Press Coverage: Talent Development and “MBA alternatives”

Posted on October 26, 2009 by mkizilos

Just a quick note on some press interviews I did this month.  The October issue of Twin Cities Business magazine did a story on the intersection of talent management and talent development.  I have commented in this blog about the importance of strategic talent development, and I expressed  some of these views in that article.  The best learning and development experiences are those that enhance the individual’s skills while supporting the achievement of organization goals.  Kevin Wilde, Chief Learning Officer at General Mills, offers some great insight in the article.  Check it out.

Also, I was quoted in a story on MBA Alternatives.  A digital version of the story can be accessed here.   Carlson Executive Education’s Minnesota Management Institute, a trhee-week program targeted to high potential managers and directors, is often viewed as an alternative to a traditional MBA.  The mini-MBA market has been very hot lately.  So much so, that some are overselling what you can accomplish in a very short time (e.g., some mini-MBAs are just 5 days…!).  We have takent the perspective that it is better to offer a strong program to build skills that high potential managers and directors need than to offer a sampler of MBA topics.  Our MMI program is an intensive, three-week transformational program.  You don’t get a “mini-MBA” credential from the program, but you do get a powerful, perspective-shifting experience that can accelerate your career.  Enough said.  you can check it out on our website if you are interested…

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Strategic Talent Management

Posted on September 14, 2009 by mkizilos

I am preparing to make a presentation to members of the Minnesota High Tech Association this week.  As I have been thinking about my topic, “Strategic Talent Management,” I have been trying to hone my message down to just the basics.  Here are a few highlights that I plan to discuss:

1. Strategic Talent Management starts with top management understanding that having the right people with the right skills in the right jobs is vital to the accomplishment of organizational objectives. Now this is nothing new.  Just about every HR, talent, or learning and development person will start by talking about how important top management support is.  Without top management support, it is hard to create a culture that values development of people.  But in the case of talent management, the importance of top management engagement is particularly vital.  This is because it is the only way to get a meaningful linkage between the strategic goals of the enterprise and the talent management effort.  It is usually not enough to “link” to a strategy after the discussion of the strategy is over and decisions have been made.  Unless the talent management agenda is explicitly considered during the strategy discussions, the talent discussion will start out behind the eight ball.  The focus will need to be on trying to fill in essential gaps in understanding about the implications of strategy for specific jobs, skills, people, and timing.

Unfortunately, in many companies, the political realities of the strategic planning process are such that HR (and the owners of the talent management process) have to struggle for a seat at that table with a meaningful voice.  Forward-thinking companies give HR that seat, but many do not. (for an interesting side-bar on this discussion, you may be interested in this article by Bob Bogart, my former boss from Thomson Reuters who published a piece on getting HR a seat at the board room table).

2. There are 2 aspects of “Strategic” when thinking about talent management: 1) the linkage to strategy, which was referred to above; and, 2) adopting a strategic approach in the management of talent once that linkage has been made.  Both meanings of word “strategic” are important.  The second meaning, taking a strategic approach, is all about investing in the development of the right talent.  Which jobs in the organization are the most critical for success?  If you were to invest a dollar in getting the right talent into those jobs, either by hiring the right person or developing an incumbent’s skills, would you get a big return?  I have blogged about this notion of “pivotal jobs” before.  A great concept developed by Pete Ramsted and John Boudreau.  Identifying these jobs requires a segmentation approach.  Then, investment can be funneled into those most important segments.

That is all for now…

Filed under: Talent Management, Talent identification | 1 Comment »

Financial Impact of Talent Management Practices

Posted on July 22, 2009 by mkizilos

I came across this recent study by Bersin Associates (a pretty good resource for learning and development and talent management information) documenting the financial impact of effective talent management practices.

Drum roll, please………….

“Companies with Integrated Talent Management Strategies See 26% More Revenue Per Employee and 41% Lower Turnover among High Performers, According to New Bersin & Associates Research.” 

This is a pretty significant result, and came from a sample of 773 HR managers and executives. 

If you dig into the report (or at least the press release, since I am not shelling out $595 for the full report!), development plans were a particularly important indicator of success: 

“Employee development strategies are critical to success. High-quality development planning is one of the practices most highly correlated to reduced turnover and increased revenue per employee. Unfortunately, today this process is very immature. Only about half of respondents widely use development planning and only 8% said plans were effective. ”

If you saw my last post on development planning, you can probably guess that I am smiling.  Without solid development plans, all of the good work done to identify and develop talent falls short. 

I also found it interesting that online systems are increasingly being used to underpin talent management efforts.    Some will say, “it is not about the technology, it is about having good discussions about talent.”  My reponse is that it is hard to have good conversations without good information, and good information means up to date information that is readily available…and that requires a system of some sort to store and manage it.

 

Filed under: Talent Management, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

“Can You Show Me a Well-Written Development Plan?”

Posted on June 23, 2009 by mkizilos

One of the things that I hear regularly from people in the learning and development community is, “our people don’t know how to write good development plans. ”  In the next breath, often comes a request such as, “Can you show me some examples of well-written plans that I can use to help educate my people?” 

This would seem to be a reasonable request, right?

Actually, I don’t think that providing examples of “good development plans” is the best way to help a person guide their own development.  Why?  Well, a good development plan doesn’t necessarily look much different from a bad development plan.  

The most critical components of a good development plan are all those things that don’t make it onto the development plan form–the quality of the process used to get meaningful feedback on strengths and weaknesses; the effort invested in reflecting on where you are trying to go in your job and career; the extent of personal insight and self-awareness behind the plan, etc… Of course, the problem is that all of this other work is the hard work of development that many people aren’t ready to do. 

So, the interest in “well-written development plans”  can be a sign that there is too much emphasis on the talent development process and not enough on the hard work of actually helping to develop capability. 

Don’t get me wrong.  Development plans are important and useful tools, and it is good to have one that is based on a thorough self-examination.  My point is simply that the writing of the plan is actually pretty easy when you know what you are trying to accomplish. It is every other part of the process that is difficult. As a result, looking at “well-written development plans” is not that instructive for the individual wanting to drive their own development in the most effective manner.

This reminds me of something once told to me by a college classmate that has stuck with me through the years.  He was describing his experience in trying to write a paper for our philosophy class:   

 ”At first, I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but I just didn’t know how to say it.  Then, I realized, that’s just another way of saying I really don’t know what I want to say.” 

It’s not that people don’t know how to write good development plans. Its that they don’t really know what they need to develop and how to develop  it.  Unfortunately, that is a much harder problem to solve.

Filed under: Creating a high-impact development plan, Executive Education, Self-Development, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Theory versus Practice?…Or, Is “theory” a dirty word?

Posted on June 15, 2009 by mkizilos

Last week we held the final preview session for our Minnesota Executive Program (MEP), and something that one of our faculty said stuck with me.  It was in response to a question about how past participants had applied what they learned in the program to their jobs.  The question was initially fielded by two past participants who attended the preview–one from Lund Foods, and one from Hormel.  They each explained how the program has been valuable to them, and provided examples. But then, Norm Chervaney, one of our faculty who has been teaching in the MEP program for over 20 years made an interesting point.  He suggested that people sometimes approach university-based executive education assuming what turns out to be a false dichotomy: “theory” versus “practice.” 

His point was simply this:  “Would you want to have a surgeon operate on you who did not have a deep understanding of physiology?”  I know I would want my surgeon to have both a theoretical or conceptual understanding of body systems, and a lot of experience actually doing the surgery. 

So, why is it that so often “theory” is used as a dirty word.  As in, “that is just a bunch of theory,”  or “that is too theoretical.”  Yet, one never hears anyone saying, “that’s just based on experience,” or “that is just too practical.” 

But, perhaps they should. 

In the best sense of the word, “theories” simply help you to make sense of complex situations by helping you to understand the pricniples or elements that are in play.  We create and test theories–though we don’t call them that–all the time. Any time you use your prior experience to guide your actions in a new situation you are doing so because you have created an implicit theory about how things work and you believe that your theory will apply to the new situation.  Of course, the only evidence to support your theory is your own experience. 

In contrast, well done research leverages the experience of others in similar situations and distills down the essential lessons. In addition, since theories in the academic world are more formal, they must stand up to intense scrutiny, and can be tested with enormous amounts of data and well-designed experiments.  I don’t actually know any reputable academic who deals in the type of theory that some think of when they think of academic theory–the armchair theorizing that is disconnected from the real world. I think the last great armchair theorist was William James, and he died in 1910. However, I do know of plenty of consultants who sell themselves as experts based on their experience, yet lack even a basic theoretical foundation for their work.  For example, many executive coaches operating today do coaching that crosses the line into therapy…and don’t even realize it because they lack sufficient knowledge of psychology.

Good executive education recognizes the importance of practical experience and theoretical knowledge and presents a blend of ”theory” and “practice.”

Filed under: Defining Executive Education, Executive Education, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

MBA Alternatives?

Posted on May 18, 2009 by mkizilos

 If you missed the May edition of Twin Cities Business Magazine, you also missed the special focus section on Executive Education.  In addition to discussion about various MBA options, local universities also highlighted their non-degree MBA alternatives (see pages 90-91). 

I highlighted the Minnesota Executive Program (MEP) and the Minnesota Management Institute (MMI), our two robust general management programs.  While some view these programs as “MBA alternatives,” many who attend these programs are actually looking to refresh skills acquired during an MBA some 5-7+ years ago. 

The Carlson School has been offering these general management programs for well over 30 years.  The programs have evolved over the years, but the impact that they have on participants has not changed.  The clear message from every person I have spoken with about these programs is very clear: their lives have been changed–new perspectives on how organizations run, new career opportunities, advancement, and new levels of success.

Sorry for my blatant advertising here.  I generally don’t like to take your time to push brochure-speak at you, but these are some pretty powerful programs!

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Leaders as Coaches

Posted on May 11, 2009 by mkizilos

One of the most striking trends in the learning and development field over the past 10 years is the increasing use of coaching as a development method. Why is that?

Increasing pace of change is making effective leadership more crucial
The pace of change has picked up so dramatically in recent years that most organizations are struggling to keep up with the competition, let alone stay ahead of the pack.  A hard fought competitive edge that might have set you up for 5 years while the competition scrambled to react may today yield you a  six-month headstart. 

While the pace of change is impacting all dimensions of organizational life in diverse ways,  the underlying implication of all the change we face is that it is increasingly important to have highly capable leaders.  While we still acknowledge the importance of creating robust organizations –as systems–there is an increasing awareness that even the best systems may not be flexible enough to respond to rapid changes in the environment without extraordinary leadership.  The extraordinary leader can anticipate, learn, shift, and help ensure that the system is adapting. 

So, the talent development system needs to be great at identifying those with leadership potential and helping them to develop as rapidly as possible.

So, what has this got to do with leaders as coaches? 

Coaching has some interesting advantages over more structured approaches to learning.  In traditional learning settings, there are well established means of mediating the relationship between a learner and a body of knowledge.  If you want to learn what you need to know about corporate finance, there is a well established process to follow–learning certain concepts, in a certain sequence, with clear means to confirm your learning along the way.  Moreover, the content and the process is all well articulated–there are books, instructors, videos, practice problems, and all manner of techniques.  Some refer to the traditional learning model, typified by the classroom experience, as having “the sage on the stage.”  As Assistant Dean of executive education, I am intimately familiar with the traditional model, and can attest to the fact that it has an important place in the arsenal of development approaches.

However, in order to develop leaders quickly, we cannot rely completely or solely on the traditional learning model.  To be effective in the rapidly evolving real world of organizations, leaders need to be constantly learning and adapting.  The body of knowldge to be learned is evolving with the context, and lessons need to be teased out of a swirling complex of interpersonal and organizational dynamics.  However, unlike the traditional learning context, there is no one there to mediate the learning.  There is no one to make sure that you are learning what you need to learn. 

Enter the coach. In contrast to the traditional learning model, the learning model based on coaching is typified by some as having ”a guide on the side.”

Coaches as learning facilitators

 A good executive coach can play many roles, but the role of learning facilitator is critical.  In this capacity, the coach helps the individual to process their own experiences, and ensure that the right lessons are being drawn from them. Rather than working from a predetermined curriculum that a “teacher” wants a “student” to learn, the coach starts with the individual’s own experiences, and helps the individual to learn from a process that involves dynamically processing experience in an iterative loop–>individual action–>result/impact–>facilitated reflection.   

I have written here and elsewhere about my strong belief in the power of learning from experience, and the coach is essentially an aid who helps the individual to learn from their own experience.  Given that external executive coaches are pretty pricey, and can’t be easily scaled beyond a small pool of the most critical talent, we are starting to hear more and more about helping leaders within the organization to get better at this critical skill. 

In fact, I decided to write on this topic because today is day one of a new program on The Art and Practice of Leaders Coaching Leaders offered by Carlson Executive Education.   While it is too late to enroll in this class, you may be interested in checking out some of the new half-day programs we are offering in the Momentum Series.

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Can you keep a secret?

Posted on April 15, 2009 by mkizilos

Many of the most successful large organizations have been spending a lot of time honing their talent management practices in recent years.  A great deal of energy is being spent on identifying talent.  The idea being, identify the talent, and channel your development development resources into those who have it, since that will give you the biggest payoff. 

Once you have a process to identify top talent, you face a key question:  “should we tell high potentials that we see them as high potentials?”  This question is raised all the time by line executives (both those asking for their ratings and by those doing the ratings), and by talent management practitioners.  The question is frequently accompanied by one of several basic rationales (usually revealing the questioner’s intent): 

1) Transparency.  We need to be transparent with our development efforts, so that people understand the process is fair and don’t feel that we are keeping secrets about them.   This rationale carries with it the most intuitive, gut-level appeal.  Who wants to advocate for secretive HR practices…smoke-filled rooms, etc…?

2) Tell them or lose them.  If we keep it a secret and don’t tell high potentials that we think they are great, don’t we risk losing great people? 

3) If we don’t tell them, what’s the point of doing the assessment in the first place?  If we are aren’t telling high potentials that they are high potential, then we also can’t tell all those other people that they are not high potential.  So, how can we help them to develop?

There is validity in each of these views, and many other arguments are usually brought up in the course of  exploring this topic.

My view? 

I am all for transparency, but about the right things.  If the organization is caught up in the debate about the ratings, I see it as a potential danger sign.  The ratings are made in order to help the organization to have a robust dialogue about talent, reach common understanding about each person’s strengths and weaknesses, and, most importantly, to guide the organization’s development effort–espcially for certain top talent individuals. 

Given that actions speak louder than words, the question that we should be debating instead is, “what happens when someone in this organization is named high potential?”  Are certain development experiences cued up? Does the designation trigger a developmental assignment reserved for high potenials?  Is participation in certain learning programs reserved for high potentials? 

If the high potential designation does not trigger clear development actions for individuals, then who cares what the rating is anyway? If it does trigger such actions, then people will figure it out and the rating won’t be important.

The problem is that it’s hard for the organization to walk the talk in this way. Channeling significant development resources toward high potentials also  means channeling  them away from other non-high-potentials.  The unanointed in this scenario don’t particularly care for this sort of approach.   To follow this path, you need to have a pretty high level of confidence in your talent identification processes.   Otherwise, you will lose in two ways–investing in those who don’t have what the organization needs for the future, while disenfranchising those who do, but have been incorrectly passed over by your talent identification process.

Here are a few of my favorite tests for the quality of a talent identification process:

1) Do ratings depend upon the whims and perspectives of individual managers, or is the process sufficiently institutionalized so that it is not dependent upon individual managers? 

2) Do your talent assessments emerge from rich dialogue with senior management about each individual?  If talent assessments don’t get changed as they move up the chain, then the dialogue is probably not as robust or diverse as it should be.

3) Do leaders in your organization own the potential ratings, or are they something that they know HR wants them to do?

If your talent review and identifcation process does not pass these tests, then you might be best off keeping your potential ratings a secret.

If you are interested in this and other talent management questions, you may want to check out the upcoming Talent Management Strategies course (May 19-21 at the Carlson School).  It is a great program that can help you to better frame your talent management approach.

Filed under: Executive Education, Talent Management, Talent identification | Leave a Comment »

Target Corporation: Fast, Fun, and Friendly

Posted on April 9, 2009 by mkizilos

I attended a great presentation by Jodee Kozlak, the Head of HR for Target Corporation.  She was speaking at the First Tuesday series sponsored by the Carlson School, Wells Fargo, Twin Cities Business, and Northmarq.  The speaker series, open to the public, is held the first Tuesday of each month at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Center (my first time there–a phenomenal space, by the way!).

Fast, fun and friendly.  

Jodee spoke about the core values at Target Corporation, and how they are integral to the business.  One of the values stood out to me as particularly evident to the average guest at Target: Fast, Fun, and Friendly.  While she described several other core Target values around leadership, diversity, inclusiveness and caring for the corporate legacy, this one struck me as especially powerful.  And, nice to see “Fun” called out as a corporate value!

Can you imagine what life would be like if all of our work environments could be described this way?  Target has created an impressive organization since its founding in 1962–from $0 to over $65 Billion in 47 years.  To have done it in a way that breeds enthusiasm, fun and friendliness is an impressive feat. 

This value reminded me of my experience working with an incredible IT leader, Charlie Feld.  I worked with him at Delta Air Lines.  He was the CIO tasked with getting the air line ready for Y2K (remember that?), while simulataneously trying to transform the organization into a high performance culture.  One of Charlie’s favorite questions was, “are you having fun?”  In the midst of the challenging task, which he compared to the Apollo 13 recovery effort (failure is not an option), Charlie was always positive, optimistic, and wanted to create an environment where others were too.  This was another way of saying, are you fully engaged?  Charlie insisted that one of the core competencies for an effective IT leader was passion for the job, and what he called being “fun to be around.” 

He created an incredible culture, and went on to a senior executive role at EDS.

Filed under: Executive Education, Talent Management, corporate values | Leave a Comment »

HEADLINE: “People are our biggest liability…”

Posted on April 1, 2009 by mkizilos

You don’t hear many CEOs or other corporate leaders using this phrase.  If one did, it would probably make the headlines. 

Instead, what you hear is, “people are our biggest asset.”  In fact, if there were a hall of fame for hollow phrases, this one would occupy a prime position in the section honoring corporate-speak. 

The reason this phrase sounds so hollow is that hardly anybody means it when they say it. What they really mean to say is that talent is their biggest asset.  In a world of increasing competitiveness, talented people can make the difference between success and failure.  Anyone in the learning and development field can attest to the fact that creating a strong, high performance workforce is something that takes hard work and dedication.  The investment in the workforce can transform the raw people resource into a high-value asset.  Without that effort, however, those “people” can be a significant liability for various reasons.  

For example:

1. “People” that don’t have the skills or experience needed to deliver on the organization’s strategy. 

2. Having too many “people”.

3. Having “people” in the wrong places.

I think you get the idea.  

When organizations lay off workers, they are essentially reacting to one of these or similar realities and, one could argue,  admitting that, for the moment, “people are our biggest liability…”  It just woudn’t be too popular for them to say that!

Clarification: In my previous post I commended companies with the strongest talent management practices in part because they have leaders that “express the belief that talent is their greatest asset…” I was choosing my words very carefully.  The leaders in these companies have moved beyond the empty phrase, and approach talent decisions with this more informed persective.

Filed under: Hollow phrases, Talent Management | Leave a Comment »

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