Globalisation, technology and changing attitudes have brought the need for different ways of plotting a career path for the ambitious. Janice Caplan, Co-founder of the Scala Group,looks at way and means of keeping talent on course, making a significant difference to the sense of engagement and loyalty.
Traditionally, career development was seen as moving upwards along a linear path and was equated with promotion. In our new world of fast change and flatter hierarchies, everyone must continually refresh their skills and acquire new ones. Few people are likely to get to the top by following an upward path, and many will change careers more than once. In this environment, how we achieve development ourselves and offer it to others requires new ways of thinking about and managing careers. Looking at this from the individual’s perspective, since the demise of ‘jobs for life’, job security is not something an employer gives you, but something that you must actively achieve for yourself by keeping marketable and employable. This means acquiring outstanding learning agility to keep your skills up-to-date, and also the ability to look ahead, spot trends and envisage outcomes to know which new skills will give you the edge. Self-knowledge is vital. The key to developing performance and reaching your potential is not just to build technical skills, but to understand the impact you have on others and how you achieve results so that you constantly improve your game. It is by leveraging your behavioural strengths and compensating for your weaknesses that you can take on new challenges and adapt to changing environments. It follows from this that outstanding development is a key lever for retaining and motivating people.
However, human resource practice still commonly reinforces two beliefs: one is that people leave managers not organisations, and the other comes from the ‘war for talent’ debate, with its dire warnings of insufficient people to fill leadership or business critical roles. It’s not clear that either of these beliefs was particularly sound. Now they are also out-of-date.
The war for talent mentality has led to over-investment in too few at the expense of too many. In today’s lean organisations everyone is critical to success. Moreover, roles are too inter-connected for it to be effective to focus on a handful of ‘high potentials’, for whom anyway the organisation can rarely meet expectations. As regards the role of line managers, the emphasis on their responsibility for retention and motivation misses the point that managers are becoming increasingly remote from their people who are working in multiple, flexible and virtual teams, with spans of control too wide to make it possible to hold the meaningful conversations about performance and careers that research confirms are important drivers of motivation and retention.
Another characteristic of today’s business world is that technological development is driving a pace of change that does not give the business the same long lead-time in strategic decision-taking as in the past. Should we develop a particular new product line? Should we move into China? Should we diversify? Should we be acquisitive? The majority of businesses I know, even small ones, are running blind in front of these decisions, as they don’t know their workforce well enough to know who could, or wants to take on these challenges. Recruiting externally is only a partial answer as internal support is still required. Few businesses, with the exception of notable cases such as Siemens, McDonalds, and Standard Chartered, have good quality data about their people to help make strategic decisions. Even with this data at hand, grasping new business opportunities requires an agile workforce that adapts rapidly to change, and has the right capabilities available when needed.
Self-managed succession is an approach I have developed to fit this new business environment. It starts with a three-stage development planning process, which encourages people to draw up a long-term development plan setting out their aspirations over three career stages relating to three time spans, and matching these with business needs and development opportunity. For individuals, this represents an opportunity to think through aspirations and development needs, identify preferred learning methods, and plan how and when to follow through on these. Stage 1, is the immediate future. This is the period generally covered in performance appraisals. It should focus on what stretch and challenge is available in the current role.
Stage 2, focuses on medium term development and the next possible role for the person, say within three to five years, and will aim to produce the capabilities they will need. And stage 3 addresses longer-term ambitions.
When you do this it is surprisingly easy to develop an effective plan. It is like the difference between a ‘planned economy’ and a ‘market economy’: the market economy usually wins hands down because it is flexible and driven by the people who take part, whilst the planned economy is inflexible and constantly blocked because it is handed down from on high and contradicts what people actually want. In most cases people aim for something that they can start working towards now and it is probably what the organisation needs too. For example, say someone aspires to a role that needs deep understanding of compliance and regulation. Giving this person the opportunity to start building this understanding, say by assigning them to a project, moves the person along their career path, builds skills the organisation needs, and gets an important task done. This straightforward process brings many benefits. Its focus on the future is valuable for getting people out of their day-to-day routine to engage in scanning for issues coming over the horizon. Once people identify this opportunity, they immediately start thinking about how to develop their skills to meet this challenge. This helps create the agility and forward-looking attitudes that business success today requires. It is a non-judgemental approach that gets away from the idea of separating out high potentials. It aims to provide appropriate development for everyone, and in doing so automatically takes care of your high fliers, who are the most likely to fill all of the stages listed above.
Whilst the process is straightforward, implementing it requires a sea change in attitudes and this demands an investment of effort, but brings great benefits. Firstly, it requires conversations about performance and careers and these conversations do not have to be led by overburdened line managers: they can be designated to someone else. Such a role works more effectively when the designated person is more senior, and when the role is regarded as prestigious and a step to senior leadership. So the organisation’s model for success should include an emphasis on learning; your own learning, and supporting others. The plan should be reviewed at least annually with follow-up support in between. To quote Clutterbuck[1], “it’s hard to predict specific career opportunities within a corporation even in the short term and many people don’t have a clear idea of where they want their careers to take them. We need to create opportunities and initiate conversations that sustain and enhance the alignment between the constantly fluctuating demands of environment, the company and the individual employee.” The second attitude change required is that the best learning comes from the opportunity we are given to seize challenges that enable us to demonstrate and develop current and latent talents. A development plan should focus more on opportunity than any other learning method. This is a far cry from most current practice where managers are often only willing to release people for learning that will improve current performance, and where learning is still mainly about training courses.
A three-stage plan with its dual emphasis on stretch and challenge in the current role whilst looking ahead to future business challenges is a highly effective way of creating dynamic succession planning throughout the organisation. The process must be self-managed if it is to be flexible and engage the commitment of employees. This is not a one size fits all development process with generic career paths but a fluid approach that gives people the freedom to get on with it on their own, and create their own learning and development opportunity. Evidence shows that this is how high-performers and high-potential people flourish, but it is an inclusive, individual-centred approach that emphasises ability, aspiration and diversity of skills over a traditional career route.
Formal interventions, including training courses, are still needed, as is career information to help people understand different roles. Technology makes so much of this easier and more cost effective. This is especially the case with assessment centres, which have long been the crème de la crème of selection and development methods, as participants are observed performing in various situations, which are often modelled on real-life work situations. This contrasts with psychometric or other tests that are based on individuals’ report of themselves from which inferences are made about how people are likely to perform. Assessment centres provide a high quality of feedback to the individual who can then use this self-awareness to raise performance, or develop towards new roles. Importantly, they also reveal potential, which is becoming increasingly valuable in today’s business world where changing roles are demanding talents people may not yet have had to demonstrate. Moreover, so often in organisations, promotion is given to people who have been doing the new job unofficially for some time. But, there is increasing evidence that the younger generations especially are no longer content with this and are seeking more rapid progression. Understanding potential helps significantly.
A drawback of traditional assessment centres is that they are costly, and time-consuming, involving trained observers and lengthy reporting. New online business simulations, such as e-Simulator SuiteTM, eliminate these drawbacks, whilst providing an immersive, and stimulating delegate experience. Martina Horni?áková Assistant Manager of the Education & Training Team at Kia Motors, Slovakia is highly experienced at using both traditional and virtual assessment centres. She points out that “traditional, classroom, assessment centres are much more demanding on the organization thanvirtual simulation, which is less people intensive, easy to administer and yet the feedback is often more incisive and of higher quality. Importantly, Horni?áková also finds that the virtual processes have high credibility with line managers who see the objective input it provides into the decision-making process as a huge support. Changing perspectives on career development also require a redefinition of what we mean by talent. I was struck recently by a view given by Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta who said simply “talent is the opportunity someone gives you.” This sums up my approach nicely.
[1] Clutterbuck, D (2012) The Talent Wave: Why succession planning fails and what to do about it, Kogan Page London
