Todays organisations need, above all else, to be flexible and adaptive to changing circumstances. This imperative was explored in the Financial Times last week. The article by Stefan Stern presented the views of various strategy consultants, in particular Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey. According to BCG, organisations must be alert and responsive to signals from outside, with clear views on social change and customer preferences. They must also secure the most talented people, either as regular employees or as contractors.
Being flexible and adaptive will be partly secured by organisational design but quite obviously it also requires people with the right behaviours to be recruited and for those desirable behaviours to be further developed and rewarded. These behaviours need to be specified. In other words, talent needs to be defined, both the talent of the technical/professional expert and the talent to run an adaptive organisation.
This task of defining talent does not seem likely to be performed well by an old-style competency framework. These cumbersome frameworks seem distinctly outmoded and unlikely to deliver the flexibility and adaptability that organisations need for growth. Something far simpler and itself responsive to change is required. Otherwise there is a real danger of failing to emphasise the behaviours that will be really essential for the future and failing to keep these behaviours up to date.
At Human Assets, we have been advocating an approach that starts with the organisations strategy; then asks what outputs the person has to achieve to make a maximum contribution to the strategy and finally asks what behaviours are required for each output The result is a succinct list of indicators of excellence clustered around the key outputs that must be delivered for strategic impact. The number of indicators is naturally limited to the number of such outputs. The indicators are clearly tied to the future business and its strategy. We have found the approach appeals to managers and staff as reflecting straightforwardly what a person must do to deliver excellent performance.
If being flexible and adaptive is the organisations strategy, this is converted into specific outputs for people to achieve and the indicators of excellence specify the behaviours required for a flexible and adaptive organisation. The indicators allow flexibility in how the outputs are achieved. The approach avoids cloning and encourages a diversity of style and thinking. All that is required is that the outputs are achieved within the guiding framework of the organisations values.
Indicators of excellence approach are covered in detail in our recent publication on talent management, Holding on while letting go: A directors guide to contemporary talent management.
For a discussion on these matters, please contact Charles Woodruffe. Charles can be reached on +44 (0)207 434 2122 or charles.woodruffe@humanassets.co.uk
Reference
Stern, S. Living strategy and death of the five-year plan. Financial Times
Newsletter: November 2009