TALENT MANAGEMENT: DDI’S VIEW

For four decades, DDI has helped thousands of organizations around the world achieve superior business results through hiring, developing, and retaining exceptional talent. Through both this experience and extensive

research, we identified a number of best practices we believe should serve as the foundation for a talent management system.

Best Practice #1: Start with the end in mind—talent strategy must be tightly aligned with business strategy.

Effective talent management requires that your business goals and strategies drive the quality and quantity of the talent you need. Procter & Gamble, for example, views “business decisions and talent decisions as one.”

And research put forth by the Aberdeen Group showed that best-in-class organizations are 34 percent more likely to connect succession management strategies with organizational strategies.11 Below are statements made by organizations whose specific business goals and strategies drive their talent needs:

> “We acquired one of our largest competitors and have redundant talent. How will we ensure we retain the best? Who willoversee the integration? What is the right management team for our new company?

Who will help us focus on quality and cost containment, while pursuing new markets?

And which employees will best fit the new culture?”

> “We are a global automobile manufacturer that has steadily lost market share. What sort of talent are we going to need to shake up the status quo, rejuvenate our brand, and give us the action-orientation required to turn things around?”

> “We are introducing a ‘blockbuster’ drug that requires us to double our sales force in the next eight months. In addition to sheer numbers, we also need to add the right kind of talent—sales reps who take a consultative approach with physicians.” The real scenarios described above represent clear-cut examples of why matching

talent to business needs is so powerful. These organizations all hold a common belief that business success hinges on having the right talent in place—at the right time. Each of the organizations described above is proactively addressing its talent needs. But far too often, the connection between talent and business strategy is considered long after strategic plans are inked. Best Practice #2: Talent management professionals need to move from a seat at the table to setting the table. When we gather groups of HR professionals for events, we often ask them who owns talent management. They point to senior management. Many have a seat at the table, where they’re involved in discussions about business and leadership strategies that were  previously held behind closed boardroom doors. But securing the right to listen in is not enough. Talent managers need to own parts of the process and serve as partners, guides, and trusted advisors when it comes time to talk talent.

Research shows this is no easy feat. In fact, it looks as though neither HR nor senior leader is at the helm of the talent management ship. DDI regularly takes the pulse of leadership practices around the world. In the most recent report, the Global Leadership Forecast 2008/200912, leaders were asked to rate the overall quality of HR. Only a quarter offered a very good or excellent rating, and just 30 percent of CEOs viewed HR as a strategic partner. On the flipside, those critical CEOs face challenges of their own. Top corporate leaders, such as former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, report spending about 50 percent of their time on their people.13 They got involved in recruiting top talent, grooming high-potentials, and reviewing talent pools.

Speaking on the topic of talent management, Campbell’s CEO Doug Conant tells us, “I would say CEOs, on average, understand and appreciate talent more than the everyday person because they know they can’t do

their jobs without it.” Yet, we find evidence in our Global Leadership Forecast14 research that not all CEOs share this mindset. We asked both CEOs and HR professionals how often CEOs are actively engaged in four distinct talent management activities. Though half of CEOs took credit for personally developing or mentoring other executives, ratings from both CEOs and HR were startlingly low in all other categories, as illustrated

in Figure 1.