Four Groups Blog

Malcolm Gladwell has been over to London, talking about his new book, The Outliers. I haven’t read the book and I’ve only scanned the reviews, but the talent management component of the message seems to be that;

Outliers focuses more on the social and cultural context of individuals to explain their extraordinary success… Gladwell explains how success in the 21st century is less about sheer intelligence and more about collaboration and hard work

We’re always in favour of collaboration, although concerning Gladwell, the BPS blog linked to a wonderful interview with Gladwell and Katie Couric in which Couric asks Gladwell if he is stating the obvious. Gladwell’s reaction before answering is well worth the three minutes and preceding advert!

However you perceive Gladwell, it is wonderful to watch someone who has been so closely entwined with the zeitgeist for so long.

According to Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC Holdings;

Values go beyond ‘what you can get away with’ and that values are, in the end, critical to value – to sustainable value, that is

Green goes on to say;

“For companies, where does the responsibility for this begin? With their boards, of course. It is their job to promote a culture of ethical business throughout their organisation. It is true for banks at this time, but also true for all our businesses at all times.” Most of his industry colleagues wanted to do this and to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and know they were doing the right thing, he added.

Evidently, very relevant advice, if perhaps acknowledging that the horse has already bolted. That said, such sentiments go a long way to endorsing the opportunity and recognising the potential value that comes from successful leadership development.

Quotes via People Management

Nick McCormick very kindly sugested a podcast with himself on management tips. We had a good chat about some thoughts on leadership and spent about 10 minutes talking about;

• Self Awareness
• Relationships
• Systems
• Culture

I spoke a bit more about our own, Wilber inspired perspective on the topic. If you fancy a listen, the podcast is here.

Michael Spect points us to an article and interview he did with Kate Carruthers. I’ve added some extracts from the piece below;

A fragmented approach to the elements comprising workforce development led to lack of integration and inability to align the workforce to current and future business demands.

Who’s doing it [Talent Management] well? According to Michael Specht no single organisation jumps out as doing it all well. Several are doing some bits well but nobody is doing it end-to-end as yet.

Research in the recently published Cedar Crestone 2008–2009 HR Systems Survey has found that organisations that extend their talent management strategy across the entire workforce have better returns.

This research is confirmed by another survey from IBM on the ROI of Talent Management, where it was noted that organisations “that apply talent management practices demonstrate higher financial performance compared to their industry peers”.

Gary Cokins highlights some recent Dutch research that suggests;

overall enterprise performance is improved by defining accountability for sales turnover and profit and loss simultaneously over multiple dimensions (e.g., by product, region, account, market segment, industry). This “multidimensional” concept means that for each dimension, a separate manager is held accountable –and with consequences of reward or punishment

While a full appreciation of multidimensionality is for me at least, some way of, I am intrigued and interested to read that;

The Dutch study implies that reshaping an organization’s social structure with multidimensional principles is emerging as a trend. Implementing a performance management framework most certainly is an essential enabler to make such a vision a reality.