How often do we hear that we are in a 'war for talent', competing to lure the best and brightest to our school, college, company? The costs of creating businesses are said to be lower than ever, especially where silicon valley is concerned. Hence, the differentiator is in the talent.
And yet, this rings so hollow. Take Yahoo, now up for sale after nearly 4 years of the talented Ms Mayer at the helm. A cornerstone of her approach was talent, famously through her aquihires - buying small start ups, closing down their products, and turning their people onto the most strategic areas of the business. Talent is an ingredient, not the resulting dish ready for a michelin starred restaurant.
Many companies put great effort into their talent management systems, setting goals and rating people on their results yearly or even quarterly. And yet, if this is the primary process for performance management, talent is very good at learning how to play the system. Managers at Google are said to have spreadsheets to model out how to best rate members of their teams over time in order to land promotions and salary raises at the optimal intervals to keep them motivated and retained.
What has been missed is that the organization itself is a living organism, with its own culture and set of processes that ensure ongoing vitality and health. An article in Fortune noted how the CEB saw across multiple companies how getting things done is getting harder. "Most business activity is slowing down, not accelerating. In benchmarking the speed of key processes across the corporate sector, we find again and again that decision-making at even the most basic level has slowed materially over the past five to 10 years." The Hard Evidence: Business Is Slowing Down - Fortune
There are larger factors at play than individually talented people can address. Companies are just too big and the regulatory environment is just too complex (e.g. Google in europe, Uber vs taxis). Technology has brought us so many gains, and yet just how productive are we when we are reading emails on our phone, during meetings we attend, while managing our projects across multiple platforms? We are doing more, but are we getting more done?
We are also encouraged to spend our time collaborating together, in open plan spaces. An interesting study in HBR showed how important it is to find balance in the physical world too. "My findings, which complement various studies on open workspaces, suggest that more-transparent environments are not always better. Privacy is just as essential for performance." (The Transparency Trap - HBR). The article suggest that less transparent work environments can yield more transparent employees. By balancing transparency and privacy, organizations can encourage just the right amount of "deviance" to foster innovative behavior and boost productivity.
Great ideas are cyclical, because while our tools change, our humanity stays (I hope). Thus, after some years of drinking from the fire-hose of free data, and eating for the buffet of always on connections, it's getting to be time to get back to some solid Mintzbergian good strong sensible process. Our talented leaders will perhaps pat themselves on the back for recognizing this.
Great ideas are cyclical, because while our tools change, our humanity stays (I hope). Thus, after some years of drinking from the fire-hose of free data, and eating for the buffet of always on connections, it's getting to be time to get back to some solid Mintzbergian good strong sensible process. Our talented leaders will perhaps pat themselves on the back for recognizing this.
Comments