TM - December 2007 - (Page 55)

[foundations] by Kate DCamp I I Encourage New Roads in T alent Development vant reality. It strikes me that this is precisely what is needed in the effort to develop talent. Developing T alent ’ve always advocated “continu- obvious and less likely to evoke the ous learning.” In companies, this same response. translates into providing a robust set of training opportunities, Lessons From including internal job movement. a New Road Movement works, in part, because With that as a backdrop, I recently it interferes with the “comfort embarked on an exercise in continuzone” that we all fall into. ous learning of my own, starting Whenever we have been in a posi- law school as part of the class of tion long enough to know how to 2010. I assumed returning to school do the job without really thinking would be like changing jobs. I would about it, we tend to internalize the be in a new environment, but I steps required to complete tasks. In some respects, this is a good Moving people to new roles thing. Having worked through helps to force a fresh look at the learning the world, but a more radical curve, we enter a approach may be needed. stage of higher productivity. The downside is the logic behind the tasks is rarely recould use the accumulated knowlexamined for its relevance to the edge of a 30-year career, adapt it to current business environment. the new setting and add technical Training is often created to teach a new and better way to do things. But, training rarely solves the underlying problem, which is the internalization of the “old” logic behind the way the tasks have been performed. The difficulty in thinking beyond what you know is compounded by the process of internalizing knowledge. Greater productivity is achieved precisely because active, conscious thought is no longer required. For instance, you may find yourself nearly home from a daily commute without consciously recalling the landmarks along the way. While it can be disconcerting to realize that you have been driving without keeping track of your surroundings, it is efficient to complete this routine task without having to think about it. In the commute analogy, a change in the road, such as a detour, will cause most of us to come back into full awareness to deal with the new facts of the situation. Changes in the “road” in business are far less knowledge to supplement what I already know. It has been a big surprise to find how much this new “role” does not leverage past experience, but requires discarding a thought process geared to speed versus depth of the decision process. Law school is taught using a Socratic approach, which requires students to actively practice reasoning. Active reasoning is required to think through all of the aspects of a fact situation and see the problem from multiple points of view, leading to a set of alternative solutions. There is almost never an absolute right answer, which makes the decisiveness cultivated in a business career a bit of a barrier! The technique of gently and repeatedly bending a question and posing an impromptu series of “what ifs” gradually becomes a way of thinking about everything. This approach is a faster way to survey the landscape and calibrate decisions to the current and most rele- Historically, the talent management process has focused on assessing the talent in the organization and then hiring and developing to fill gaps. We do not usually think in terms of broadening the point of view of the organization as a whole or embedding a new way of thinking. Over time, this tends to produce a narrow and backward- About the author Kate DCamp is the senior executive adviser at Cisco. She can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. looking collective corporate brain. Moving people to new roles helps to force a fresh look at the world, but a more radical approach may be needed. Internal movement is often too little and too linear, focusing only on high potentials and logical next steps in their career progression. The deliberate movement of more people to roles that are focused on broadening their perspective creates a collective adaptability that has geometric benefits to the organization. I saw this approach in action at GE, where the cultural norm was constant rearrangement of the talent to put a fresh team on all of the new roads that hold some promise for the future of the businesses. I am not suggesting that everyone should follow a single approach. What I am suggesting is that all of us need to re-examine the focus of our talent development efforts, with an eye toward creating the capacity to see the new roads ahead. 54 December 2007 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - December 2007

Talent Management - December 2007 Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Human Performance Leading Edge Capabilities The Engaged Difference: What People Want Analytics in Talent Management: The Sports View The Use of Merchandise for Employee Recognition Taking Aim at Performance Appraisals Talent Management Drives Organizational Change Generational Diversity: Mastering the Boomer-X-Y Divide Dashboard: Security-Savvy Workforce: Designing a Security Awareness Program That Works Application: Hilton Hotels Corporation:Checking Out the Merits of Paperless Efficiency Insight: Unlimited Engagement: Innovative Corporate Communication at Deloitte & Touche USA Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Foundations

TM - December 2007

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