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Talent - Performance & The Sweet Spot

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"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." - Peter Drucker

Keeping everyone on your team in the sweet spot of performance has to do with both leadership AND management.

Leadership is required to set the right team goals to begin with which will make it a lot easier to get people to align their personal goals with those of the team.

To truly gain a performance advantage every detail about this alignment process needs to be managed. Great companies like General Electric have very disciplined human resource programs that are focused on making this alignment happen.

The fourth element of this alignment is time - organizations, personal development, market forces and personal circumstances are all dynamic and it is unrealistic to think that everything will stay aligned.

What is important for building a strong organization is making sure that (1) the current alignment meets or exceeds the current needs of the business and (2) that you understand and plan for things to become out of alignment.

This is often very hard for the smaller, family owned business because their whole lives are wrapped up in the business and have been for quite some time, possibly even their whole lives. These owners and managers take it very personal when things become out of alignment; when good employees leave the company; when people don't seem to care as much as they do.

Let's dig a little deeper into this alignment starting with the Team Goals. Can you clearly articulate what you are building, where you are going, how you serve your customers, and how you see people fitting into your team? This is all about leadership - it is a lot easier to attract and retain good people for the right cause than if you appear to just be scrambling to make some money somehow.

The second thing you need to work on is getting to know your people; really know them. What do they do for fun? What is their family like? What are their personal goals? Career goals? When you start to understand these things about your team you will see where alignment may come together in the future or come apart and you can plan for it.

The third thing to look at is whether the proper skills are present. All the desire in the world won't make up for a lack of skills. This is something you can plan for with both internal and external training, possibly even including this in some type of rewards program.

Here's a typical example of the cycle of alignment and why it is important to understand the direction things are heading:

You are a company that requires a lot of travel and long hours from your foremen but you compensate them well for their efforts. You've got this great guy named Joe who has about 4 years of experience. He is single, doesn't own a home and is like a sponge when it comes to learning and really wants to become a foreman.

Through regular leadership reviews which are part of your management processes you recognize him as a "Strong Potential" and realize that while he doesn't have all the skills today the perfect alignment is coming so you make a plan for him to accelerate. You place him in a series of rotating positions with your best foremen and superintendents for the next 2 years.

Now you have "Perfect Alignment" and things are going great. Joe is out of town running job after job. He's loving life because he's learning a lot and has fun traveling. You couldn't ask for anything more.

After 4 years Joe meets someone back home over the Holiday's and they end up getting married. Another year goes by and they buy a home together and start planning for a family. Joe becomes increasingly tired of traveling and eventually leaves the company.

Was this a bad thing? Yes and no. If the management processes in the company did not pick this up on the radar and start planning for it then it is a very bad thing. If there is resentment on either Joe's side or the company's side then the situation wasn't handled well.

Could Joe's job have been salvaged? Possibly - if the company had a position opened up that didn't require the traveling AND Joe had been prepared with the skills required for the job. It is quite possible that the job could not have been saved. There may not have been another position open or Joe may not have had the skills to fill that position.

To avoid talent gaps in the company this problem should have been spotted years out and plans should have been underway to find and develop the next "Joe." To avoid resentment there should have been discussions early and often with Joe to clarify the changing of personal goals, what his plans were, how the company could help, etc.

As a manager you know these situations end poorly way too often.

Good companies have good leaders that do their best to work through these situations. GREAT companies have a very structure process in place to generate a "Talent Pipeline", to maintain alignment as long as possible and to help people make transitions both inside and outside the company.

Posted by David on November 29, 2005 08:22 AM|Permalink

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