Impact Focused Development – Best Way to Develop & Retain Top Talent
We are living in a world where not only business, but the way of life itself is rapidly evolving. A careful examination of these changes, and we will find while in every business there are some things that will not change, there are other things that are rapidly evolving. To get this in perspective, just a few relevant comparisons:
| What’s not changing? | What’s changing? |
| Customer has been and will continue to be the centre of a profitable business. | Customer expectations and their right are evolving faster than ever. Also, are evolving the models and methods of engaging customers. |
| The need for sound financials has always been there and will continue. | The challenge of staying profitable is being shaped by a rapidly changing competitive landscape. Industries are competing not just within themselves, but with other industries too. |
| Fundamentals of running a business: investment, product/service, delivery, selling, etc. still are absolutely required. | But the investment and revenue cycles are constantly seeing changes, along with ways of doing business. There is a technology-driven way of running a function, with its traditional role, still relevant in most cases. |
| Employees and staff are still critical. | Employment concepts and practices are rapidly evolving and will continue to evolve. |
Now, in the light of all this, if the business has to perform, Business Leaders have to deliver outcomes and impact. And this means, often the Leadership and Talent pipeline also has to perform.
For decades now, Learning and Talent Management practices have shaped up, evolved, and developed many ways to deliver better Talent Management programs. There was a world of skilling and tooling created by the advent of large-scale manufacturing and quality practices.
Then came the world of TNI-TNA and training calendars. Then the evolution brought in learning journeys and interventions for competency development. Gradually assessment and development centres came, and so did blended learning.
Now we have gamification, simulations, VR and well, coaching & mentoring too. And these are all still relevant and will remain relevant, till there is a need for growth/change in running the business and within that the need for growth/change for people.
But with most of these methods or method-oriented approaches, the objective was often readiness of talent, not really application of talent development to immediate business context. Not making a sweeping generalization here but bringing forth a practical challenge that I have seen both from the HR and the business leadership side.
The question in today’s world is who will help assist senior management in managing the challenges they have to deal with? This is where Leadership and Talent pipeline has to perform more than ever, we need more hands-on-deck to manage business outcomes and their impact. This entails complex and prolonged problem-solving at times.
This is where the construct of Impact Driven Development of Top Talent comes in. Impact Driven Top Talent Development:
- Is a framework/approach that selects talent pool relevant to solve the organizational problems. This is done by using the problem contours to establish talent assessment criteria. Hence, unlike the traditional approach, only the presence of certain competencies is not enough.
- Ensures integrating development with solution of business problem in real-time. This is far more than the traditional approach of action learning projects etc.
- As an approach doesn’t need an independent IDP, but generates a Context-Driven IDP. Here, a top talent program Incumbent chooses development focus to solve the problem faster, better, and possibly in novel ways. In fact, several incumbents can share a context drive IDP.
- Ensures the incumbents learn and deliver, and further grow with the outcomes.
By this philosophy, top talent is always organized as a task force, with the relevant authority, and rationalization of their day-to-day workload, so they can focus on delivering outcomes and desired impact.
The best variations of the Impact Focused Development are:
- Change Indexed Development – here the business is looking to fix problems, or evolve to newer ways of doing things with the existing customers, products, services, etc. Efficiency/remediation is the key here.
- Solution Indexed Development – here the business is looking to create new products, services, business models, etc. Innovation is the key here.
- Growth Indexed Development – here the business is looking to expand territory, or new lines of business, or new categories of customer acquisition. Setup and expansion are the keys here.
In this way, the talent pool will be the harbinger of change and will be a segmented group purposed to deal with difficult or high-stake issues. Meanwhile, the rest of the solid citizens of the organization can keep their focus on the repeatable and reproducible day-to-day operations without worrying about having to take risks. Needless to say, regular upskilling can continue for this population.
The Core Components of Impact Focused Development are:
- A problem / situation / need to solve
- A talent pool willing to play the high risk – high stake game
- A sign-up process where they are repurposed to being the final frontier
- A skilling-tooling process where they are purposefully reskilled
- A governance process that will enable them
- A senior leadership commitment to see them through to the impact
The key challenges (dilemmas & derailers) for Impact Focused Development are:
- Keeping the talent program relevant through the year to capture business issues – this is a cycle change from the once-in-a-year approach.
- Enabling focus of the talent group with work and empowerment management – this is a cultural change to be made.
- Enabling real-time skilling and guidance – this is a leadership mindset shift
- Knowing what to do with the talent, once the Impact has been achieved – this is a process change.
- Creating a pool of sufficient and readily available focus areas – this is a growth and business issue and a strategy change.
The Key benefits of Impact Focused Development are:
- That it yields a purposeful talent development, which is proved with actual results.
- That it eliminates the need for laborious IDPs and development which is difficult to track and even justify in terms of ROI.
- That it brings a clear distinction between regular work and prioritized high impact goals.
- That it eliminates a need for separate stretch assignments to be distributed all around the organization without a guarantee of things getting done.
Question is, how do we make this switch?
First and foremost: this is a mindset change. Stop making Talent Management an HR priority/purpose. Talent is one of the essential supply chains in keeping the business running. So, Talent Management has to be a business priority.
Second: this is a strategic change. We have to start looking at talent development to be a driver of business change, solutions, and growth.
Third: this is a cultural change. We have to make time and space to pull out a set of available talent and repurpose it to make a differential business intervention and gain.
Fourth: this is a leadership change. Leaders have to take on the task of talent development in a purposeful way, and the purpose here is to ensure a better return of investment of time, energy, and resources.
Lastly: this is an operational change, where not everyone is doing everything in the organization. The concept of division of labour is used in an intelligent new-gen way to deal with what’s novel, risky or high stakes, a little away from the regular work.
In bits and pieces, many organizations do some of this in their talent development cycles. But the point here is to transition to this targeted approach.
