As a talent and development manager, can you provide evidence that your annual budget spend (on developing your people) is actually making a strategic difference to the performance of your organisation? If not, then now is the time to align your organisation’s strategy with the development needs of your people in line with their aspirations.
If you’re being honest with yourself, are you guilty of a ‘cut and paste’ approach to planning and resourcing your next wave of talent learning and development activity. After all, it’s taken you all that time and effort to develop and implement your management and leadership development programmes so, if it isn’t broke why fix it?
Below are 3 things you need to consider to make a lasting strategic impact in the development of your people and in ensuring your talent strategy’s success.
Link to your people’s aspirations and needs
The landscape of effective talent management has made a seismic shift in recent times due to the change in working practises and to people re-evaluating their career plans and work–life balance. Your talent strategy needs to keep pace with the overall strategic requirements of your organisation, but equally with the personal aspirations your people are focused on.
Blend skills and experience opportunities
For your high performing, high aspiration, high potential talent, skills development just isn’t enough. Your talent development plans need to reflect a blended approach by providing them a greater exposure to the experience opportunities they’ll need to become a truly effective successor.
Evaluate and measure
All too often the measurement of internal promotion is the only measure that many talent managers use. However other measures, such as exposure to development experiences and the subsequent outcomes, need to be considered. By focusing on the skills required and the experience needed for your top talent, you can evaluate their progress over a set period. Without setting effective measures your talent and development evaluation becomes obsolete.
To find out more about our ALIGNED® talent model, please contact me at matt@twentyoneleadership.com so we can continue the conversation.
