Strategy Execution is Becoming the War for Talent

DDI’s recent findings in the Global Leadership Forecast for 2014-2015 stated that only 46% of critical positions can be filled by internal candidates.  If critical positions alone are not being filled effectively, the risk of not being able to fully execute your strategy becomes so great that many new innovation and growth projects go into a long waiting cue.  These strategic projects are overwhelmed by the inertia of the current resources being applied just to the current business model.

Given this issue around critical positions, I co-authored, TM³: A framework for superior talent performance so we can begin a dialogue to discover the key issues and possible creative solutions surrounding three systemic long-term mega-trends that are not going away and will have major implications to an ever increasing challenge to a leader’s ability to execute their chosen strategy.

Here are some excerpts from TM3:

“No talent, no growth. Lack of talent is emerging as a critical inhibiter of growth strategies. Many companies lack sufficient levels of talent to devise repeatable game-changing, next-generation offerings. To execute any particular growth strategy, companies need retain and engage the people who are critical to their current business whilst attracting and assimilating new talent with relevant skills to lead future endeavours.

The impact of the war of talent on organizations is to a lesser degree caused by the actual un-availability of talent but more by the in-ability to adjust to and exploit the new realities of the global market workforce. People still want to work, but not in the traditional way offered by most companies. If organizations embrace and adapt to the new realities they will continue to thrive.

The talent shortage is so severe that some companies already need to change their approach to strategic planning. Traditionally, talent is an after-thought of strategy: define the strategy, plan it and provide funding. The required talent is assumed to be available when you need to execute.

In a world where one cannot assume that the talent will fit the organization the organization needs to fit the talent. We need to learn faster. Our current organizational capabilities and knowledge especially in HR, Strategic Planning and Innovation may be irrelevant. Some will need to change more than others, some faster than others. All will need to become more open, externally focussed, pro-active and flexible.”

At the recent 2015 Human Capital Institute Conference, Workforce Planning and Talent Strategy Conference, PwC’s Tim Ryan outlined in his keynote, Global MegaTrends and the Future of Talent, that the freelancer economy is not a random event. I agree and here is another excerpt from TM3. “We are creating a young generation that has learned to be entrepreneurial from the beginning, has tasted the benefits of individuality and freedom while making financial ends meet. It’s a generation that will not want to be employed anymore. Having a job seems to be so “old”. Being entrepreneurial, launching a start-up and living the life of a digital nomad is hip.

On the other end of the experience scale, more and more senior executives are quitting their jobs in search for a more balanced life in evasion of organizational pressure, politics and burn-out.  These trends among our young and our most experienced people are only one sign of the emerging freelancer economy. New developments usually start at the fringes before they become mainstream.

The Freelancer Economy is enabled by globalization, technology and mobility and accelerated by marketplaces of Elance, Odesk or Freelancer.com that create market transparency allowing everybody to find tasks, temp positions, projects or contracts at an individual sweet-spot of pay, passion and purpose that many organizations are struggling to hit.”

Given how fast the Global Freelance Economy is growing, I am predicting that Talent Acquisition will fast become the most important core strategic competence you must have to ensure you have the right skills and capabilities to execute your strategy. Fifteen years ago we were caught up in the management process of getting the right projects started at the right time to implement strategy — primarily a strategic portfolio resource optimization exercise — but we will now have a much more challenging process to get the “right people” at the right time on the right projects. I remember doing a strategic resource plan for a major private bank and the client told me, jokingly, that the primary recruitment screen was to see if the candidates were breathing. There was such a large demand for people to implement their business plans that they were hiring anyone they could find coming out of the universities. But, as we have come to painfully learn, “availability” is not a skill set.

Strategic Workforce Planning around critical positions is where we will need to focus more orgaizational capability building quickly and this will not be done in the traditonal way. As Tim Ryan asserts, business leaders will need new employment models and that will directly impact the way you plan and lead an organization’s strategy. Running a more open organization to access qualified “millennial” talent in the global-mobile workforce will not bode well for organization’s that are based on “you-work-for-me-here-in-my-office” authority structures.

Once you have a new talent aquisition strategy your next challenge will be your talent engagement model, the ability to lead and manage hybrid teams that have full- and part-time freelance contractors and part- and full-time employees on a sustained basis. These hybrid teams will bring us the real matrix management opportunity! Stay tuned for the perpetual dynamic change required to keep up with the trends that are changing our organizational planning worlds right now!

Click here to download TM³: A framework for superior talent performance!