Talent's progress

Is there a perspective that can throw light not only on the progress of  employees, but also on the effectiveness of people management in the organization? Tracking the changes in the positioning of employees on the talent grid over a period of time can be an excellent option!

There are many ways in which the progress of an employee ('talent') in an organization can be depicted. The most concrete one is in terms of the roles the employee takes up in the organization. Then there are aspects like compensation, responsibility level etc. that can also be used to track the progress of an employee in the organization.

In this post, let's look at the progress of employees in the organization in terms of a more abstract (though very widely used) representation - in terms of the changes in the mapping of the employee to the performance-potential grid. This grid, often called the talent grid, is typically a 9-box one, with box 9 corresponding to high performance coupled with high potential. 

If we track the changes in the positioning of the employees on the talent grid over a period of time, say for 3-5 cycles of talent review process that lead to the mapping of the employees on this grid, the trends emerging from the same can give us very interesting insights on the effectiveness of Talent Management in the organization. 

Ideally, employees should shift right and/or up on the grid. This would mean that the Talent Management in the organization has managed to help the employees to improve their performance and/or potential. Similarly, if the general trend in an organization is that employees would shift left and/or down and then out of the grid (and the organization!) it can be an indicator of lack of effectiveness of people management in the organization. 

Of course, these movements are also dependent on the employees (their performance and demonstrated potential). However, the overall trends in the movements on the grid (for a group of employees) can provide valuable indications on the effectiveness of people management in the organization.  These employees went through the selection process of the organization before they started featuring in the talent grid and hence the organization can't easily disown them or their movements on the talent grid! 

Yes, there could be other factors at play. For example, if the organization has imposed some sort of normalization on performance ratings and/or on potential ratings, this would limit the percentage of the employees who can be in box 7, 8 and 9 (the boxes in the talent grid that denote the best talent positioning). Also, if 'long term' performance (and not recent performance) is what drives the positioning on the performance axis of the grid, the degree of  'fluctuation' along the performance axis of the grid is likely to be lower. 

There is also this interesting phenomenon of stickiness of the ratings, especially potential ratings.  The extreme case is when the organization takes the stated or unstated position that the 'potential' is a non-modifiable factor, in which case no movement on the potential axis would be possible. Mercifully, most organizations consider potential to be some sort of a combination of ability, aspiration and leadership and somewhat modifiable. 

All this assumes that the definition, the rating scale and the calibration norms for performance and potential (that lead to the positioning on the talent grid) remains consistent over the years/over the period used for trend analysis. Else, there is a possibility of scenarios similar to that of 'reducing poverty by redrawing the poverty-line'!  

There could also be deeper factors like the tacit definition of 'what good looks like' and  the unstated assumptions regarding people management in the organization  (e.g. 'we hire a person based not only on the fit to the current role but also on the fit to the future roles' or 'we hire people mainly to solve a particular problem at a given point in the organization's journey'). 

As we have seen in 'Type N and Type O Organizations', in  the case of 'Type N' organizations, the relatively new employees have a great advantage over the other employees, though this advantage vanishes quite quickly as they become 'old' (tenured)! This can lead to rapid changes in the grid positioning as the employees tend to get over-positioned on the grid initially and then shift left and down (and out!) very quickly. This creates a lot of action (and an illusion of progress) on the people management front, though over a period of time it might become apparent (if the organization is open to see it) that quality of talent in the organization hasn't improved and that 'the new is not really outperforming the old'!

 So, where does this leave us? Though Talent's progress (or lack of it) on the performance-potential grid is a rather abstract way of capturing the Talent trajectory', it can indeed provide very useful insights on the effectiveness of people management in the organization! While the movement of a particular employee on the grid is mainly a function of the performance and demonstrated potential of the employee, the trends in these moves at the group level points to the effectiveness (or lack of it) of people management in the organization. These organization level trends can also be very useful in unearthing the unstated assumptions that the organization has made on people and on people management!

Any comments/ideas? 

Unorthodox concepts in HR : Part 8 - ‘Type N’ and ‘Type O’ organizations!

In this post, we will continue our exploration of Unorthodox concepts in Human Resources/People Management. Here we are exploring concepts that are unlikely to be found in ‘respectable’ text books (and also not taught in ‘premier’ business schools) but are very much real in the paradoxical world of people management (See ‘The attrition principle’,  'In the valley of attrition' , 'Sublimation of vision statements' , 'Computer-controlled Manager Empowerment', ‘Training the Victim’ ,‘Two plus Two personality profiling’ and 'Herophobia' for the previous posts in this series).

Based on my experience as an employee and as a management consultant, I have noticed an interesting pattern. Some organizations are optimized for newly hired employees (‘Type N’ organizations) whereas some organizations are optimized for tenured/'old' employees(‘Type O’ organizations). Of course, there are organizations that are equally good (or equally bad!) for all the employees! However, ‘Type N’ and ‘Type O’ organizations are quite common!

One easy way to determine the type of the organization is to see how employee engagement scores vary with tenure. Yes, the dividing line between ‘new’ and ‘old’ varies across organizations  I have seen organizations where you become an ‘old employee’ as soon as you complete one year and I have seen organizations where you will be considered to be a ‘new employee’ till you complete about five years. While the median tenure of employees in the organization has some impact on this ‘new-old dividing line’, it is usually a matter of organization psychology and is not directly derived statistically!

In ‘Type N’ organizations, 'not being burdened by the past' is a great advantage. So, the new hires, especially new leaders, have the advantage. These tend to be organizations that believe that new employees are hired to solve particular problems or to seize particular opportunities that the existing employees have failed to do. In these organizations, ‘tenure’ seems to have psychological association with ‘inability to drive change’. They might even consider many of the existing employees to be part of the problem! Hence, new hire has an advantage, so long as he/she is considered ‘new’. The difficulty is that the ‘new’ employee can move to the ‘old’ category quite quickly (and even get fired fairly quickly). If this happens mainly because of an underlying/unstated assumption that ‘new is good’, this ‘new-old-out-new’ cycle can repeat!  

'Type O' organizations tend to believe that one needs to understand the organization context deeply before one can really contribute, especially at senior levels. So, tenure is valued. These also tend to be organizations where it takes quite a bit of time for a newcomer to figure out how the organization really works. In these organizations, often the effective style of influencing tends to be ‘indirect’ (almost like billiards- you hit something so that it goes and hits the target as compared to hitting the target directly)! This doesn’t mean that ‘Type O’ organizations don’t value performance. It is more matter of a newcomer taking time to figure out how to perform better. Things get progressively easier as you spend more time in the organization. In a way, it is like batting on a difficult wicket. It takes time to ‘get your eye in’ but things become much easier after that. It becomes so wasteful to 'throw your wicket away' (leave the organization) after having done all the hard work to 'get your eye in'.  

Now, let’s look at an interesting question :  “Can the organization type change?” The answer is ‘Yes’. This happens mostly when there is a leadership change at the CEO level and sometimes at CXO level. A new leader, hired with a transformation agenda, can view most of the tenured employees as ‘part of the problem to be solved’ and hence might replace them with external hires. If a critical mass of ‘new people’ are brought in (and ‘old people are vilified), the organization can move from Type O to Type N. Now, two scenarios can happen. The first one is that newly hired people and the CEO/CXO stays on for a long time and the organization starts drifting towards Type O. The second scenario is that the new CEO/CXO keeps on replacing may of the people (including many of the newly hired people) as soon as they become ‘old’ (e.g. after 1-2 years) and hence the organization continues to be Type N.

In 'Type O' organizations, the leadership (especially at CEO/CXO levels) tend to remain remarkably stable  and that increases the probability that the organization continues to be 'Type O'. It is when a 'Type O' organization under-performs for a long time that a 'Type N' CEO is brought in, and the possible shift to being a 'Type N' begins. If the new 'Type N' CEO doesn’t have sufficient powers, he/she can easily get lost in the system or the system might even reject him/her. This ‘reaction’ of the system can be one of the reasons why the new CEO might be tempted to make a lot of people changes. Of course, there are indeed wise 'Type N' CEOs who are very selective and fact-based about the people changes!

So what does this mean? It definitely makes sense to figure out if you are joining a 'Type N' or 'Type O' organization. It is part of the psychological alignment required on what good looks like! Obviously, it makes sense to join a Type O organizations only if you are willing to sweat it out for a long period – significantly beyond the 'new-old dividing line' in the organization. Since they are optimized for new people, it is easier to join type N and to come up to speed faster. But the danger is that of the transition from ‘new’ to ‘old’. So, one must join for the right reasons (beyond the organization being 'Type N'). Remaining a bit of an outsider can definitely help,  especially in driving change.  Of course, being a bit of an outsider while being a full member of the organisation is a delicate balancing act!

Any comments/ideas?