Talent Management - September 2008 - (Page 56)

SUCCESSION continued from page 45 cerned that we have strategies for two things: transferring the knowledge to the current workforce and getting talent on-board.” To attract talent, the government must revamp its image and market itself to potential candidates. Dalton said other government agencies might want to follow in the Army’s footsteps with regard to its marketing campaign and rebrand themselves in a light that attracts the younger worker. “The mindset is changing,” Dalton said. “If I could go work at NASA and play with some of the most hightech toys in the world, that’s pretty attractive to me as a young engineer coming right out of graduate or undergraduate school. That’s what the government is doing: highlighting the experiences you’ll get. It’s the Army ‘Be All You Can Be.’ It’s the hype that if you go into the government, we can offer you challenges that you won’t get in the commercial world.” From recruitment to development to succession, talent management is a cycle, and each component needs to support the next. Novak said the government needs to have a formal sourcing strategy to identify, attract and recruit the talent it needs. Then it must hire and on-board them, develop and retain them, and equally important, government agencies need to recognize and reward talent. “We need a systematic approach to talent management, so those processes need to be aligned with the organization’s purpose, strategies and goals. And they need to be integrated with the organization’s other business systems. It needs to be measured, analyzed, evaluated and improved continuously. And it needs to be an enterprise-wide leadership competency and a management function,” he said. To make the human capital management strategy an enterprise-wide initiative, organizations should relate it back to everyday employee management and make managers the owners of their respective departments’ recruitment, development and succession. “One of the success components is having close managerial involvement,” Tonkin said. “A lot of organizations start with HR fully managing the process, and it’s targeted at executive-level positions only. It’s removed from that day-to-day management process. It’s becoming more popular and valuable for organizations to get their managers involved with the growth and the long-term success of their teams.” One way to do this is by setting goals for managers and holding them accountable for results. This also will help organization-wide buy-in. “There has to be a sense of urgency,” Novak said. “Government leaders have to understand that if they don’t do this, then government will fail. They have to make that known throughout the government, and they have to get people on-board to support that idea.” APPLICATION continued from page 51 principles: People make the difference, and promotion from within the enterprise is essential for success. The Power of the Networked Enterprise TU and MAP are only part of what helped the networked enterprise come to life. Another example has been the onset of 11 leadership councils that revolve around speciﬁc functional responsibilities. While Textron’s businesses may be very different, the disciplines within each business are similar. Councils comprised of senior leadership teams from functional units — including communications, engineering, technology and others — meet face-to-face at least four times each year to develop strategies, discuss common issues and solve problems. Council meetings have enabled a natural rhythm for cross-functional and cross-business collaboration. Additional teleconferences and face-to-face meetings are scheduled throughout the year on an as-needed basis and give business leaders a place to have candid discussions on business issues and share best practices that can be applied across all businesses. A recent engineering and technology council meeting provided an example of the level of progress that can occur at these gatherings. This particular council has a priority to better utilize talent within Textron’s Global Technology Center (GTC) in Bangalore, India. With engineers in India working directly with engineers in other parts of the world as true extensions of their work teams, projects stay on track and move 24 hours a day. This council continues to share success stories that promote the capability and efﬁciency of the GTC across all businesses. While this is a single example of council success, it is encouraging that councils come together to work on issues that may affect multiple disciplines. For example, the communications, information technology and human resources councils recently held a tri-council meeting. They plan to meet regularly to understand their needs and implement strategies and tactics that will enable more effective employee communications. The phrase “you don’t have to be bad to get better” is common at Textron. Talent managers continue to transform the company, making it better and stronger. Textron has made signiﬁcant progress in establishing and executing its talent management strategy and understands work must continue to foster and grow an environment that identiﬁes learning and talent development as top priorities. Gwen Callas-Miller is executive director of global leadership development and Textron University, Textron Inc. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com. 56 September 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - September 2008

Talent Management - September 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance: Stop Wasting Money on Training Leading Edge: No Whining, No Excuses Learning Connections: Do You Get It? The Untapped Resource Reinventing HR Doing Compensation Right: The Winning Spread Managing Performance in the Knowledge and Innovation Worker Age Stop-The-Clock Time Management Preparing for the Future in the Public Sector SAS: Connecting People, Process and Products Talent Transformation at Textron The Price of Finding the Right Gen Y Candidate Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Do What You Love, Love What You Do

Talent Management - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.