“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.” — Lawrence Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell International
In sports, it is the game plan. It business, it is called the strategy.
Regardless of what you call it, as the quote says, it is all about people. They are the stars. The talent you have within will, in the end, determine the trajectory of your business.
If you look at the most admired and successful companies around the world, those who have figured this out and found a way to get the best talent top the list. If that is the case, then why are so many companies floundering or just muddling along?
They are in that fix because they are concentrating on the strategy — and only the strategy. It’s all strategy and no results.
In strategic workforce planning, each company must define their strategic role. This is the role that drives the strategy. That role has nothing at all to do with leadership, as the role of the leader is as the coach who will enable the key players to get it done.
The companies that master this take the talent game seriously, and make finding, growing, developing the best talent a top priority. It is not easy to get into this category in any industry.
If you look at the leaders in any industry vertical, you will realize that they have figured this out. For the most part they follow some simple rules. If you were to speak to their HR heads, they would tell you about their Talent Management that the Human Capital Strategy is built around talent.
The C-suite discussions are focused on the talent within. One global CEO of a very successful retail empire told me that the first item of discussion on their agenda is people: Success stories, development opportunities, person of the week/month, etc.
He said this instills in all his team the importance of people in their success. This from a person who started his empire with one store and now has a chain of their stores across the Middle East. His take was that he could not have achieved any of this without those people. Some of them started out in low-level roles — as a secretary or a delivery person — and have now climbed the organizational ladder.
As a matter of fact, their top performing store is run by a gentleman who had no formal education and was originally hired as a driver. His take was that they hire the person and do not concentrate on the CV.
Here are a few of my takes on some of the hurdles to winning with talent:
We now live in an uber-competitive environment, and your competitors are going to work every day trying to win. Let your talent be the catalyst that will allow you to lead your industry.