTEGRITY is about the HONESTY which surrounds who you are, what you know, what you don't know & what you can't know. POTENTIAL is often able to mask these questions & what you get in the end is a masked reality which everyone wants to buy & wear but it seldom hides more than it exposes.

Nearly all AC & DC frameworks have a premise of "OBJECTIVELY DEFINED" SUBJECTIVITY built around what the ORGANIZATION needs w.r.t. the BUSINESS GOALS & the necessary COMPETENCIES needed. Not only we can question the methods these needs were evolved with, I would also ask if we are able to predict what you needed so accurately why don't we design a RECESSION FREE TALENT. Can that be made possible ?

Nearly all organizations are ridden with the BIAS (PERIOD/ PAST PERFORMANCE/ RECENCY/ HALO EFFECT) etc. for what they want to see in their PEOPLE. Unfortunately as is the case in PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT, these BIASES over-power the people at the helm of TALENT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORKS also. It is seldom seen that ORGANIZATIONS would spend on what they would need in 10 years time but it is what they "feel" will serve them well in near immediate future.

LEADERSHIP in itself is no longer today about planning, organizing, controlling, co-ordinating etc. or the MANAGERIAL GRID alone. It is beyond that. It is about your BEING. Your SPIRIT & it is the SPIRIT with the INTEGRITY which forms a RECESSION FREE TALENT.

I think time has come when You & I need to refer to a POST RECESSION ERA & the VIEW it offers about TALENT. If TALENT was the USP, why it didn't succeed in FIGHTING the RECESSION. It did hit all of us.

Let us look at the organizations which collapsed during the RECESSION. Some of the BIGGEST NAMES which perhaps were the biggest source of the SO CALLED TALENT for the INDUSTRY. You know what they missed, they didn't have the TALENT which had INTEGRITY & which had a strong SPIRIT.

According to me all the BEST KNOWN SUCCESS STORIES are of those people who had the POTENTIAL but they had INTEGRITY & the SPIRIT to back it up. After all you can't be in a RACE to be the NUMBER 1 if you don't respect what it is to FAIL & let me assure you, REAL TALENT doesn't run to win, it runs to "BE".

My personal assessment & learning over the years has been, that, the best known LEADERS were never aware of their TALENTS even till they died but we today read books on their lives. Isn't it amazing to see that TALENT is not to be explored & assessed but to be EN-ACTED DAILY with the due INTEGRITY & SPIRIT.

HONEST DNA in an ORGANIZATIONAL SURROUNDING

Have you ever been in a spot where people completely mis-understood intentionally or un-intentionally what you said or did. If yes, let me tell you that one of the biggest challenges prevailing our times of today is BEING HONEST. The below mentioned write up is a brief account of my personal belief on HONESTY. There is nothing right & wrong about it. I am sure this could have been perhaps more beautifully captured but I am being "HONEST" in presenting "HONESTY" the way it is "FOR ME".

Well millions of literature on this subject is available today & million more will be churned out in future about HONESTY, but I have seldom seen the challenges of BEING HONEST going down. Infact the graph is all the more on an upward swing.

In a place where your own people whom you may have liked & believed in can at times find ways & means to malign you & abuse your stands with the worst categorization you may have yourself never imagined. This is nothing new. If you look at the most pure, the most revered world of SPIRITUALITY itself - It has happened to everyone from RAM to SAI BABA to JESUS to BULLA SHAH to GURU GOBIND SINGH.

It didn't leave even almightly leaders in ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS like JACK WELCH. Nearly two decades went by when he was criticized by people within & outside GE for being an OUTSIDER who was un-emotionally bound by CHANGE. Reason - He was HONEST. The business world however didn't hate him for what he said & did but for how he THOUGHT. How can he be HONEST?

I am tempted to recall examples from our own history wherein we had a MAHATAMA trying his lifetime to bring two quarelling religions or groups to agree. We Agreed to Dis-Agree permanently. Infact I was astonished to read some of the worst labels levied on him by people stating he was the worst politician ever as he kept stating the need to be honest & what was his crime :-

He believed in a 360 DEGREE APPROACH - He used to criticize people belonging to RELIGION A in front of people belonging to RELIGION B & vice versa. Well the INTENT - HONESTY.

None of us today would ever imagine that what this world could have been or else what INDIA could have been without the MAHATAMA but we again have millions of pages available on how he damaged this country & yes there are a BILLIONS of pages also available on also how great he was & what INDIA became under his able "HONEST" LEADERSHIP.

In our LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS we all might have often spoken or heard about leaders from the west like JACK (WELCH), ANDREW GROVE, ALFRED SLOAN, LEE ICOCCA.

Interestingly, the above people were most notoriously famous or rather ill famous for their ways & style of dealing with ORGANIZATIONS. The problem here is not that they were HONEST. The problem was that the people they dealt with couldn't digest that much stark, open & in your face honesty. Yet, these people succeeded in carving out not only a LEGACY but a GREAT HISTORY.

Most often in LEADERSHIP, a true challenge is building teams & yet honest teams is another dimension altogether. People who will be honest to each other.. People who will not back out & instead stand out with each other when the time comes.

However, let me tell you if you are an HONEST LEADER, chances are you will always be a famous part of LUNCH TABLE GOSSIPS & however hard you try, it will seldom so happen otherwise. People will be able to narrate stories about how you were WRONG & how many mistakes you made.

Still, it is my longmost held belief that if you want results let people be honest first. Honesty itself is a CHALLENGE for a TEAM as there is no way a TEAM can succeed if we encourage to be DIS-HONEST. Sooner or later the same people who play politics are played by POLITICS. HONESTY is the only ANTI-POLITICS PILL & perhaps the BEST one at that.

One of the challenges I see today in organizations is in retaining LEADERSHIP TALENT who can criticize & people who agree with everything are aplenty in most organizations. Typically ORGANIZATIONS over a period of time develop an accurate habit of hearing what they want to hear, how they want to hear & when they want to hear & from whom they want to hear. There is enough money even today riding on LIP SERVANTS.

I believe if we hire for FITMENT, we are acutely short of TALENT. We need to hire people who don't think like us. I love this quote which summarizes the premise beautifully - "If between you & me, we need to agree on everything, then one of us is not needed".

Problem is that this is perhaps still far from reality. However, there is still a ray of light at the end of the tunnel as HONESTY is re-gaining its GROUND. I do belive HONESTY will never lose its CHARM & yes it is an un-adulterated VIRGIN - un-touched, un-blemished & un-polluted.

Organizations must realize that they need to retain a fine balance of bringing & nurturing HONESTY & the only way to do that is to have people who can criticize & change your STATE.

However, finally, I can tell you one thing that the only thing which will stand the test of time is the VOICE INSIDE YOU. Whenever in doubt, whenever in conflict with self or others listen to that VOICE. It is the only VOICE with whom you can be honest & trust me it can handle criticism.

I fondly recall my own version & interpretation of INDIRA GANDHI's quote about WORK. I think there will always be two classes of PEOPLE. A) HONEST TALKERS B) HONEST DOERS. HONEST TALKERS can't act but they will talk always about BEING HONEST. HONEST DOERS are those who don't care what the situation is as HONESTY is a way to live for them. You must always strive to be in CATEGORY B as there is very less traffic there.

People in the end can blame you for being HONEST as you are indeed a MINORITY but you will still always be the first to know when & where to STOP & START again. HONESTY in that sense for me is BEYOND ETHICS!!!!