Assessing and developing talent

"When I looked at my research notes and interview transcripts from the executives we’ve interviewed, one theme that comes through is that their greatest decisions were not what but who. They were people decisions."

If business success came down to a formula, most businesses would do well. But it is not too difficult to conclude from a wealth of evidence that people deliver success. So we have to figure out how to bring out the best in our people, whatever else business success depends upon. One of the 20th century’s greatest business leaders was Jack Welch at GE. Not everything he did has proven to be transferable to other organisations but his most fundamental belief is significant. He claims that: “Great people not great strategies are what made it work. We spent extraordinary time recruiting, training, developing, and rewarding the best”

Similarly, Jim Collins, whose excellent research on company transformations is summarised in his 2001 book .Good to Great. put it like this: “In a good to great transformation, people are not your most important asset. The right people are”.

The difficulty we face as business leaders is how to judge who are the great people, or the right people. Every organisation has its own framework for making assessments. The competencies of one organisation are seldom the same as any other organisation so we are faced with a fundamental problem. Success in one environment will not necessarily predict success in another. In the same way, a positive evaluation under one organisation’s competency framework will not necessarily read across to another.

Edgecumbe’s assessment model Primary Colours

We have tried to make sense both of the factors that cause managers and professionals to succeed, and of the competency frameworks we have encountered in our client companies.

There are three fundamental and underlying capabilities that have emerged and we have put them together in our Primary Colours model or framework. All competencies seem to be made up of these three underlying capabilities. The first is cognitive ability, the second is skills with people and the third is operational capability. We have called these: Strategic, People and Operational capabilities.

The Primary Colours model can be used in several ways:

• For assessing and measuring the underlying capability of the talent in your organisation;
• To describe jobs, people and development needs;
• To describe and set objectives;
• integrate information easily into an organisational talent management database.

Most fundamentally, Primary Colours provides the organisation with a common language for people and organisational development processes such as recruitment, appraisal, talent identification, succession management, management development and performance management. The appeal of the model is its simplicity. If your organisation already has a competency model or qualities framework that describes the required tasks and behaviours of the management group, the Primary Colours will map on to it. So will the frameworks of other organisations and this makes comparisons possible. How else can you judge the comparative strength or your management team? We measure the ability of individuals under these headings so that we can discover what comes easily to them (strengths); what they can learn and improve, but may never master (development needs); and what they will always find difficult (dependencies). In this way we explode the myth that all deficiencies are development opportunities. They are not, but some are and it is important to be able to tell the difference.

Strategic capability

Strategic capability is required to set the direction of the organisation by being able to see opportunity, understand risk and make judgements and decisions.

Delivery capability

Delivery capability is about getting the job done well.

People capability

People capability covers the full array of interpersonal skills and leadership behaviours required to make the organisational function day in, day out.

The talent audit

As well as assessing the talent in this way, we need to understand the organisation’s journey. Its origins and recent history help us to understand what has contributed to its success and its current position. We then need to understand where it is heading, its specific challenges and the values and behaviours that it will need in order to achieve its goals.

These two exercises allow us to complete the talent audit at organisational level. However the third step of the process is to look at the leadership teams that exist in each of the critical parts of the organisation. We do this by working with department leaders to get clarity about their specific purpose and tasks. Then we analyse the team’s profiles to see how closely they fit the leadership needs of the department going forward. Most people have strengths in one or two of the Primary Colours but it is rare to find anyone who is strong in all three; hence the need for teamwork. In order to carry out the assessments in the talent audit, we consider evidence from a variety of sources which could be collected either in one-to-one interviews or through an assessment centre:

• psychometric and ability tests;
• a semi structured psychologically based career interview;
• recent performance and behaviour;
• possibly a 360° feedback;
• and group exercises (if using an assessment centre approach).

We report our assessments either using the client’s own organisational competency model grouped under Primary Colours, or under the Primary Colours directly. Under the heading of Strategy we include Analytical Power, Strategic Thinking, Decision Making and Judgment, and Innovation. Under the heading of People we include Coping with Pressure, Team working, Insight and Learning, and Impact. Under the heading of Delivery we include the operational issues of Drive for Results, Customer Focus, Performance Management, and Achieving Change. These results are fed back carefully to individuals and their development needs highlighted. The data are also aggregated to provide an overall report on the bench strength of the organisation or team.

Matching people to roles

A job such as Commercial Director of a large corporation may require highly developed strategic ability, reasonably highly developed people skills and a rock solid ability to deliver results. If these requirements were expressed in terms of our Primary Colours and each on a five-point scale: the job requirements may be summarised as 5:3:5.

Assessments carried out as described above would also enable an individual.s capabilities under these three main headings to be rated on the same five-point scales. A matching process could be initiated whether for recruitment, promotion or succession management purposes. There would also be a wealth of detail available but the essence is simplicity itself. Matching is the best method for ensuring continuing quality of delivery in the organisation as a whole. To quote Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in ‘First Break All The Rules’ (2005);

“People don't change that much. Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough”.