Talent Management

There is a Rhino under the table about strategic planning. Most people will try to ignore the rumbling, smelly, dangerous beast. Planning doesn’t have to be complicated. Actually, it’s quite simple. It seems to be time consuming — it is not. It is key to making talent management work. It needs to be part of your succession plans. Without a SMARTER strategic planning process based on the Reality Principle, you can get thwacked on the side of your head. Just ask GM, Ford, and just about every bank in the world.

* Specific
* Measureable
* Accountable
* Recorded
* Time-Bound
* Ethical
* Reality-Based

Yes there is a lot to cover — but if you don’t do it, you waste a lot more time and money.

Jump start the strategic planning process with a set of simple statements:

* Describe what Joy & Profit Inc. wants to accomplish.

Here are four “thought starters” that applies to many businesses:

1. We want people to understand that when they buy from Joy & Profit Inc., they get great value for their money and time. Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluation and Alignment

Are your strategic talent management processes in alignment?

I am currently coaching the senior leadership team of a company in a very competitive market. They have been very successful but don’t have the technology, financial resources or critical people to grow the business.

The President/CEO is currently interviewing candidates for a critical vice president of technology position. I will conduct extensive competency-based interviews with the final candidates and incorporate personality and ability tests. We want to ensure that people and processes are in alignment.

Your business is constantly changing. So are your customers. Depending on your industry, this may be rapid or extremely rapid. If you do not change along with the business environment, you may become seriously out of alignment. What got you here today may not get you there tomorrow. The people you hire, the way you organize them, the economic incentives you offer them and even the tasks you delegate may no longer create the culture and outcomes that are critical to success.

Have you checked to see if the design of your organization still aligns with key success factors for your business? Effective executives regularly seek advice and fresh perspectives from people who are less emotionally invested in their business. This allows them to determine whether historically relevant aspects of the business remain critical to future success.

Ask yourself:

o Does the design of my company still align with key success factors?

o If I had to design my business from scratch, how would I create it? How would it differ from the current design?

o Should I create a task force to answer these questions and make recommendations?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a happy leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged and aligned with the strategy and vision of the company.

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted advisor to senior leadership teams.

We provide strategic talent management solutions to select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders and lawyers. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever you want to do most things, you’ll need a plan, some strategies for how to approach it. Being well-advised can provide you with a sure track to reaching your goals. You’ll find three useful suggestions in the following paragraphs that will help you be more successful. Adhering to these suggestions will give you an edge and will enhance your prospects of being more effective as a manager.

When you want to be an effective manager, you’ll discover it really is essential that you start to consider more of the ‘emotional’ aspects of leadership. This is on top of your ‘normal’ management responsibilities. Failing to do so can lead to regrettable outcomes. It might turn out that you end up with lower productivity, or even a group of very disinterested employees.

Here’s is the top three desired leadership attributes as shown in a recent study by Towers Watson:

1. Be trustworthy.

You will need to be trustworthy since it is the primary attribute of a respected and creditable leader. Failing to do this could possibly reduce the quality of all the relationships that you try to build amongst the team. So don’t slip up and skip over this important suggestion!

2. Show that you care about the well-being of others.

Pretty much as essential as being trustworthy will be showing that you care about the well-being of others. I want you to know that this is simply not something to disregard. It may help to consider the wider benefits, a thing that almost anyone trying to improve the team’s performance wishes for.

3. Be ‘visible.’

Finally, when you want to be an effective manager you will need to make sure you are ‘visible’ to the workforce and not hidden in an ‘ivory tower.’ This may help with you getting to know your team, a very necessary part of being a high performance organisation. Screwing up this may cause you to lose credibility in the eyes of your team — and you’ll likely concur that this ought to be avoided if at all possible! Read the rest of this entry »