My post on comparing HR and IT as service parts of the organization once again brought out the best in my readers. Miki at Leadership Turn gave her usual, and appreciated, “words-that-we-would-like-to-say-but-don’t” in regard to a McKinsey Quarterly’s quote “only HR can translate a business strategy into a detailed talent strategy…”:
“That has to be the stupidest statement that ever came out of McKinsey! I spent 25 years as a recruiter and another decade teaching line managers better hiring skills and in most instances HR has neither the knowledge nor the business acumen to detail staffing needs for any project, tech …read more

The “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” article in The McKinsey Quarterly referred to applying customer segmentation principles to designing different talent management approaches for segments of the workforce. This starts with recognizing that it’s more than just “top talent” that needs this kind of attention:
“The impact of top talent on corporate performance hasn’t diminished, but what’s much clearer today-not least, as a result of the expansion of knowledge work-is that organizations can’t afford to neglect the contributions of other employees….Experience suggests that an exclusive focus on top players can damage the morale of the rest of the organization and, as …read more

The McKinsey Quarterly article on “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” has spawned a lot of reaction on my part. One statement seemed to lay the talent management function firmly in the lap of HR:
“Only HR can translate a business strategy into a detailed talent strategy: for instance, how many people does the company need in order to execute its business strategy, where does it need them, and what skills should they have?”
This got me thinking about how IT interacts with the organization on it’s projects. I’m not a fan of expanding the role of a CIO to be CEO-like. The …read more

The McKinsey Quarterly article on “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” conducted a survey of 98 business/HR leaders that yielded obstacles to effective talent management; it’s amazing how well these “obstacles” correlate with obstacles to any organization wide effort like project management and PMO processes- the top three were:
1. Senior managers don’t spend enough high-quality time on talent management
2. Organization is “siloed” and does not encourage constructive collaboration, sharing of resources
3. Line managers are not sufficiently committed to development of people’s capabilities and careers.
Often HR is given the “talent management” task. However, the “obstacles” point to talent management being a function …read more

A McKinsey Quarterly article on “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” dealt with lack of talent management especially when more knowledge workers are required:
“Companies like to promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating, and retaining capable workers as they were a decade ago.”
While reading this it dawned on me that talent strategies lead to talent tactics and talent projects just like any strategy-tactic-project link in the organization. They went on to describe how talent management is perceived by …read more