My friend Candela is a writer and defines herself as a Cheever fan. He says that what differentiates one writer from another is his perspective, his particular and unique way of seeing things and transmitting them. This is how my friend Candela defines the talent of a writer.
If you type the word talent into Google, 98,600,000 results appear. Perhaps overwhelming, right? But it is clear that it is a topic of interest. Everyone talks about talent, chases talent or perhaps the way to be talented. The process begins in the academic world, although I don’t know if it is adequate, and continues and is accentuated in organizations, already in the business environment.
In the organisational sphere, there seems to be a consensus on what Talent is: the capabilities and power of employees aligned with the needs of the business. Do we know what the business needs? Let’s then extract the business indicators and establish what knowledge, competencies, skills, personality, aptitudes, etc. we need in our employees. And, with this cocktail, we already have our particular definition of talent!
So why this reluctance towards talent management programs on the part of almost everyone? According to a recent study by Hanrel and Baier (2014) in which more than 1,000 organizations participated, which were asked to prioritize among ten different business actions, belonging to different functional areas, talent management programs appeared in seventh place, after the need for technological programs, innovation in production, New financial approaches and marketing mix programs. This same conclusion is endorsed by D. Ulrich, What is happening here?
Most Talent professionals, dedicated to people, talk about the need for the company’s General Management to be a person committed to talent, who believes in people as a differential value. They say that this is essential for a Talent policy to be developed in the organization. Whether it is right or not depends on the Talent Leader.
The Talent Leader must be able to prove the worth of their area, that’s how things work. Due to my work as a Consultant, I have the opportunity to meet excellent professionals dedicated to talent management working in the same direction, demonstrating the added value of their area. They adopt a position committed to business results and are able to demonstrate their contribution to the company’s income statement. They speak a common language with the other areas of the company, use ISO quality formulas, showing that they are not the exclusive heritage of the areas of manufacturing, production, environment, etc., and link their programs to business results. They approach the rest of the company’s professionals with the security and confidence that a position as such allows.
This is how the “talent mindset” (a term coined by Mckinsey) is generated, which reaches all the leaders of the organization. Talent professionals, attending to the business, develop programs for the management of people and also ensure the proper implementation. And it all starts with the evaluation of the organization’s talent.
We generally know where we want to go, but do we know where we start from? Evaluation is the basic tool of talent management, the pillar on which each of the management programs that we can design to have an organization prepared for a more or less immediate future is based. It is the responsibility of the Talent Leader to carry it out in a transparent, objective and reliable way.
ISO 10667, which ensures good practices in the evaluation of people, groups and organizations, is a fundamental aid in the process, an indicator on how to plan, carry out and evaluate the evaluation process itself. Could we say then that ISO 10667 helps the Talent Leader in the process of demonstrating the value of his area? No doubt.
There are many opinions that, outside the area, issue about Talento. “It’s so common sense…” But paraphrasing the one who said that common sense is the least common of the senses and that even to build a bridge a lot of common sense is needed, let’s add value to the organization through proven techniques and programs based on certainties. Only in this way will we demonstrate courage, a matter of brave people?
María Luisa Riobóo
General Director of Psicotec