Talent Management: Expert Solutions - Shopify

Talent Management: Expert Solutions

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Henry Ford

Table of Contents 4

From the CEO John Dutton

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Introduction Dakotah Fitzhugh

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The Big Picture of talent management Michael Tingsager

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Navigating the complicated and the complex with style Dr Kenneth R Brousseau

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The new ABCs of sales Ian Kershaw

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Potential for what? Joseph H Kalkman

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The gaming imperative for pre-employment screening assessments Dr Tom Janz

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Developing new leaders Ruth Gibson

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Dynamically aligning management of talent with market changes Pravir Malik

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Sales recruitment Andrew Dugdale

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Business success? Grow your own talent! Nicole Dominique Le Maire

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From the CEO Our first Talent Management eBook, published in December 2014, received a great response. Six months later we have produced volume two, and we hope you enjoy it as much as the first. We continue to expand our product portfolio and business associations. This volume brings together eight experts from our growing network across the globe. Some you may be familiar with, and others will be fresh new faces and perspectives. Each has contributed an article on a talent management topic for which they have particular passion and expertise. We hope you enjoy reading these articles. Included below are a few suggestions on how to make the most of the content.

We encourage you to: • Start with the article that sparks your interest the most – No need to begin on the first page • Share it with friends, colleagues, strangers – Start a conversation and spread knowledge among your peers • Engage with the authors – Add to our dialogue by contributing your views on our blog, LinkedIn, and Twitter

John Dutton CEO and Chairman, Synermetric Ltd

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Introduction When we published our first eBook last December, we asked readers to respond to a short survey about talent management challenges for 2015. A huge thank you again to everyone who participated; as a reminder, the responses of over 200 HR professionals are collected in Research Insights: Talent Management, which you can download on our website. We found several common themes amongst the challenges outlined in our readers’ open-ended comments, which we have attempted to address on our blog and in this publication. We are continuing the conversation in our Synermetric Community on LinkedIn, so please share your thoughts on these topics there as well.

Sourcing top talent What if the people you’re hiring aren’t actually the right ones for the job? How do you determine who the ‘right ones’ are? It may be that you’re looking in the wrong places. In his article, ‘The new ABCs of sales’ (page 20), Ian Kershaw describes how redefining one company’s idea of who they were looking for resulted in a broad field of successful hires. For his part, Dr Tom Janz suggests that the issue may be the reach of your recruiting process. If tedious trials and irrelevant assessments are turning potential employees away before you even see them, you could be missing out on your best talent. His article ‘The gaming imperative for pre-employment screening assessments’ (page 28) describes how gamifying screening processes can drastically improve the size and quality of your candidate pool.

Retaining talent with limited resources We all seem to be perpetually short of those two precious business resources: time and money. Understandably, the pressure to budget tightly and achieve results quickly often weighs on recruiters. However, this is not a good place to cut corners. Our last eBook featured an article by Dexter Davies Smith outlining the costs of recruiting the wrong candidate. (You can also read his series in full on our blog.) This time around, Andrew Dugdale broke down an enlightening study revealing the casual attitudes many organisations apply to recruiting their sales executives, and how rarely those attitudes pay off (‘Sales recruitment’, page 41). The bottom line: investing in your recruitment process is worth all the resources you can spare, and designing a process that identifies candidates that truly provide what you need will save you time, effort, and disappointment down the line.

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Similarly, you can’t afford to lose the talent you have, and it’s far more affordable to develop your workforce than it is to replace them. As Nicole Dominique Le Maire points out in ‘Business success? Grow your own talent!’ (page 46), maintaining a powerful talent pool requires consistent engagement. Spare some time to refine your organisational processes now, and you will end up saving those precious resources in the long run.

Adapting approaches for diverse generations in the workforce The ongoing transition of the millennial generation into the workplace has prompted much analysis as businesses attempt to understand and adopt strategies to effectively manage employees across generations. As a part of our HR Tech Europe interview series in conjunction with HRIS World, we talked with NGA HR about their recent survey of UK businesses, focusing on the expectations and motivations of a diverse workforce, which you can find on our blog. Just as a new generation of workers brings new challenges to their employers, an aging workforce presents issues in the form of succession planning. Do you know who will step up when your top performers retire? By identifying and developing the potential of promising employees now, you can be prepared for handovers looming in the future. Joseph H Kalkman addresses how to scout out future leaders in his article, ‘Potential for what?’ (page 23).

Developing leadership How can you create and nurture new leaders? How can you help current leaders stay on top of their game? Most of the articles in this book address leadership in some way, but to get down to specifics our own Ruth Gibson has laid out a guide for nurturing leadership in her article, ‘Developing new leaders’ (page 35). In addition, Dr Kenneth R Brousseau has contributed an in-depth article on understanding the differences between managing complicated and complex systems, both on organisational and individual levels. How can companies and their leaders adjust to changing models of business and complex situations? How can you help your top leaders adjust to new positions requiring different approaches? You’ll want to read ‘Navigating the complicated and the complex with style’ (page 11) to find out. For another approach, Michael Tingsager brings leadership and talent management together in his article, ‘The Big Picture of talent management’ (page 8), which encourages a more expansive view of who leaders are and what they do. Finally, Pravir Malik has provided an overview of his research into how organisational leadership can align talent management strategies with the behaviour of their markets. ‘Dynamically aligning management of talent with market changes’ (page 37) explains his method of harnessing organisational “DNA” to create an interlinked system of individuals, organisations, and the markets in which they operate.

Managing coaching processes 6

Several respondents mentioned coaching as a part of their toolkit, and expressed


desire for a system to manage their coaching process. We’ll take a closer look at coaching processes in future publications, but for now we recommend taking a look at the capabilities of dashboards or web portals to keep your coaching programmes organised. Creating an online structure by which participants can schedule meetings, keep track of their progress, communicate with managers, and access resource libraries can encourage involvement and improve the effectiveness of your programme. If coaching is an important part of your development strategy, it’s certainly worth a look. You can read more about dashboards and web portals on our website, or contact us and ask for Ruth, our resident expert.

As always, we are immensely grateful to our ever-widening network of HR professionals, consultants, psychologists, researchers, and technologists. Exploring the spaces between science, technology, and humanity continues to be a fascinating and rewarding experience, and we appreciate all of the people who enrich this space, yourselves most of all.

Dakotah Fitzhugh Marketing Technologist, Synermetric Ltd

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The Big Picture of talent management Michael Tingsager Talent management has been a challenge or priority on the agenda of all HR and L&D teams in recent years. Everyone talks about the importance of getting the right talent on board to gain competitive advantage. It seems that organisations all over the world understand that there is need for focus and investment if you want to win the war for talent. A fresh report from Deloitte1 addresses the top challenges within talent management and the top areas organisations are concerned about: • 86% of UK organisations say leadership is one of their biggest challenges, with only 8% ranking their leadership pipeline as ‘excellent’. • The difference between the reported importance of leadership and how ready organisations feel they are to succeed in this area has risen to 35, the widest gap of any HR issue in the report. • Taking a medium- to long-term view, businesses are falling short in developing young leaders, as only 6% of companies said they have “excellent” programmes in place for younger staff. Throughout the financial crisis, organisations have made large investments in talent management processes and technology to make sure that they have enough of the right talent now, but neglected to plan for the future. Have these investments given businesses a secure talent pipeline in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) business environment? Or have they created a rigid and costly framework that make it hard to remain agile and adapt to changing circumstances, in the business, sector, and labour markets?

Have these investments given businesses a secure talent pipeline? Or have they created a rigid and costly framework?

Are processes and systems the answer? The classic life cycle of talent management, joining together several HR practices united by a set of ‘talent’ competencies, attributes, and behaviours, still works. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. But in the face of many commercial challenges including economic pressures, predicted skills shortages at a national level, and increasing competitive pressure, this set of HR practices, however well-conceived, is no longer enough. 8

According to Deloitte’s research findings on leadership pipeline and capability


challenges, the ability of leadership to bring these talent management practices to life, applying their judgement and people development skills, will become even more crucial for businesses. Furthermore, the performance of the ‘talented few’ cannot be enough to sustain business performance in a VUCA environment. Leadership therefore need not only to bring talent management practices to life, but to ensure they keep them aligned with overall business goals, and engage the wider organisation in achieving these.

Talent management can’t only be about the smooth execution of processes and systems. It has to be about everyone in the business being on the same page. To put it a different way, talent management can’t only be about the smooth execution of processes and systems. It has to be about everyone in the business— leaders, managers, and employees—being on the same page and understanding the organisation’s goals, challenges, and opportunities, as well as experiencing people practices that help them to contribute. What are the roles of HR and L&D functions in this? Rather than being the ‘keepers of the keys’ on yet more processes, following up on completion rates and compliance, they have to understand the power of creating great experiences for employees through people practices, and helping leadership to create a sense of purpose by linking these practices to organisational goals. Is this casting the talent management net very wide? Yes, it is. But in addition to core talent management practices targeting the talented few, it acknowledges that the individual talents of all employees, when focused on the right things and the same direction, are vital in achieving business goals. With more direct engagement in this broader, more inclusive approach to talent management, employees will feel more valued and also engaged in developing themselves, others, and the organisation. It sounds simple, but it’s hard for leaders to do of their own initiative and under their own steam. In fact, this could lead to teams pulling in different directions, to the detriment of company performance. So it’s time for HR and L&D teams to turn the tables in how they engage leaders, managers, and employees in talent management, going well beyond obliging them to execute on processes. This is very much in line with our philosophy: the Big Picture. We believe in letting people at all levels of the business solve challenges and opportunities together, and getting them on the same page. This may not instantly feel like a natural and easy process for everyone involved, as cynicism, skill gaps, low trust, and low confidence in leadership can all be potential barriers. We therefore aim to create engaging materials and methodologies which enhance the capability of organisations and consultants to facilitate great conversations and planning. This helps HR and L&D teams and leaders alike to enable people with different experiences of the business to quickly engage around business challenges, create a shared understanding of business goals and priorities, and find solutions that will enhance the performance of each team and the individuals in it. 9

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Conclusion There’s no blueprint for a gold-standard approach to talent management. Each organisation must find its own best fit for meeting current and future needs, delivering its strategy, and bringing its values to life. People no longer look for a career but an experience, which organisations can achieve through true engagement with a broader and more inclusive approach to talent management, aligning HR and L&D practices with business goals, and enhancing the performance and individual voice talents of all employees.

References 1. Bersin, J., Agarwal, D., Pelster, B., & Schwartz, J. (Eds.). (2015). Global Human Capital Trends 2015. Deloitte University Press. Retrieved from http:// d2mtr37y39tpbu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DUP_ GlobalHumanCapitalTrends2015.pdf

About the author Michael Tingsager has a background as a leader and interim management consultant in SME and global corporate companies. He runs his own consultancy business and is Sage Chief of the Big Picture Academy. Mr Tingsager is an expert in operations and people with focus on leadership development, strategy, OD, change management and talent management. He is an advantage MBTI and Big Picture practitioner.

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Navigating the complicated and the complex with style Dr Kenneth R Brousseau Failure to recognize the difference between the merely complicated and the truly complex can bring an enterprise to its knees. Too often, the telltale differentiating cues remain hidden in plain sight by pattern-bound ways of thinking much better suited to the past than to the present and future. Complex systems are coming to dominate most aspects of the world around us, both in terms of business products and operations. Aligning styles of thinking with the specifications of those systems is fundamental to their successful handling.

Complicated systems vs complex systems Complicated systems and complex systems are similar in that both are likely to consist of numerous parts that must ultimately fit together in coherent ways. Both can be difficult to handle, and both require a good deal of thinking. However, the similarities tend to end there. Complicated systems are comparatively more stable and less subject to change. Things can be anticipated in advance. Once a product or task has been handled successfully, the same procedure or method can be applied to similar products or tasks with a good deal of confidence that similar results will be achieved. The system may consist of many parts, and the ways to handle those parts may require a great deal of training and experience to master. That mastery usually requires being trained and experienced in a specialized body of knowledge and skills. For example, civil engineers know the parameters that need to be detailed when designing a bridge. Bridges can be very complicated structures; however, we have been designing and building bridges for many centuries and the fundamental principles of bridge design are well documented.

Figure 1: Suspension bridge design example

Predictability is inherently a feature of a complicated system. That is, the end goal or desired outcome is known, even if the path to achieve that goal may be long and might contain numerous decision points. However, the length of the path and the decision points are known in advance, and

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the criteria for turning one way versus another at the decision points are known. With sufficient training and experience, plus appropriate attention to detail, the correct turns can be identified with confidence. Things proceed linearly, from A to B to C, according to one or more established sets of rules or algorithms. Consequently, the handling of complicated systems can be mastered and the correct rules and procedures can be codified. Referring again to bridge design, many factors have to be taken into account in the design of a long suspension bridge: the extremes of weather, currents, and winds, and the weight of materials are examples of the many parameters involved. However, most of these parameters can be estimated accurately from historical records, known properties of materials, and from technical specifications. Once they are known, experienced engineers can put together a detailed blueprint for the bridge. Then comes the complicated task of building the bridge. As in all large construction projects, many groups of specialists and skilled workers will be needed. Each group has its specialized job to perform. Integration and coordination during the construction are essential; however, the individual group of specialists need not worry about such matters. They do their individual jobs and the general contractor overseeing the construction assures that the sequencing and integration of parts goes forward according to an established plan. Figure 2: Complex systems are quite different, and a key differentiator Schema depicting a complex system is uncertainty. Things are not nearly as predictable. In a complex system, uncertainty may arise from two different system features: change and multiple interdependencies among the parts. The parts tend to change or evolve, as do the relationships among the parts. Any one part of the system might be influenced by multiple other parts and, in turn, might influence a number of other parts. Linearity vanishes; things cannot be programmed in advance to proceed in a straight sequence from A to B to C. Consequently, the design and configuration of parts might need to be negotiated in real time based on the dynamic state of the system and the multidirectional interdependencies. For instance, in an automated weather prediction system there are many mutually interacting variables that determine predictions: atmospheric pressures at the surface and aloft, air mass positions and movements, and ocean currents, to name a few. Changes in any can influence any of the others, moment by moment, as per the classic “butterfly effect.” Such systems are far more accurate now than in the past, aided as they are by global satellite tracking systems. Nonetheless, their accuracy remains relative and far from absolute. As a rule, methods that proved successful for dealing with a particular complex system cannot be counted on to work the same way for handling a similar system in the future. This is because similarity is inevitably a relative quantity in the realm of complex systems. No two systems will be exactly alike, and in fact if they were exactly alike, they would not be truly complex systems. 12


The complicated past The Industrial Revolution sparked a huge leap forward in the design and construction of massive and elaborate machines and products. Roads, ships, automobiles, aircraft, spacecraft, computing systems, factories, and buildings of huge proportions demonstrate this. The rise of scientific management as conceived by Frederick W. Taylor in the early Twentieth Century and as implemented in mass production operations worldwide is perhaps the ultimate expression of rules for handling complicated systems. According to the dictates of scientific management, everything is specified and programmed in advance, right down to the exact moment-by-moment sequence of motions made by workers in those operations. Not surprisingly, in the business world, that complicated past continues to influence operations today. Organizations are set up like elaborate, complicated machines to produce work. Units based on function, product or geography are designed so that each can perform its specialized role, leading ultimately to the output of standardized products and services. Employees within each unit are assigned specific “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs) on which they are exhorted to concentrate their attention and energies. The idea is that if we all just focus on doing our jobs, the right stuff will get produced in the end.

The complex present and future Change is a hallmark characteristic of complex systems, not complicated systems, and in the new millennium, things are changing and the pace of change is accelerating. Moreover, it is now commonplace for a business’ operations to span the globe. Consequently, the communication requirements within an enterprise must address asynchronous time zones and cross many national, cultural, and market boundaries. In many instances, the demand for new and innovative products and services means that an enterprise must keep moving faster and faster. Companies must stay abreast of swiftly evolving market trends, while dealing with competitive threats that seem to appear instantly, seemingly out of nowhere. New technologies can spring up overnight that can change the entire shape of what once was a stable and longstanding market. Think of Kodak, Xerox, and Motorola, former titans of industry whose business models were rendered almost obsolete right in front of them. One could argue that they had become pattern-bound by their past successes in much less complex times, even though their products were built upon highly complicated technologies. At the moment, fast-moving startup firms such as Uber and AirBnB are radically altering parts of the local transportation and hospitality industries while current occupants of those industry segments struggle to compete using traditional practices and procedures. Few enterprises can rest on their laurels and survive.

Silo mindset from the past Nonetheless, perhaps reflective of past complicated systems and the mindsets engendered by them, many products are designed and produced within different units that each have their have own standard procedures and highly specific performance

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objectives. That is, each unit has its own set of performance objectives – its own KPIs. Often those KPIs are so specific and narrowly focused within each unit that the various units become silos of internal focus. The need for integration becomes eclipsed or is treated as “someone else’s job.” When the work is merely complicated, relegating integration to third parties or individuals higher in a chain of command might work just fine. But where the work is truly complex, a hierarchy simply cannot anticipate and adequately manage integration challenges, many of which can only be identified and handled on a real-time basis.

Mixed systems: complicated and complex Even the most complex projects today will involve pockets of highly complicated work. Producing a smartphone requires the efforts of numerous specialists: device engineers, firmware architects and programmers, and materials and packaging specialists, to name a few. In other words, most systems are hybrid combinations of the complicated and the complex. In complicated and complex hybrid systems, integration is the chief challenge. Assuring that the varied parts of a system perform their specialized functions and work together can be a formidable task. One of the biggest challenges arises from the fact that highly complicated work requires a different mindset, or way of thinking, than is needed to handle highly complex work. Yet, in many cases, the mindset best suited to handling complicated work is tasked with the handling of complex work. In order to address the particular challenges of a given system, rather than relying mainly, or only, on standardized management procedures, it is essential to think in a way that mirrors the qualities of the system. Fortunately, styles of thinking can easily be mapped to system qualities.

Styles of thinking Just as systems can be described as complicated or complex, so can styles of thinking. Briefly, complicated and complex styles of thinking both fall into a category that my colleagues and I call “maximizing,” or analytic, as distinct from “satisficing,” or action-oriented. Maximizing refers to the tendency to maximize intake of information and analysis of that information when thinking or deciding. Satisficing refers to the tendency to take into account a minimal number of facts or items of information when thinking and deciding – i.e., one is quickly satisfied that a workable solution can be identified by just a few facts. In both categories, maximizing and satisficing alike, styles further differ in the extent that they focus in a structured way on achieving a specific, pre-established goal or outcome as opposed to being responsive to multiple objectives or outcomes that themselves can shift and change as a situation evolves. In our terms, some styles are uni-focused, while others are multi-focused. See Table 1.

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In dealing with systems, our experience shows that all styles are needed, but not necessarily in equal measure. The less analytic, more action-oriented styles, Decisive and Flexible, are useful for dealing with immediate operational issues that


arise: assuring that things are moving forward and that shortterm operational problems are addressed and decisions are made. However, in the realm of complicated and complex systems, the more thinking oriented, maximizing styles have a special role. Complicated and complex systems can both be demanding in that a lot of thinking is needed. The maximizer styles, Hierarchic and Integrative, share this quality – both styles are given to doing a lot of thinking. For the purposes of this paper, I will only be giving attention to the two maximizer styles.

Table 1: StyleViewTM model

The Hierarchic style, shown in Table 1, is an analytic, uni-focused, and structured mode of thinking and deciding. When a Hierarchic thinker takes on a problem requiring a solution, the tendency will be to examine a problem thoroughly and to carefully break it into its constituent parts for study or examination. The analysis normally takes place with a clear objective or desired outcome in mind that serves as the focal point. That objective typically is preestablished based on previous training, experience, logic and/or established policy or rules. With this objective in mind, the thinker will look for a best path or strategy to achieve that goal, ideally one that will stand the test of time. Once a path or strategy to achieve the objective has been identified, the inclination is to put together a detailed plan centered on the key objective and then to stay the course until that objective has been achieved. Clearly, the Hierarchic style is a complicated way of thinking; a mindset that is well suited to handling complicated systems. Its analytic, detail-oriented, and highly procedural and focused qualities fit well with the intricate and structured aspects of complicated systems. The Integrative style is a better fit with complex systems. Integrative thinkers can be equally as analytic as their Hierarchic-thinking counterparts, but in a much less structured way. In this mode of thinking, the tendency is to keep one’s peripheral vision fully activated and to look at the broad context surrounding a problem. The thinker is interested in, and notices, how the parts of the system are influenced by contextual factors and how the parts of a problem interact and overlap internally. No two problems or systems are seen as identical; differences and unique features are noticed and take on importance. Moreover, goals and particular outcomes are not fixed; instead, they tend to emerge from the analysis and no one objective is likely to stand out as eclipsing the importance of other objectives. Consequently, with multiple objectives in mind, no one path or strategy is seen as adequate for dealing with a problem. Instead, multiple paths and strategies to achieve multiple objectives will emerge from this way

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of thinking, and those strategies along with the goals they serve may shift and change as the problem evolves. As an analytic, multi-focused and dynamic way of thinking, the Integrative style fits particularly well with complex systems that contain many interacting parts that shift and change in unpredictable ways. The Integrative thinking process parallels the essential qualities of complex systems.

Mindsets as deep grooves of thinking As discussed, executives and systems managers today remain a lot more familiar with good methods for managing complicated systems than for handling complex systems. Many have been educated in disciplines traditionally applied to complicated systems. Moreover, many have experience in organizations whose very structures mimic complicated systems and are geared to reduce uncertainty and facilitate focused effort on highly specialized roles. Inasmuch as styles of thinking evolve and take shape under the influence of experience, many have developed profiles that put a good deal of emphasis on the Hierarchic style of thinking.

When things go wrong The problem here is the Hierarchic mindset’s propensity, when faced with change and uncertainty, to put in place procedures and work arrangements that attempt to reduce or eliminate ambiguity. Clear job specifications are created, along with detailed work rules, highly focused performance criteria in the form of KPIs, and rigid project schedules that often include no provisions for unexpected events. In other words, the Hierarchic tendency is to create a complicated organizational machine tuned to dealing with highly complicated systems and projects. When things go wrong, the effort will be to tighten things up further, search for a “root cause” and/or to identify one or more culprits who failed to perform their jobs according to the rules. In a complex system these efforts could lead to additional cascades of problems. Keeping in mind that some amount of Hierarchic thinking usually will be needed in a truly hybrid complicated and complex system, let’s consider the Integrative mindset. When things go wrong, instead of zeroing in on a root cause, the inclination is to look more broadly at the system and to pay close attention to interactions and interdependencies among the parts. Problems tend to be viewed as having multiple causes and as resulting from inadequate interaction among the multiple parties, no one of which will be viewed as “the culprit.” We recently saw the telltale signs of the sole use of complicated thinking in the R&D division of an electronics manufacturer. A costly problem arose at the very end of a chain of functions needed to produce a significantly new version of a microprocessor. The chain was set up to operate, in the words of one individual, like a “relay race,” where each functional group would perform its work and then hand the developing product off to the next functional group in the chain. 16

Seemingly small changes can introduce major uncertainties and unintended


consequences that are increasingly common when products change rapidly and become increasingly complex. In this particular case, things went along relatively smoothly until the design reached the last node in the chain – the packaging unit where the new processor needed to be encased. It came to light that there simply wasn’t any package solution available that would work. The performance requirements that the new design had to meet had ended up giving the device a significantly different configuration from that of previous generations. No one at any of the earlier points in the chain had anticipated the consequences for packaging. Had the potential for a packaging problem been recognized earlier, the design conceivably might have been managed along the way to accommodate use of an existing, or easier-to-create, package. But, it seemed that within each function the focus of attention had been inward. This problem caused a costly and moraledamaging delay while a new and unique package solution was designed, tested and constructed. These outcomes could have been avoided had there been more communication and interaction all along the chain, but at the time, communication between non-adjacent functions simply was not part of the linear, A-to-B-to-C way of managing projects.

The art of managing styles of thinking Mindsets can be very powerful. Styles of thinking are habits and those habits can form deep grooves. Procedures can be put in place to counter the negative consequences that can result from people getting stuck in those grooves; however, such procedures could simply result in a proliferation of new rules that create rigidity as opposed to adaptability. In contrast to managing by more and more rules and procedures, a more powerful strategy is to make people aware of their own thinking styles and to show them how and when to shift gears and move into a different way of thinking. That is, people can learn to shift away from a familiar thinking style, at least temporarily, toward another style that better fits the circumstance at hand. Helping people to situationally adapt their styles of thinking and decision-making requires self-awareness and a corresponding awareness of the situational cues that indicate the sort of thinking that fits with a situation immediately at hand. To build this self-awareness we use an assessment tool built around the StyleViewTM i model shown in Table 1. The tool is specifically designed to bring awareness to people of their styles of thinking, or “decision styles,” as we call them. The assessment uses a combination of self-description and simulation to assure that individuals see beyond sometimes idealized perceptions of themselves and gain insights into aspects of their thinking that they may not see when they are “lost in thought,” so to speak. Individuals get feedback on their public personas as decision-makers – the behavior they project in important interpersonal interactions when people are inclined to present whatever they believe is an appropriate image as a thinker and decision-maker. We call this level of thinking interpersonal role style, in contrast to the less self-aware and less conscious behavior they fall into as a matter of habit when they are caught 17

i. StyleView is a trade name of Decision Dynamics, LLC.

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up in the moment and are just proceeding in whatever way comes naturally. We call this latter level operating style. It is important for people to gain insights into both of these levels in their thinking. This doesn’t come naturally for most people; the stark statistical reality revealed in the style profiles of hundreds of thousands of people is that one way of thinking does not correlate with the other! The role style profiles of most people differ quite markedly from their operating style profiles.1 It’s not easy to manage one’s styles of thinking if one can see only part of the picture. But, with broader insights into one’s own styles, people can achieve useful insights into their habits of thinking, and consequently loosen the grip of those habits. Table 2 provides brief examples of cues that differentiate complicated and complex situations, and that correspondingly indicate the key features of the Hierarchic or Integrative style that fit each situation. A few moments of reflection using such cues can mean the difference between staying stuck in a one-size-fits-all mindset versus a way of thinking that is aligned with the essential qualities of the task at hand. Table 2: Guidelines for adapting thinking styles for complicated and complex situations

Our experience shows that, once individuals become familiar with their own styles, a range of new possibilities opens up. Chief among these is the capacity to use rules of thumb, like those shown in Table 2, to adopt styles appropriate to the various situations they encounter. With practice, adapting one’s styles becomes intuitive and more spontaneous. Ability to change thinking styles, combined with awareness of the fit between particular ways of thinking and the essential qualities and requirements of systems and projects, makes navigating the sometimes complicated and increasingly complex landscape of the world of work an achievable endeavor.

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References 1. Brousseau, K., Driver, M., Hourihan, G., and Larsson, R. The seasoned executive’s decision-making style. Harvard Business Review, February, 2006.

About the author Dr Kenneth R Brousseau is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Decision Dynamics LLC, a firm specialising in behavioural assessment systems and executive talent management. Dr Brousseau received his PhD in organisational behaviour from Yale University. Prior to forming Decision Dynamics, he was on the faculty of the Management and Organisation department at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Dr Brousseau is the author of numerous articles on career development, work system design, team development, and organisational design, which have appeared in many well-known journals. He is the co-author of The Dynamic Decision Maker.

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The new ABCs of sales Ian Kershaw High staff attrition and poor employee performance are symptoms of a recruitment process that fails to identify the right ingredients critical for success in the role, and none more so than in customer-facing front line positions. Whenever I ask anybody to describe a ‘typical car salesman,’ I invariably get the same response: pushy, arrogant, sleazy, I would imagine that as you are reading this you have probably formed a mental image of something similar to the usual descriptions I hear. Even when I extend the conversation further to include salespeople of other goods and services, the personality traits and behaviours people describe tend not to deviate by much. An interesting question for us as behavioural scientists is, are these stereotypical traits perpetuated in a recruitment process? Are they fit for purpose or have they gone past their sell-by date? To what extent is confirmation bias present in a process where new recruits are appointed on their similarity to what has gone before?

The role of a salesperson is less about ‘closing’ the deal and more about building empathy and rapport.... This requires a different remuneration strategy that rewards good behaviours, and not just results and outcomes. In today’s knowledge economy, buyers are generally well-educated prior to any face-to-face contact with a salesperson. Once they identify a purchasing need, they can utilise internet search engines to uncover a vast array of information, from specific details about the product, best places to consider spending their money, the experience of others, potential pricing and discount options, anticipated future issues, and so on. Gone are the days when the salesperson held all the cards and, as a buyer, you went in to battle to get the best deal you could, never really sure at the end if you succeeded or otherwise. This change in dynamic has had a dramatic impact on the relationships between buyers and sellers in all walks of life. In this new world, the role of a salesperson is less about ‘closing’ the deal and more about building empathy and rapport to the extent that the buyer is comfortable in concluding the transaction. Several research studies have shown that buyers today often progress 55-70% of the way through their decision making processes before they step foot into a dealership or store for a major purchase. This requires a whole new set of traits and behaviours on behalf of a successful salesperson. From an employer’s perspective, this requires a different remuneration strategy that rewards good behaviours, and not just results and outcomes. 20

The best way for me to demonstrate the effectiveness of this shift in perspective would be to share some of the story around the recent work we have concluded with


a major UK vehicle dealership network. As with all major brands, their product offering, dealership locations, and physical branding are practically identical wherever you go. Their recruitment strategy was broadly the same at all locations, and well established, yet some of the salesforce delivered consistently higher sales than others. Coupled with this was a drive for ‘customers for life’, where again some employees excelled beyond their peers. The organisation didn’t understand ‘the difference that makes the difference’. The standard approach when faced with similar questions, irrespective of the role, is to carry out a validation study, correlating existing performance measures and ratings with responses to a personality preference questionnaire. This generally tends to avoid subjective information that may otherwise cloud the process. Once these data points have been analysed we can identify with statistical significance those traits and behaviours that are the most predictive of success. This information can be applied in a variety of ways. Firstly, unless these traits are already elicited, a refreshment of the recruitment process is in order. This ensures that the required behaviours are picked out and assessed in some way such that the hiring manager can obtain a clear and objective view of the closeness of fit. Secondly, the existing staff can undergo targeted development in those areas of greatest misalignment in order to support their growth and awareness. By developing existing staff and recruiting those with a closer fit, the business can generally start to shape the future in a more positive and successful way. The further interesting outcome from this investigation was that one set of traits clearly correlated with high performance in the area of sales, whilst a different set correlated with high performance in the area of customer service. Given the commercial drive for revenue performance as well as a more defined shift in strategic focus on customer service, we were tasked with working out what an optimal profile looked like by combining the two. Whilst some element of sales success was sacrificed as a result, the conclusion we reached was that an extra nine million pounds of annual profit was up for grabs if those who did not match the optimal profile came up in performance to the average of those that did. This not insignificant prize was all the ammunition needed in order to drive through the changes required to the recruitment and development processes. Having started to make the changes the following client quote sums this up:

‘Our dealership managers say we’re now bringing in better people than ever before. It’s too early to study what effect this has had on the business but anecdotally we’re hearing that there’s been a distinct improvement in performance.’ This shift in focus away from their traditional recruitment questions of ‘How many cars have you sold before?’ towards looking for candidates that can demonstrate empathy, building rapport, clear communication and so on has lead the recruitment team to consider applicants from outside of the industry. In particular this dovetails nicely when topics of diversity and inclusivity are also considered and thereby has an impact on the on-boarding process too. Whilst there is a clear and demonstrable benefit on the bottom line by having higher-

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performing salespeople in our businesses, if we took a leaf out of the latest book by Dan Pink, To Sell is Human, we can very quickly get to a place that indicates any interaction between two people becomes a buying and selling relationship.1 No longer is sales solely related to a cash for goods or services situation, but one where one person gives something to the other in return for something else. Typically this might even be time or information based. Pink talks about the new culture of human interactions being based around empathy, resilience, and clarity of communication– traits that were strongly identified as correlating with a successful car salesperson above, but equally true in any people-related situations not typically associated with a ‘sales role’. It might therefore be wise to consider that almost no matter what our roles are, in some way or other, we are all in sales now. In Pink’s words, Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity are the new ABCs. I believe that it is incumbent on each of us not to fall into those negative sales stereotypes, but to consider to what extent those features of positive human behaviours are prevalent in our own roles and those for which we are responsible.

References 1. Pink, D. (2014). To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.

About the author As a Principal Client Partner at Talent Q, Ian Kershaw manages relationships with key clients, ensuring they each have an easy and rewarding personal experience using tools and services to support their people decisions. Immediately prior to joining Talent Q, he carried out a similar role at SHL for six years, having previously held Operations and Commercial Director roles in a variety of private sector enterprises from multi-site retail to major indoor and outdoor event construction via the wholesale and logistics of a clothing brand.

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This background helps him translate the science and jargon from the world of psychometrics into practical, deliverable, and easy-to-understand solutions that address the demands you face when sifting, recruiting, retaining, or developing your employees. Mr Kershaw is passionate about ensuring that the use of psychometrics and any associated consultative interventions drive measurable benefit for the client organisation.


Potential for what? Joseph H Kalkman Executives often push back on measuring “potential” because they doubt one’s ability to measure it, and are hesitant to make people-decisions based on it. Yet they do so anyway–they make talent calls, deciding who gets what break-out assignment or the next promotion–without any data. Few decisions have more impact on a career, or on the success of a company, than determining who will take on leadership roles. A few years ago I spent some time in Silicon Valley, meeting with venture capital titans like Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, Mayfield, and others. I was surprised by one consistent theme: while venture capitalists bet big dollars on great ideas, more importantly, they bet on the “entrepreneur”. These are the inventors who are passionate and committed to getting a solution that works in the market. Many times that initial great idea morphs– it is tested, adjusted, stretched, developed and evolved in the process of coming to market and reaching scale. Sometimes the initial solution is even rejected outright, but the core idea and the drive to get it right fuels the confidence of the investors to continue to develop it. So it is with Leadership Potential. A leader’s strong performance to date is like the inventor’s great idea. It catches the attention of senior management. But is past performance enough to trigger a venture capitalist-like investment of time and resources? The future, while unknown, will predictably test that leader. How will they adjust, stretch, develop and evolve in the face of increasing complexity and challenge? Gaining insight into their potential can increase the likelihood of making the right call. Potential can be identified. It can be measured. That measurement should be used to shape the investment of time and resources to develop that leader, and to build a talent bench of ready leaders.

“Today those responsible for hiring and promotion decisions must instead focus on potential…” Fernandez-Araoz, Harvard Business Review

What is Leadership Potential? Ask any thoughtful leader, and he will typically have a point of view on potential (often reflective of his own experience). You may hear something like “You can tell a leader has potential because he has vision…or charisma…or smarts…or tenacity...” Or maybe this response: “I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it.”

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Research is helping us describe it and measure it. Silzer and Church report potential can be measured by cognitive ability and personality.1 Leadership Potential is based on foundational, intrinsic attributes of a leader. These foundational attributes–namely cognitive ability and personality (or work styles)– are then mediated by values and experiences shaped by extrinsic forces. Finally, these variables are applied in the context and culture of the organization which determines success in leadership roles. Cognitive ability is a foundational element of Leadership Potential. Successful leaders typically score better on cognitive assessments. Hunter and Hunter show cognitive ability has a positive effect on performance.2 Korn Ferry’s data analysis indicates high IQ executives tend to be high performers.3 Overall, Fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires attain higher scores on cognitive tests.4 Even so, cognitive ability alone is not enough of a predictor of potential. Personality is an equally foundational element. How leaders engage with their motivations, their work, and their co-workers, and what work behaviors they demonstrate, directly contribute to–or derail–their success. The Harvard Business Review reports that intelligence alone is not enough to identify potential.5 Most leaders who “fail” to progress do so not because of cognitive concerns, but because of derailing behaviors or fit issues with the culture of their company. Zenger and Folkman studied 450 Fortune 500 executives and over 11,000 leaders to identify the ten most common leadership shortcomings (which led to firing or ranking in the bottom 10% in 360° feedback). Eight of those ten fatal flaws were based in personality or work styles.6 While these foundational dimensions of cognitive ability and work styles are the basis for identifying Leadership Potential, they alone are insufficient for determining the potential of a given leader. Potential is also mediated by experiences that shape that leader (e.g., an expatriate assignment, owning a P&L, leading a business turnaround, etc.). Potential is also influenced by that leader’s values (e.g., passion for the content of the work or mission of the company, declining a relocation assignment while children are in high school, etc.). Talent review discussions – with or without using a 9-Box type format – are useful in bringing talent decisions forward. However, aside from historical performance ratings, they have a dearth of data, and are often highly subjective. There are ways to measure potential that can bring objectivity and comparability into these discussions.

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How do you measure Leadership Potential? Learning Agility There are several assessments aimed at identifying potential. One concept gaining attention is called Learning Agility, which is a personality-based analysis of an individual’s attitude towards continuous and flexible learning approaches. People who rank highly on Learning Agility tend to have the right attitude towards continuous learning and are more willing to deal effectively with ambiguity and change. In our fast-paced world, those able to deal effectively with ambiguity and change have an advantage. But does that also mean they have high potential to be successful as leaders? As we’ve discussed, there is more to potential than just learning and adapting.

Leadership Potential Recently developed by Assessment Associates International, a research firm with whom I consult, the Leadership Potential Report (LPR) shows great promise in this area. Rather than using Learning Agility as a proxy for Potential, the LPR directly assesses the cognitive ability and work styles (or Behavior Potential) of the leader, to provide a Leadership Potential profile and score.7 The LPR develops an overall rating of Leadership Potential using three facets of cognitive ability and four facets of personality closely associated with successful executive performance. The LPR uses a structural model of cognitive ability similar to Johnson and Bouchard8 and Page,9 based on verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning. It also measures personality and motivational characteristics that influence an individual’s behavior in work settings, anchored to the Big 5 personality factors.10 These characteristics comprise four of the most valid behaviors found in highly successful executives: interpersonal acumen, thinking acumen, results acumen, and emotional acumen.

How do you use Leadership Potential? Many organizations use “performance” and “potential” to compare leaders and to identify Top Talent, often using a 9-Box structure to do so. As an HR executive, when I led these talent sessions, we typically used ratings from recent performance appraisals to represent a leader’s performance. Regarding potential, we often had no data. For potential, I have used nominal sorting to group leaders into categories, or company values ratings from performance reviews, or leadership competencies, or had managers sort leaders by descriptive criteria in a leadership model before coming into the talent discussion. None of these methods were objective, nor did they provide much comparability across leaders. In some cases, the assignment of potential may

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have had more to do with how well the manager presented the leader than with the actual potential of the leader being discussed. When using the 9-Box for discussing talent, the outcome of that discussion – sorting leaders against the criteria of performance and potential to identify top talent – is always the result of judgment, not math. It is an inherently subjective process. Managers are paid to exercise their good judgment in making talent calls. The risk is that their good judgment is flawed. As humans, we see our world (and other people) from the perspective of our own experience. In general, this serves us well, but it also invites bias into our decisions. We can “see ourselves” in others and over-value certain familiar traits. One way to address this risk, to control for bias, is to engage in robust discussion with other managers about the leaders being considered in the 9-Box process. In this way, multiple perspectives shape the talent decision, not just a single viewpoint. Another way to mitigate risk is to use valid, comparable data to inform the discussion. When objective data on potential is available, the 9-Box discussion can be anchored with an initial score to compare leaders. Clearly, it is a grand over-simplification to reduce the future capacity of a talented leader into a single score. However, providing an objective and valid data point, which can be directly compared to other leaders, is a significant step forward in improving the quality of the talent discussion. After completing the talent assessment discussion and aligning on Top Talent – those leaders with high potential and high performance – the organization can now focus its development resources to accelerate the development of their Top Talent.

Conclusion Every organization makes talent decisions. Some use performance data to make these calls. Some use gut feel. Some have a long-standing, robust talent assessment process, while others are just discovering a need to bring process discipline to this work. Leadership Potential is a profound, underlying variable that can help predict future success. It is founded in measurable cognitive ability and personality traits. Tools like the Leadership Potential Report can measure these traits, and when used in the context of a talent review process, improve the objectivity, validity, and success of the talent assessment process.

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In short, by using objective Leadership Potential measures, you can gain confidence that you are making the right call when tagging leaders as “high potential,” and accelerating the development of those most likely to achieve career success.


References 1. Silzer, R. F., and Church, A. F. 2009. “The Pearls and Perils of Identifying Potential.” Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 2(4), 377-412. 2. Hunter, J. E., and Hunter, R. F. 1984. “Validity and Utility of Alternative Predictors of Job Performance.” Psychological Bulletin 96 (1): 72-98. 3. Lewis, J. 2014. “Executive Insights: When is high IQ a liability for an executive?” Korn Ferry Institute, 2014. 4. Wai, J. 2013. “Investigating America’s elite: Cognitive ability, education, and sex differences.” Intelligence, 41, 203-211. 5. Fernandez-Araoz, C. 2014. “21st Century Talent Spotting.” Harvard Business Review, June, 2014. 6. Zenger, J. and Folkman. J. 2009. “Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders.” Harvard Business Review. June, 2009. 7. AAI Assessments. Leadership Potential. Retrieved 20 June 2015, from http://aaiassessment.com/products/leadership-potential 8. Johnson, W., and Bouchard, T. J., Jr. 2005. “The structure of human intelligence: It is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation (VPR) , not fluid and crystallized.” Intelligence, 33, 393-416. 9. Page, R. Applied Reasoning Test, Manual. 2009. 10. Barrick, M. R., and Mount, M. K. 1991. “The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-analysis.” Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.

About the author Joseph H Kalkman has over twenty years of executive experience in human resources and line leadership. He is an expert in talent management, high potential identification and development, succession and leadership continuity, and strategic organisational development. Working primarily in Fortune 100 companies, he has led nearly every HR function, and has coached CEOs of small non-profits and Fortune 50 companies, developed leaders at all levels, and directly supported C-Suite executives in multiple industries. Mr Kalkman earned his MA in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota, and his Talent Management Certification from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He has presented across the US on talent management, leadership, engagement, and effective compensation committee relationships. The innovative HR work he implements has been featured in Business Week, Time, NBC Nightly News, and 60 Minutes.

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The gaming imperative for pre-employment screening assessments How improving the candidate experience impacts the chances of hiring top performers Dr Tom Janz The buzz has been building for years now: “Game-enabled assessments are the wave of the future.” “Gaming will make assessments fun and engaging.” “Assessment games will be a competitive advantage when seeking young, educated, talented high-tech and business professionals.” Blah… blah… blah… Most of us have read the articles in ERE by luminaries such as Dr. Charles Handler and Kevin Wheeler or seen the magic quadrants or Gartner white papers. Yet, with notable exceptions, game-enabled assessments are still far from mainstream. So how are those tedious, boring online assessments workin’ for ya? We detect an extinction-level event that will change everything about online screening assessments. The HR leadership at a company in the roofing material warehouse space called us wanting to ditch the assessment of dependability and safety provided for free by their insurance company. Why? Candidates didn’t complete it. Some of those who did answered 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 after the first few items, just to get out of there. In addition, a fast-growing uniformed security company that processes 24,000 assessments a month wanted to drop their 80 item assessment and find something more engaging. The HR leader at one of the world’s largest security companies wished we had talked to her 9 months ago, when she started a field trial with the largest and best-known international assessment vendor. The problem is the same…

Only 40-60% of respondents who click “Apply Now” in a trial of a well-known performance test actually complete it.

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A higher percentage of candidates will complete simple, fast assessments such as the DISC, the MBTI, the Predictive Index, and PerforMax.1 There are literally hundreds of back-of-the-napkin developed assessments by Dr. This and Professor That.


Here’s the thing… there is clear evidence that they predict job performance weakly, if at all. Assessments that don’t predict job performance are about as helpful as giving a fish a bicycle or worse, some mercury. Careful studies, such as the Epson research project by Dr. Peter Saville, show these assessments deliver predictive power in the 5-15% range— well below what the lowly unstructured one-on-one interview delivers (at 20%).2 A major reason respondents don’t finish online pre-employment assessments is because they are tedious, long, and boring.

Generic tests that ask questions that predict job performance, but don’t look like anything people do on the job, is another issue. Test items that lack job relevance turn off top talent. Face validity (whether the test is job-related) does not determine the predictive power of a test, but it does influence whether respondents finish the test. And if top-performing talent won’t finish the test, or blow it off, they won’t score well and thus won’t get hired. This is a particular problem with mental ability tests that sometimes include algebra when there is none to be found on the job, or picking the next number in a series when the job involves picking the right sales pitch to make to a new customer in the store.

That’s where the visual gamification imperative comes in… If only half of the candidates seriously finish the assessment, which half is that: The top half or the bottom half? Well, it’s not as simple as that. Yet few would argue that more top 20% Generation Y performers are likely to blow off or drop the assessment than performers from the bottom 20%. After all, it’s the bottom 20% that need to do whatever it takes to get a job. The top 20% likely have other offers, or soon will. Look at it this way: if the 80/20 rule applies, then only 20% of the top 20% of performers complete the assessment (at a 50% overall completion rate, but 80% of the bottom 20% complete it. Your chances of hiring a top 20% performer, even with a screening assessment solution that validates with a correlation of 0.5, are way lower than for a similar screening tool that enjoys a 95% completion rate. Consider the diagram to the right. It shows that of fifty candidates that complete a long, boring, measure of theoretical personality, only two will come from the Top 10 performing group since only 20% of Top 10 performers complete the test. Since that type of test has less than 30% predictive power, the odds of hiring a Top 10% performer fall below 1:10. Not good! 29

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So how much good does using carefully validated assessments do if they are longer, tricky, and annoying to candidates? This time, the diagram graphs the situation where the science-lite measure of theoretical personality is replaced with a validated inventory of performance constructs that include mental, social, and organisational performance. The resulting predictive power rises above 60%, but that still results in expecting to hire just one of the ten performers the employer wanted to hire at the outset. The results are twice as good, but still not good enough.

Now consider what happens when screening assessments result in a 95% completion rate, particularly among the top 10% of talent. Here is why gamification is not just nice, it’s necessary. When 95% of all candidates and at least 90% of the top 10% of talent complete the assessment, combined with a 60% predictive power, your odds of employers hiring the talent they set out to find rise to 5:10—a 5x increase. And those they hire that are not in the top 10% will be mostly in the next 10%.

What game-enabled assessments look like today 1. The first level of gamification replaces text with visual images sampled from on-the-job performance Assessments that feature a great number of sentences or dozens of paragraphs of text cause people to zone out, presenting too great a contrast with the short, interactive, visual world of PC, tablet, and smart-phone gaming experiences that occupy large chunks of time among most target talent populations. 30


Work Memory Test The Work Memory assessment series offered by PeopleAssessments.com, where I am Chief Scientist, illustrates this category. Research published in the journal Intelligence found that assessments of short term memory captured 80-85% of the predictive power of general mental ability tests3—the best single predictor across all research published by scientists who aren’t selling anything. Yet they cause half the level of discrimination against protected minorities. That’s what we PhD I/O psychologists call a “two-for”. Work Memory tests use visual content drawn from the job itself to make the assessment relevant, while it does its powerful work measuring memory speed and accuracy. The Work Memory test page shown here comes up after respondents applying to a retail designer brand store associate with a role. First, they are shown a page with the catalogue items and the prices, with the instruction to: “Study the page just as long as you need to commit it to memory.” The respondents then proceed to answer questions on the items and prices shown here. The Work Memory test items are drawn from the company’s online catalogue, so they are job related. We make sure the test images and recall questions get at shortterm memory by having current workers calibrate the items—comparing how long successful and struggling workers study the images and how many they get right.

2. The next level of gamification adds interactivity to visualization The next level of gamification interacts with respondents, engaging them in actions with consequences as they move through the assessment. Logi-Serve, an assessment of service and sales excellence, exemplifies interactive visual assessment focused around judgment scenarios.i Respondents use slider bars, not multiple choice buttons, to indicate their likelihood of choosing four behavioural options for each of nine scenarios. Then, depending on the option they chose, they are asked to rate the likelihood that their chosen behaviour produced three different outcomes for the other party depicted in the scene. This taps into knowing which behaviour works best in a given situation and also how that choice 31

i. PeopleAssessments.com is a licensed reseller of Logi-Serve.

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will impact others. A recent large head-to-head field study that pitted Logi-Serve against a text-heavy, long, tricky questionnaire for call center staff found a 98% (vs. 50%) completion rate for Logi-Serve, with the key side benefit that over 80% of candidates responded that they “would recommend trying this assessment to their friends and colleagues at school.”

3. A third level of gamification inserts valid assessment items into existing full motion, three-dimensional video games Gamification is using games and game dynamics to playfully induce behaviour. Here, the participant first selects the gender and dress of the avatar, and then enters the “Road Ahead” video game played by over 25 million people. They run, they jump, they stoop to get under obstacles, they pick up coins and they move to the side to avoid the moving train. Persona-Labsii has inserted psychometric test items as the game goes into slow motion mode as they answer the item within a preset time window. Research is currently underway on the positive side benefits of keeping the respondent pre-occupied with collecting points and increasing their game play level. We hypothesise there will be less time to embellish responses to fit the job while respondents are concentrating on the game. Assessment scores more resistant to faking should be the result. Stay tuned for more findings on this topic.

Respondents complete assessments situated in popular games with a similar high percentage (above 95%), as reported above for level 2.

4. In the fourth and ultimate level, the game becomes the assessment. At this level the choices and evaluations that participants make are recorded and compared with those of successful performers, as well as all other candidates in the game’s database. Once the initial screening phase collects predictive choices and ratings from prospective candidates or finalists, the follow-on phase collects deeper data to shape new hire 32

ii. PeopleAssessments.com is a licensed reseller of Persona-Labs.


orientation, probationary reviews, and performance development discussions.

Achieving a high quality, interactive, full motion visual assessment experience makes candidates forget about the time, enjoy their assessment session, and complete it. As a bonus, over 75% of the time, they recommend it to a friend or colleague.4

Summary of best practice implications Employers set out to hire the best talent from those that can be motivated to consider the opportunity. If they can find ten candidates for each position opening, they seek to hire the top 10% of talent from their candidate pool. Their odds of doing that depend mainly on two things: one, the predictive accuracy of the methods they use to funnel down the ten candidates to the one person per hire that receives and accepts an offer, and two, the percentage of top performers that stick with completing the selection methods and remain motivated to accept an offer, if received. In the past, many if not most of the selection methods used, from the quick résumé sort to the unstructured one-on-one interview to references to quick personality type tests, offer little predictive accuracy. The problem is that you are unable to hire the top talent if you can’t tell who they are. They don’t wear a tattoo that identifies them, unfortunately. More recently, employers have turned to assessment methods—from cognitive ability tests to performance-keyed self-report tests to situational judgment tests. These assessments have proven predictive power in studies published by scientists who aren’t selling anything—when candidates can be motivated to complete them in proctored settings or for career development applications. However, candidates asked to complete them in an un-proctored initial screening session increasingly either click out or click quickly to get through them, since they have such a low expectation that devoting forty or more minutes to thinking carefully about their answers will result in anything positive for them. Making valid assessments as short as possible (but not shorter), visual, interactive, and animated increases the completion rate and fixes what’s broken about screening assessments that predict performance. 33

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References 1. Basile, P. Personal communication. 2. Saville, P., MacIver, R., Kurz, R. & Hopton, T. (2008). Project Epsom: How Valid Is Your Questionnaire? Phase 1: A New Comparative Study of the Major Personality Questionnaires in Predicting Job Performance. Jersey (UK): Saville Consulting Group. 3. Verive, J., & McDaniel, M. (1996). Short-Term Memory Tests in Personnel Selection: Low Adverse Impact and High Validity. Intelligence, 23(1), 15-32. Retrieved from http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/Publications/Verive%20&%20 McDaniel%20%281996%29.pdf 4. Wexler, J. Personal communication.

About the author Dr Tom Janz is Chief Scientist for PeopleAssessments.com. He has a PhD in Industrial Psychology and began his career with academic positions at a number of universities. He has since held science and leadership positions at Personnel Decisions International, Guru Worldwide Inc, Unicru, Batrus Hollweg International, and Lominger International. Dr Janz has a long-held belief in the value of online interview decision support technology, and now pursues his dream of offering valid, affordable online tests and interviews via PeopleAssessments.com. Dr Janz has published several articles and book chapters on topics ranging from expectancy theory to motivational culture to selection utility, and is the co-author of Behaviour Description Interviewing: New, Accurate, Cost Effective.

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Developing new leaders Ruth Gibson Developing the leadership pipeline and succession planning were identified the top two challenges for 2015 by readers of our last eBook. and both are high on organisational talent management agendas. But what makes a good leader? The answer to this question is not clear cut, and although there may be some core themes (such as good communication and integrity) that apply across the board, there will also be unique differences in the meaning of “leadership” between organisations—and therefore in the requirements and processes to develop it. One thing to remember regardless is that to ensure a healthy leadership pipeline, the processes around developing new leaders should be continual rather than one-off events.

Where to start? Begin by prioritising your current workforce. How can you identify the people currently working in your organisation whom you can develop and promote to lead in the future? Developing (and retaining) internal talent tends to be less expensive than hiring externally. After exhausting your internal resources, seek to fill any gaps with external hires. In addition to providing needing skills and experience, new hires can offer a healthy dose of external influence to existing leaders with organisational values and culture already engrained. If you need to refresh your process or wish to add more data to your decisions, psychometric assessments are a popular way to assist talent identification. One of their main benefits of the assessment method is its objectivity, i.e. the results do not depend on a manager’s personal views, but rather on clear data mapped against key requirements. There are many different types of assessments which may be useful depending on your requirements, including 360-degree feedback, personality assessments, and ability assessments. Often a combination of assessments can produce the most powerful solutions, and when added to personal processes such as interviews, can provide the most complete picture of a person’s potential.

What should the leadership development programme focus on? Again, this may vary depending on the particular organisation, but there are likely to be some common core elements. You can identify the requirements of the specific programme through the use of a thorough development needs analysis. This will map the gaps between the current position and future requirements for leaders, helping to align the development programme with the strategic priorities and goals of your organisation. Programmes with multiple activities are often considered beneficial.

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These might include mentoring, internal and external training or courses, stretch assignments, coaching, assessments, and more. The aim is to develop skills and competencies required for leadership roles as well as tailoring development to the individual and their particular needs and desires.

Engage senior leaders in the development of new leaders Create a culture where aspiring developing leaders are not seen as a threat to jobs of current, more senior leaders, but as an asset that should be nurtured. Or perhaps a little competition is a good thing? Either way current leaders have vital experience and knowledge and can act as important mentors to developing leaders within the organisation.

Build in flexibility It is important to build flexibility into a programme. There are likely to be some core modules, but not everyone will need to develop in the same areas. Tailoring programmes in this way can lead to further engagement in the process and new leaders will feel that their needs are being met more directly than if the full contents of the programme were generic to everybody.

Set a robust monitoring and evaluation process. Monitoring and evaluation covers two key areas: First, track individual progress. There are some great systems out there which will help track and monitor goals at an individual level. A coach or mentor can also be connected to enable conversations to continue online in between face-to-face interactions. Second, monitor and measure results. Make sure that a system has been set up to track the success of new leaders going through a development programme. Decide what the KPIs will be at the start of the process. It is important to track success to ensure that the programme’s worth can be proved and validated.

Communicate back Communicate the success of the programme. Don’t keep it hidden, be transparent about the work the organisation is doing and the investment put in.

About the author As Business Psychologist and Product Manager at Synermetric Ltd, Ruth Gibson uses her passion for psychology, assessments, and people development to curate a powerful and complementary range of psychometric assessments and tools. She develops Synermetric’s relationships with leading authors, and provides clients with training and advice on how to utilise their tools for optimum effect.

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Ms Gibson has a BSc in Psychology and MSc in Occupational Psychology, and has previously worked for consultancies in human capital and talent management as well as resourcing. She is a member of the British Psychological Society, and is certified in Test User Ability (formerly level A) and Test User Personality (formerly level B). She is also a trained practitioner of numerous assessments and tools.


Dynamically aligning management of talent with market changes Pravir Malik How can change in markets and management of talent be dynamically aligned? One way is through a process of fractal-modeling whereby key characteristics of a market are cascaded into a talent management system that allows those characteristics to be embodied in teams and individuals. This is a process that my company, Deep Order Technologies, has invested in, with the development of a framework, process, and an associated always-on Organisational DNA Determination and Development beta-tool. At their cores, individuals, teams, organisational entities, and markets are seen as sharing deep archetypal characteristics. General categories for these characteristics can perhaps be intuitively grasped from these examples: • Consider a simple example of a chair. For centuries perhaps, people sat on the ground, or on boulders. Then one fine day somebody had a flash of insight, and the concept of sitting on a movable, comfortable chair became real. The concept itself was the result of the power of knowledge. Having had the sure vision of the thing to be done, the force and energy to do it became real. This is the result of the power of energy. Now, of course, was the issue of making the concept real. Elaborate plans were then drawn out, specifying materials to be used, implements to be used, alternative end-designs, and even the process of production. This was the result of the power of harmony and mutuality. Finally the blueprints needed to be executed. The skill and workmanship and overseeing of the project had to be embarked upon. This was the result of the power of service and perfection. • Or consider the example of the human body. One can again see the action of the archetypes in the very creation of the human body. Thus, the archetype of wisdom and knowledge creates the thinking ability resident in the brain and mind. The archetype of harmony and mutuality creates the lungs and heart, by whose action the individual can remain connected to the rhythm of the vaster breath all around, and keep connected the different parts of the body whose individual rhythms are in tune with the heart. The archetype of power and energy create the entire digestive system by which food is assimilated and provides power and energy for all that the body needs to do. The archetype of service and perfection combines micro-elements into atoms, and these into molecules, these into plasma for cells, these into organs, and these into the body itself, which then becomes the sac within which all the other archetypes and their representatives can act. But markets too can be understood in similar ways. Hence the healthcare industry may in general build itself based on the power of service and perfection. The information

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technology industry may favour the power of knowledge. But then there are a lot of variations possible under these broad archetypes, and as a first step the Deep Order Technologies Organizational DNA Determination model allows shifting markets to be understood based on the nuances of the archetypal instincts or characteristics required for success.1 Figure 1 graphically suggests some of the DNA mathematics that must take place to determine this. In the figure below, the four areas on each side of the square make up four key archetypes which are mutually exclusive. These are used to define the possibilities of a market. Using this we can see how an organisation is positioned and what their primary drivers are. The longer the arrow, the stronger the component. E.g., in Figure 1, there is a strong drive for knowledge/wisdom and power/leadership.

Figure 1: DNA mathematics - Market and organization alignment

The larger figure in the square maps the relative strength of the key characteristics of success for an emerging market. The smaller figure suggests possible responses to be cascaded into the organization. After cascading these capacities into individual companies, they will need to be embodied so that they become real as indicated in Figure 2. Figure 2: DNA cascading

Embodiment means that when a researcher is seeking after a new insight, it must be done with a one-pointed commitment and concentration so that deep knowledge can be unearthed. When the manager is seeking to motivate their team they must do so with such conviction and energy that inspiration and engagement manifest in the team. When the organizer is seeking to design and arrange parts of an organization, they must do so with such a sense of rhythm and harmony that the beauty of nature becomes apparent in the designed forms. When the engineer is constructing their device, they must do so with such a sense of accurate detail and attention that perfection itself arises through their touch. 38


Archetypes Embodied Examples of ways in which the four archetypes of knowledge and wisdom, mutuality and harmony, power and leadership, and service and perfection can be embodied follow below:

Knowledge and Wisdom • Not only seeking knowledge in areas related to one’s immediate work, but seeking knowledge in other areas as well; • A need to research and create new knowledge; • A temperament that is calm and turned to introspection and even meditation; • A tendency to want to dominate all emergence of passion and vital tendencies by reason; • The urge to spread knowledge amongst all; • Perhaps even seeking truths too profound to express in words.

Mutuality and Harmony • Understanding of rhythms of all kinds; • Understanding and even mastery of the laws of interchange by which organisations are built; • A need to amass quantities in order to throw them out in even larger measure, in order to create an even greater return; • The ability of compelling others to unite through harmony; • The ability of turning insights into practicalities – of making even abstract thoughts and ideas manifest practically.

Power and Leadership • The development of an unflinching courage; • The ability and need to be a leader in noble causes; • The need to protect the down-trodden; • The ability to muster and possess great energy for any new endeavors; • The ability to see the new and needed; • The ability to convince others of the worthiness of new adventures.

Service and Perfection • An extraordinary attention to detail; • A need to labour at any discipline in order to achieve perfection; • A giving of oneself to that which one loves without concern of the self;

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• A sense that nothing is too small to be the object of attention; • A sense of what has already been accomplished and what remains yet to be accomplished. These archetypes form the core drivers of Deep Order Technologies’ tool, which allows individuals and teams to map and track current and aspirational characteristics. Current characteristics are existing capacities already possessed at the team or individual levels, while aspirational characteristics are determined by the market and coordinated by the organization. By performing gap analyses on the current and aspirational states of these characteristics, the tool can provide advice on strengthening any of the sixty embodied capacities that make up its drivers. Thus the DNA of an organisation can be cascaded into that organisation’s practice. In this way, through self-reflection and adjustment, this DNA can be embodied so that an organisation can dynamically align itself for success as per the changing realities in a market. By taking this process to an even more advanced stage, new organisational DNA can be proactively created, to then define and create new markets.

References 1. Malik, P. (2015). Next Generation Human Capital Enterprise Systems. Aurosoorya. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://blog.aurosoorya.com/2015/02/23/nextgeneration-human-capital-enterprise-systems/

About the author Pravir Malik’s focus areas include human capital, organisational, and associated systems development. He specialises in igniting organisational potential and creativity by leveraging appropriate technology, tools, and processes. He is currently leading the development of next generation enterprise systems through the development of a Unified Theory and Mathematics of Organisation. Mr Malik has applied aspects of such systems while operating as the Founding Member of A.T. Kearney India, the Managing Director of Advisory Services for BSR, an Intent Architect with Conner Partners, and while on the HR Leadership Team of Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

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Mr Malik has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Florida, and a BSE in Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of a series of books focusing on fractals and organisations, including Redesigning the Stock Market: A Fractal Approach.


Sales recruitment Place your bets please... Andrew Dugdale The British Institute of Learning & Development (BILD) and the Universal Sales Skills Audit (USSA) recently joined forces to conduct a national survey in the practices of sales executive recruitment. For a profession that can literally make or break the biggest of corporations, the study revealed fundamental cracks in the way many employers placed new hires, and a fairly cavalier attitude toward how a new recruit was expected to perform in their probationary period. In the past few years a lot has been said about the need to professionalise the sales industry. There is a need for qualifications and a somewhat more formal entrance to a career in sales other than being handed a list of prospects and a telephone. However, if you assume that more than half of the sales managers recruiting new executives entered sales through this very same door, you begin to realise the problem here – we gravitate towards those like us, the ‘that’s the way I started and it worked for me’ mentality. Now you begin to realise the magnitude of the problem and the size of the oil tanker the industry is trying to turn around. Reinforcing this fact was the shocking find that, when employing sales executives, over 58% of employers believed that ‘salespeople should know what they are doing’. This value was then rather unsurprisingly repeated when just over 58% of employers also reported that ‘Maybe some [sales executives] aren’t as good as we would like’. What other professions do you know where it is acceptable practice to ‘drop someone in and see if they work out’? Perhaps in the example of a manual labour job with zero customer contact, we might accept that all that was at risk would be the outgoing wage for a few weeks and minor disruption to a production chain somewhere. But for sales, the risk factors treble with wasted salary (often high), loss of projected revenues, and the potential pointing of once loyal customers towards alternative suppliers. So, with over 50% of employers admitting they are playing roulette with their sales hires it is encouraging to note that over 42% did recognise that there was room for improvement in their sales recruitment procedures, so the door for change is ajar. 54% of recruiters stated that they ‘rigorously follow up all their references’, but with employment laws dictating how so many of these references are worded, do you really trust them? And how many employers do you know that have done their utmost to help a troublesome sales executive out of their door and into the clutches of a

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competitor? It seems that, for a profession that lacks an academic paper trail, skills assessment has to be the way forward when recruiting salespeople. 45% of surveyed recruiters conducted some form of assessment when hiring sales executives, leaving that rather worrying 55% standing by their game of ‘try it and hope for the best’. In the survey, only 38% of surveyed companies stated that ‘Our sales performance has consistently enabled us to meet or exceed our sales targets for the company over the last three years’. The message seems to be clear: there is still too much guesswork employed in sales recruitment and this is a totally unacceptable risk given the difference to performance that sales skills assessment tools make.

BILD/USSA Recruiting Sales Executive National Study

Q1. What process do you follow to determine whether they are the 'right person for the job'? We review their CV and job history

87.50%

We review their profile on LinkedIn/Facebook or other social media platforms We check their profile on Twitter or other social media messaging services

41.67% 16.67%

We get a number of people to interview them without a formal interview structure

33.33%

We have a formal structured interview process which we rigorously follow

62.50%

We rigorously follow up all their references

54.17%

We use third party tools or processes to assess their suitability for the job Other

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41.67% 16.67%

Q2. Thinking now of the sales job itself, which of the following statements are true? We have a detailed and up-to-date job description

91.67%

We have a recent, well-constructed set of sales skills for this job

54.17%

We have a means of assessing which candidates have the required sales skills

45.83%

We rigorously apply our assessment methodology during the hiring process

37.50%

The methodology we use to determine candidate fit to the role is proven to be effective over time in reducing our 'hiring failure rate'

33.33%

The assessment methodology we use provides us with a detailed picture of a candidate's skills gaps which we can use for future performance development Other

45.83%

4.17%

Q3. Thinking about how well sales candidates perform post-hire in your company… All the salespeople we hire are exceptional performers

25.00%

Maybe some aren't as good as we would like

58.33%

There's room for improvement in our recruitment process Other

41.67% 12.50%

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Q4. Now looking at how you improve the performance of your sales hires… We believe that salespeople should know what they are doing

58.33%

We occasionally pick some sales training and send them on it

25.00%

We use a formal sales methodology and send them to be trained in that

33.33%

We identify some general areas needing development in the interview process and train them in those

41.67%

We use detailed data from third party assessments to identify areas of weakness and focus development in those areas We just change salespeople who don't perform

29.17%

16.67%

Other

29.17%

Q5. Thinking now about the sales performance of your company over the last three years… Our sales performance has consistently enabled us to meet or exceed our sales targets for the company over the last three years

37.50%

Our company has grown market share relative to our competitors over the last three years

58.33%

We have neither grown nor lost market share compared to our competitors over the last three years Our sales performance has gone down relative to our competitors’ performance over the last three years I don’t know how we are doing from a sales performance perspective Other

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20.83%

8.33%

12.50%

8.33%

References Combined survey of BILD members and the Sales Initiative Community, 347 respondents, April 2015.

About the USSA The USSA operates worldwide, analysing the skills of customer contact/sales staff and compares them to a global benchmark for effective sales performance. The assessment modules align to published academic standards for sales skills. Their ‘Core Sales Skills’ cover the five most fundamental sales skills modules. These skills are required by all salespeople, regardless of their specific sales role. www.universalsalesskillsaudit.com

About the BILD The British Institute for Learning & Development® is a registered charity. Their vision is to achieve excellence and recognition in Learning and Development for individuals, organisations, and the profession as a whole. www.thebild.org

About the author Andrew Dugdale is an expert on talent management within the Sales sector, helping forwardthinking firms assess, recruit, develop, and retain the right people at all levels within their sales organisations. He is a pioneer in developing the interface between the C-Suite, Sales, Human Resources, and Learning and Development departments, helping to define and put in place a framework which enables them to ‘speak the same language’, cutting across cultural boundaries and delivering breakthrough sales performance. Mr Dugdale is President of SalesAssessment.com, a ground-breaking business focused on providing highly predictive online assessments and associated analyses designed to enable clients to recruit the right people for specific Sales roles, predict their revenue potential, and focus their development strategies accordingly. Mr Dugdale has recently spun off a new ecommerce-based assessment company called the Universal Sales Skills Audit, delivering ‘gold standard’ sales skills assessment at a mass market price.

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Business success? Grow your own talent! Nicole Dominique Le Maire For the longest time, there have been discussions as to how talent has become business’ biggest concern. There is even more recognition today that the traditional one-sizefits-all approach to talent management no longer works. Global trends have changed the way people view conventional methods and models of talent management. In fact, the term ‘talent management’ can already be considered misleading and even outdated! It gives the false idea that you can manage your talent pipeline from one single, neat point to the next. Experts say that it might be better to use the term ‘talent navigation’ - navigating a vessel on ever-changing waters with uncontrollable winds, and with an overall sense of profitability instead of certainty.

The problem starts even before beginning the search for talent. Senior management claim that looking for the right talent these days is difficult, but the truth is that the problem starts even before beginning the search for talent. For many, defining what an individual with potential should look like is becoming a trickier thing to do. There are several schools of thought arguing that anyone, whatever their role in the organisation might be, has a talent that only needs to be discovered and nurtured properly. This is something that career counselors will need to consider. Many organisations see their talent as the people who have the crucial skills required for the business’ future. But in these changing times wherein the futures of businesses have an ever-growing sense of unpredictability, it has become trickier to identify the critical capabilities that will be required in the next few years. This is the reason why the real ‘talent’ needed today is the ability to cope with ambiguity and adapting and redefining oneself.

The importance of nurturing top talent Various research papers have revealed that top talent in organisations both contribute a disproportionate value to their entire organisation and have the easiest time looking for new employment if they become unsatisfied with their position. Let’s take a closer look at some of the other findings regarding the overall value of a company’s top talent: • top performers can produce as much as 10 to 12 times more compared to the average workers while they will usually need less than 2 times the pay. 46


• the distinction of a top performer is 2.5 up to 10 times that of the average employee. For this reason, identifying, nurturing, retaining, and rewarding top performers in an organisation has become one of today’s imperatives, simply because these individuals contribute more value. Your top talent is basically the most strategic asset of your organisation.

The ‘self’ principle The view of ‘self’ has become prevalent among (although not limited to) the digital or millennial nomad generation. Applications downloaded on digital devices as well as business and commercial interactions present in the digital marketplace now focus on the ‘individual experience’. Advanced technology combined with personal data levels has made it easy for businesses to give their customers service designed to suit each as individuals. Good examples include the tailored shopping or travel ads based on past search habits, and personalised banking offers. Because this kind of personalisation is becoming the norm in people’s lives outside the office, it is only natural that they also expect similarly individualised experiences at work.

What does this mean? In old school talent management, businesses focus on the collective talent of their people. The loyalty and attraction of talent is achieved through a more or less predictable path of career and advancement opportunities. The main issue with this approach is that senior management in organisations can no longer offer a predictable trajectory in someone’s career; at least, not in the traditional sense. People, as individuals, are no longer conditioned to tie their future to any path aside from their own direction. There are increasing numbers of talented and confident individuals who desire and demand career breaks and sabbaticals, or who seek a career path more appropriate for them and their lifestyle.

Navigating the talent journey of an individual with the use of technology must become the primary focus of any business that wants to succeed in the ever-competitive battle for talent. Tools like LinkedIn as well as other professional websites have made it easier for individuals to manage their own career path while providing a more personalised insight to their talents and skills, helping them to create more opportunities for themselves. That is why navigating the talent journey of an individual with the use of technology must become the primary focus of any business that wants to succeed in the evercompetitive battle for talent. Organisations need to establish highly informative, accessible, and individualised talent navigation frameworks that give individuals the real fact-based insight that can help them make decisions and become savvier and more adaptable leaders in the future. 47

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Build your company’s solid, successful talent pipeline Studies reveal that only around 19% of large organisations have a strategy in place to identify and develop high performers for leadership roles. Almost half of the companies taking part in the study claimed that they made use of the ad-hoc approach, or had no strategy at all.1 HR professionals identified three talent challenges: filling gaps in the leadership pipeline, performance-driven culture, and skill development. The HR team is the one which has the colossal responsibility of creating a strong and solid talent pipeline to guarantee business viability and continuity.2 Whatever the stage of your organisation, whether an established corporation or a startup, improving your talent pipeline is essential to ensure that your organisation will stay successful and competitive.

Maintaining a talent pipeline means creating and nurturing a constant inflow of possible candidates. Maintaining a talent pipeline means creating and nurturing a constant inflow of possible candidates. While there might be no need for the position to be filled right away, you will need to identify the best person to take over the moment that seat becomes empty. The basic foundation of maintaining a good talent pipeline is knowing who the right players are. Through the establishment of a good relationship with those possible key players, you will be able to match the right talent when the time comes.

Here are a few tips that you can follow for building your talent pipeline: No! to panic hiring Any event-driven recruiting can prove to be harmful to your organisation. On average, this costs companies around 250% of the yearly salary for every misplaced employee.3 As stated above, establishing the best talent pipeline will require an ongoing commitment. It is important that you continuously meet candidates to make sure that you will have a large pool of talent to choose from. It may require a change to your recruitment and selection process; never wait until your employees give you their notice.

Create a futuristic plan Never look at your talent pipeline as short-term. Top employers create relationships with future graduates by participating in the career fairs, sending employees to workshops, and offering attractive internships.

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The world is moving to a recruitment and selection focus that is based on culture fit more than on technical fit.


The companies that nurture future graduates know that they will be able to help their potential hires perform better through coaching sessions and training, but they may not be able to develop them to align with the core values and culture of the company. That is why if you meet a candidate with the same values as your company, you need to nurture them. They can give you higher return on investment down the road.

Encourage everyone to get involved Invite the entire organisation to join you in your search for the best and most suitable talent. Your present employees are the perfect tools for attracting potential employees as they live and breathe your company’s culture. In the so-called “war for talent”, highly skilled candidates always have the upper hand when it comes to deciding where and for whom they would like to work.

Retain the best and continually develop The emergence of social media has led to a marketplace transformation. The strongest candidates in their specific fields use such platforms for promoting their skill set, and this can lead to a breadth of new opportunities externally for career advancement. There are many ways that employees can find new opportunities, even when they are not looking for them. In addition, people still find themselves being headhunted and approached by other organisations, despite their loyalty to their company. The investment that you made as an employer will be seriously jeapardised when your best employees are told that the grass is greener elsewhere. Consider how to make your own grass greener: staff development is crucial. Putting flexible development plans in place that add value will guarantee the competitiveness of your workforce. In addition, having a good understanding of your employees is very important. Make sure that you know their work and give them the right to make their own decisions. Through open communication, great leaders retain top performers. Progression and freedom to develop are a must. Of course, there will always be employees who move on to progress elsewhere, but adapting to market challenges and listening to your current employees will put you in a great position for retaining your talent.

Invest in a good talent infrastructure and empower each individual – let them become your brand advocates. For employers, the provocative suggestion is this: do not make any promises that you cannot keep or control! Instead, invest in a good talent infrastructure and empower each individual – let them become your brand advocates. Your talent can make or break your organisation. By designing a talent navigation process and committing to continual talent development, you can place your

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organisation in an advantageous position to attract and retain these highly valuable individuals.

References 1. Pat Fong, W. (2014). How to Start Building a Successful Talent Pipeline For Your Company - OKRs and Continuous Performance Management. 7Geese. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://7geese.com/how-to-start-building-a-successful-talentpipeline-for-your-company/ 2. Bersin,. (2011). New Bersin & Associates Research Shows Global Growth Creating a New War for Talent. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from https://www.bersin.com/News/ Content.aspx?id=13723 3. Volo, K. (2013). How Much Employee Turnover is Really Costing Your Business. Engage For Success. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://www.engageforsuccess. org/employee-turnover-real-cost/#.VXbA_P5FCUk

About the author Nicole Dominique Le Maire has gained a reputation as a highly valued leader within the international human resources industry. She is a multi-talented woman entrepreneur and a global people connector, as well as the co-author of two books. Ms Le Maire is an expert in leading peoplebased activity from a strategic and operational perspective, with a gift for developing talent. Ms Le Maire is the founder of New To HR, which has put the fun back into the people function since 2013. New to HR supports individuals and organisations, and aims to develop into a global support community by entering into partnerships with knowledge institutes, top universities, and NGOs all over the world.

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“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” Stephen R. Covey

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Talent Management: Expert Solutions Published June 2015 by Synermetric Ltd Edited by Dakotah Fitzhugh and Ruth Gibson Designed by Dakotah Fitzhugh All articles are the copyright of their respective authors.

About Synermetric Ltd Synermetric believes in the power of science and the potential of people. They are passionate about providing the best possible solutions for people development and selection scenarios. Synermetric curates a catalogue of high quality solutions, all validated and evaluated by professional psychologists, and develops and integrates psychometrics for custom scenarios. They provide expert support and guidance for all aspects of people development projects, and facilitate training for best practice use of psychometrics.