human capital assessment

Organization innovation dies when industry myopia prevails

Industry myopia is business risk.   People who grow in one industry or cycle through only one industry may seem safe to hire, because they may slot in quicker or bring competitive advantage, but industry myopia rarely meets innovation’s need to break things to start over or to view things from a new angle.  Innovation depends on [...]

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Fistful of beans 02/16/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. They’re Human Capital, Not Cattle — Talent Management Magazine This article was the best I’ve read in years.  Each paragraph provides a contrarian alternative to challenge the command/control leaders and managers driving efficiency insanity.  Though the terms “knowledge worker”, “knowledge economy”, and “human capital” have [...]

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Fistful of beans 01/19/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. The tussle for talent — The Economist Successful companies integrate talent development with their broader strategy to ensure that companies are more than the sum of their parts.  P&G, for example, likes its managers to be both innovative and worldly: they cannot rise to the [...]

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Technical ability does little to mitigate risk

Organizations don’t simply run from a strategic plan prescription.  Projected cash flows don’t deliver themselves.  Business units don’t run in a vacuum.  All these efforts take the collaborative knowledge, ability, and skills of people and teams. If you recruit people with evaluation efforts that focus on industry experience, work history, and academic education, evidence shows [...]

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Fistful of beans 12/29/2010

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Speed to Market:  Increasing Knowledge Velocity — Chief Learning Officer Magazine The most pressing strategic learning need facing business today is managing knowledge needed by front-line performers.  There is a prevailing belief that management knows best and front-line employees just need to be told [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; stakeholder analysis template

A stakeholder is anyone [or any group] who can positively or negatively affect the outcome of the project. Risk is anything that can positively or negatively affect the outcome of the project.  So, identifying and managing project stakeholders is an important step to identifying and managing project risk. Each project has a unique set of stakeholders, [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 1

I transitioned into a human capital focus gradually over my career.  My collected experiences just overwhelmingly led me to realize without commitment, understanding, and ownership you have little hope of individual, team, or organization success.  What on earth brought about a mergers and acquisitions systems thinking approach?  Well where we are usually has a lot [...]

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When a small business should fear growth

A small company is a dynamic, creative place where it is necessary for people to take risks to build a new organization.  Leaders of small companies are visionaries and there are strong demands for innovation to do more with less and to bite off grand goals.  The people that work in small companies work around an assumed [...]

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Discounted risk is human capital risk

Many firms admit they rely on the quality of entrepreneur to determine their funding decision, but rarely is this “quality” represented in a measurable, comparable assessment, or at least as measurable as weighted average cost of capital, discounted cash flow, capital asset pricing model, risk-adjusted rate of return, and other abstract financial models. Human capital [...]

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Evaluating risk: financial models versus competency models, part 1

We make models to get an idea, on a small-scale, of what might happen on a large-scale.  Models help identify risk and attempt to predict outcomes.  Many use models to then run scenarios or alternatives to identify what could or should be.  Models then become a map for many management discussions as models provide options [...]

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Pavel Khizhnyak, Asia Marketing Director, Forex Club

“Toby is a solid business development and human capacity resource. Toby is easy to work with and has an upbeat personality. As such, he was an effective and supportive colleague, with great listening, interpersonal, and multicultural skills (international experience in Hungary and China as two, very challenging work environments). “I do not hesitate to recommend [...]

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Human capital risk, now that’s real risk

You commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people and when it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs.  Human capital risk is the real risk, but most investment firms don’t focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on quantifying the people or [...]

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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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Human capital assessments – the symptom or the disease

The drive to evaluate operations and to contain costs is mistakenly applied as an operational issue across the board.  Too often human capital assessments are lumped into the systems theory world of process and become a technical asset for management’s diagnostic view for cuts.  The result becomes an assessment or evaluation process that is really [...]

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Notes from Boston: the state of US venture capital

This was originally posted in the nowEurope, where I was a brief contributor. nowEurope reported on technology innovation in Central Europe Centrope ICT Technology Transfer. CENTROPE is the integration and cooperation of the quadrangle borders between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. Here is the article, as originally posted: In Boston, I recently attended the [...]

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Human capital portfolio management and simple math

A venture’s viability really comes down to a bet on a team to deliver.  It is the interpersonal process where venture performance is most impacted. Modern portfolio theory allows investors to maximize return and minimize risk.  The goal is to estimate both the expected risks and returns, as measured statistically, as an accumulation of investments.  Why use [...]

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Risk is an unnecessary (p)art of the deal

To identify where risk is a real part of the investment deal you will commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people.  When it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs, but most investment firms focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on [...]

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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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Gary Lazor, Business Development Director, Booz Allen Hamilton

“Toby is a solid business development and human capacity resource. Toby is easy to work with and has an upbeat personality. As such, he was an effective and supportive colleague, with great listening, interpersonal, and multicultural skills (international experience in Hungary and China as two, very challenging work environments). “I do not hesitate to recommend [...]

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All projects are human capital projects

The valuation of a company usually involves 4 areas: physical capital, financial capital, intellectual capital, and human capital Valuation is a combination of science, art, and straight voodoo (Enron anyone???). Voodoo aside, when I recast these valuations from a new angle, I see each relies, in their entirety, on people: physical capital – people are [...]

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The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow

What valuation models measure human capital ability to meet financial and strategic business goals? What formulas are used to measure human capital contribution to profits? What are the human capital risk factors you justify when you build your financial statements and projections?  Accounting’s assignment of assets and liabilities and financial management’s current or pro forma [...]

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