Building Your Leadership Pipeline
“Most organizations have several activities in place for certain HR functions like recruitment, training, performance management, and others,” said Mark Busine, Managing Director for DDI in Southeast Asia, at the Leadership Bistro event held on December 4. “These separate activities are like the spokes of an umbrella. But without an over-arching and business-driven talent management approach, it’s like your umbrella is missing its cover.” And just as several spokes don’t make for a useful umbrella (and definitely can’t provide cover for Singapore’s frequent rain showers), several HR activities don’t make for a relevant talent management strategy for your organization.
The first of three Leading Talent events provided an overview of DDI’s business-driven and holistic approach to talent management. DDI identified five key components to a talent management strategy:
- The business landscape: What are the key business challenges? What are the organization’s strategic (the whats) and cultural (the hows) priorities?
- Talent implications: What talent do you need and currently have?
- Growth engines: How will your people and HR systems drive growth and success for the company?
- Outcomes achieved: What does business success look like and how will it be measured?
- Sustainability: Do you have critical components in place—communication process, alignment, skills, accountability and measurement? How does technology enable your strategy?
To ensure a practical understanding of the framework, Mark and Nigel Phang, Director for Business Solutions at DDI Singapore, presented best practices and facilitated several brief activities.
These gave the clients and guests the opportunity to 1) identify business challenges of a company, 2) align the leadership talent requirements with these challenges, and 3) clarify factors for identifying high potentials. There were engaging discussions for each activity and common challenges among the HR leaders who attended surfaced, such as: articulating business drivers, confusing talent management with succession planning, using past performance to identify potential, and engaging the support of senior management, among others. In another exercise, 
it was apparent that alignment and integration were two areas that still needed work.
Only 10% felt their company was effective in aligning their talent management approach and practices to their business requirements. Similarly, when asked if they had effectively integrated their talent management practice around recruitme
nt, selection, development, performance management, compensation & benefits and retention, only 10% agreed. It was also not surprising that only 3% creating lead and lag measures to evaluate their talent management efforts and success.
The next two Leading Talent sessions will focus on Assessing Readiness for Leadership Transitions and Accelerating Leadership Development Across the Pipeline.
Contact us to register or to request for more information.
Articles & Publications on Talent Management
Nine Best Practices of Effective Talent Management (PDF)
Optimizing Your Leadership PipelineSM (PDF)
Taking Your Succession Management Plan into the 21st Century (PDF)
The CEO's Guide to: Talent Management
Finding Future Leaders White Paper (PDF)
Identifying Leadership Potential Facts
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