Talent Management

Why 70% is a key metric for learning and development

The 70-20-10 rule represents, by percentage, how people actually learn and develop:  70% from job experiences, 20% from feedback and collaboration, and only 10% from courses and from reading. If 70% of learning happens on-the-job, what the employee can take back and use after the actual learning remains the most critical reinforcing loop for both the [...]

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Controlling bosses cause poor work

A boss gets things done through others.  An ability to influence others to meet a goal is critical to get things accomplished.  Some call management influence, others call management coercion.  Influence or coercion, controlling bosses cause employees to strive towards goals that are opposite to the boss. Bosses are managers, bosses manage resources:  time, money, and [...]

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Stop giving advice people ignore

At work do you ever say, “let me give you some advice”?  If so, do people lean forward with anticipation to hear what you have for advice? When reviewing a draft ever heard someone tell you, “well, here’s my advice”?  If so, do you take a deep breath so as not to lose your cool? [...]

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People, process, and technology … divided by behavior

People, process, and technology. Announce a policy, full adoption. Map a process, cycle time guaranteed. Buy a server, flip the switch. Seems so simple. Interconnections, systems, are never simple. The intent of keeping people, process, and technology in mind is to think through the impact change has on the 3.  Identify that impact and then [...]

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4 questions leaders need to ask … themselves

Leaders at the top of the organization are accountable to deliver results.  Some leaders believe results come from questioning others.  Here are 4 questions leaders need to ask themselves, before they begin to ask anything of others: When’s the last time someone disagreed with me in a meeting? What am I teaching? Am I getting [...]

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The 2 most important learning metrics

CEOs care about learning programs.  To gain more executive-level interest, guess what learning and development folks? CEOs want metrics.  The learning metrics you may have collected and reported on might need adjustment to become important to an executive. The organization challenge that leader’s need to recognize is that an organization’s ability to learn and to [...]

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Recap: Emotional Intelligence

Social intelligence, social competence, emotional competence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, emotional adaptiveness, emotional quotient, emotional intelligence, EQ, and EI.  There are many schools and many thoughts about what is and is not emotional intelligence.  And just as many tools that attempt to measure, monitor, and predict the impact of emotional intelligence. For me, Emotional Intelligence [...]

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Your star performer creates employee resentment

In school, those model students who shine above others and are always ready to “help” others risk more than a roll of their classmates’ eyes in the working world.  In organizations the model employee willing to help others risks outright employee resentment.  How you identify and manage these star performers may impact more than just [...]

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Our big letdown with leaders

A good piece in Sunday’s Boston Globe Ideas section reveals we human beings disappoint easily.  And if we are easy to disappoint we are acutely set up for big letdowns from leaders all around us.  However, the big letdown and disappointment we beings feel really may have more to do with us then the leaders themselves. Here [...]

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4 performance myths dispelled and no more performance reviews

September’s Talent Management magazine writer Mr.Harold D. Stolovitch provides a reality check within his Human Performance column titled Dispelling Performance Myths: High job satisfaction results in high performance When employees select their own work goals, their motivation to achieve them is greater Personality inventories used for selection purposes are strong predictors of job performance success [...]

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The key to innovation may be better employee hygiene

Today’s drive for continual innovation, as it is taught, as it is written about, as it is sought, and as it is crowd sourced has a lot to do with early pioneers in management theory.  For example why is hygiene important to innovation?  Innovation needs motivation and motivation needs hygiene to succeed. The humanistic  management school emphasizes, [...]

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Hiring the right person is more emotional than rational

You have to assume every person you interview has the technical skill to do the job.  Once past the traditional human resources gate-keeper by the time you meet a candidate they have the skills.  When assessing a hire it is not only technical skill that keys your decision, it is about integration or how they [...]

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Create firm value, build talent during a downturn

Where many leaders chose to cut staff, cut talent management programs or to cut both to reduce costs, a Deloitte Consulting year-long study of 1,800 executives at large companies around the globe found retaining key employees, increasing the hiring of rivals’ future stars, and increasing programs to develop high-potential employees and corporate leaders are strategies to [...]

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This social media fad will ruin organization development

What does the social media fad have to do with business?  How is this social media fad related to organizational development (organization development)?  Are you asking yourself if you really need to bother learning about social media? I’ve heard it all too often and continue to cringe hearing about the lack of effort OD and [...]

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The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered – 3 Views

This morning I read something that made me hold my, very hot, coffee in my mouth longer than I expected as I processed their information. Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post reports “Disturbing Job Ads:  The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered“. Ms. Bassett comments on a job board search for quality engineer that notes states:  [...]

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Low risk, low return human resources

My 11-odd-years in business and talent management consulting [the other 9 in marketing] have shown a few disturbing trends that I see from most poorly-run companies.  These type of organizations, across all industries, ascribe to, what they believe is a low risk strategy, but in reality it is a low return strategy for human resources: [...]

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More workers voluntarily quit their jobs

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal presented More Workers Are Considering Quitting Their Jobs This is the boomerang effect of companies cutting payroll costs to the bone, redistributing work to the smaller remaining staff, and leaving an environment where workers feel “lucky to even have a job”.  This leaves little left for motivation and the result of [...]

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Isn’t it enough that I told them?

Does your organization communicate or inform. Does your leader invite conversation at the table?  Does your leader offer an environment of dialogue? If the answer is no, how does that affect organization motivation throughout all levels? Do your project leaders and project sponsors sit around the table and audit the failed implementations with comments like [...]

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Talent score report brought to you by your credit agency

How’s your credit score? Perhaps I could ask another way, how accurate is your credit score? Perhaps another way, how accurate is your credit score in assessing your talent, management, or leadership potential? According to Equifax, their internal assessments “directly aligns human resources to overall organization goals” and you can read about it here:  Talent [...]

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The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy (round 2)

The NFL draft reveals all things wrong with talent acquisition and recruiting. Looking at how an NFL team drafts provides terrific insight into what you and your company can improve upon. I wrote in the last blog, The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy round 1, a sample list of the assessments an NFL [...]

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The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy

There is little doubt each National Football League (NFL) team spends an extraordinary amount of resources preparing to draft their number 1 pick. An NFL team’s number one pick is intended to be the team’s future star and this year the NFL draft has changed their format to glorify the first round draft even more. [...]

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Googled again: cost of culture is innovation

What, really, is the cost of culture? Is culture tangible to business bottom line or is culture an intangible behavioral science term only useful for dissertations? Culture, innovation, values, diversity, opinion. Related? Perhaps to each other, but related to the bottom line? I read a recent blog on Fistful of Talent had me revisit diversity’s [...]

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Googled: the cost of culture

What does culture really costs a company? Is it worth investing in culture or passively letting culture form, also known as luck-based leadership? What is the cost of culture, in profit or loss? I found this one company a great example: Maternity leave: 5 months full salary Paternity leave: 7 weeks full salary Plus new [...]

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The cost of human capital is emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a capacity to recognize how our own emotions motivate ourselves and the awareness of our emotions on others.  Still a little to warm and fuzzy?  What about a 30% increase in bottom line performance? Emotional Intelligence is vital to maximize any return on human capital.  Why does this matter?  The happier [...]

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8 steps to better decision-making

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy. The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as [...]

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Competing values drives your organization out of business

Cultures are characterized by how things are done around here.  Culture is sometimes adopted from the founder, sometimes developed consciously by teams who try to improve performance, and sometimes culture is formed in reaction to a lack of leadership or need for survival. Culture emerges from collective: behavior, values, norms, assumptions, expectations, and process When [...]

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12 tips to bridge the generation gap

The inter-generational divide, a catch phrase that simply shouts separation. The truth is that Baby Boomers actually have quite a bit in common with Gen X’ers or Echo Boomers, particularly because they gave birth to them and Gen Y probably knew them as siblings. The Veterans or Traditionalists may be the one group that is [...]

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Change: this time let’s try something new

In today’s Boston Sunday Globe, Ideas Section, under the Uncommon Knowledge, Surprising insights from the Social Sciences, by Kevin Lewis, I read the following: A Time to Try Something New* Whenever you’ve experienced major changes in life, have you sought comfort in familiar things? If you’re like most people, your answer is yes. However, new [...]

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Competing values drive organization resistance

Organizations, like people, develop.  A start-up has different organization qualities than a 25-year-old, Fortune 500 company.  As operations increase in scale and scope a start-up faces new pressures.  Each increase in production, staffing, or market share increases their operating risk.  What worked as a start-up company with a staff of 5 and $500,000 in sales [...]

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George Washington slept here

Statues are built for leaders, or leaders are built for statues, one way or the other statues are built for pioneers, those who sought a new way; who risked conformity for their vision of what could be; who sacrifice an easy path to retirement for an audacious goal. The statues you see in your town [...]

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Diversity facade, part 1

Intelligence does not guarantee insight. However, diversity does. The very leverage of knowledge is dialogue. And dialogue, a true exchange of ideas and opinions, is only possible in an environment that welcomes and fosters diversity, not the diversity facade, but the diversity lever of possibility. Although diversity can be a sensitive and often incendiary issue, [...]

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Leaders and fishing

I focus a lot of root-cause analysis on how a leader affects their organization. Though it may seem people are responsible for their own motivation, this assumption is far too variable to count on for results. People, rightly so, have their own view, their own filter, their own experience, and their own goals. These rarely [...]

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