Research by PwC indicates that leading companies are in a near perpetual state of Reorganization.  This upsurge in Organizational Design initiatives is owing to the accelerating pace of strategic change caused by disruption of industries, changing competitor landscape, customer behaviors, and distribution channels.

Companies opt to commence efforts to restructure their organization in the hopes of enhancing efficiency, perpetuating growth, and surviving in future.  Some shift their Business Models, few alter their focus from products to customer-centric; whereas others adopt new behaviors, systems, or IT architecture.  However, merely a quarter of the Organizational Design initiatives succeed in achieving their anticipated objectives.

The reason for this high failure rate is simple.  Reorganization is not about changing a company’s organogram.  It’s a methodical processes that necessitates transforming / streamlining the decision-making process, mindsets, talent pipeline, reward structures, reporting lines, and the way responsibilities are assigned.

There is no cookie-cutter approach to Reorganization that can work across all organizations.  However, research and management best practices reveal 10 principles that are critical for developing an effective Organizational Design, applicable to any enterprise:

1. Don’t get caught in past Reorganization initiatives
2. Consider Organizational Design elements
3. Transform Organization Chart in the end
4. Don’t overlook top talent
5. Converge attention towards controllable factors
6. Encourage responsibility
7. Use best practices with care
8. Harmonize organizational hierarchy with Strategic Objectives
9. Give due emphasis to intangible elements of organization
10. Make efficient use of company culture and practices

Let’s dive deeper into these guiding principles.

1. Don’t Get Caught in Past Reorganization Initiatives

Leaders at most organizations tend to keep discussing and focusing on the old reorganization initiatives.  This takes away much of their time and energy which should rather be spent on making the current Organizational Design a success.

Organization Design should be created on the basis of an enterprise’s sense of purpose, strategy, core competencies, products, competitive advantage, and experience offered to customers and employees.  Senior leaders need to be able to see the broader perspective, set clear organizational objectives, and steer the workforce to achieve their personal as well as organizational objectives.

2. Consider Organizational Design Elements

Reorganization is a complex undertaking, but a structured approach to Organizational Design assists in identifying and prioritizing key priorities.  Organizational Design has 8 fundamental elements that are important for all organizations, Business Models, sectors, or regions.  These elements can be categorized into 4 pairs.  Each of these 4 pairs constitute a formal (tangible) and an informal (intangible) element:

• Decisions team up with Norms (the way people act).
• Motivators (the way people are influenced to work) pair with Commitments (what affects people’s thoughts about work).
• Information (the way data is processed) pairs with Mindsets (how people process knowledge and meaning).
• Structure (reporting lines) pairs off with Networks (how people collaborate).

Leaders should select fewer, prioritized Organizational Design elements to work on that have the most impact on their organizations.

3. Transform Organization Chart in the End

Most leaders consider Organization Structure to be the most critical element to Business Transformation.  In reality, there are other key organizational elements that need to be tackled first to improve effectiveness.  Revisiting the organogram does not have much effect on the way business is done—or to improve it.  Structure depicts reporting lines and changing it can reduce costs temporary.  Changing structure alone—without transforming other organizational elements—allows the redundant reporting lines to reappear and put the organization back to its earlier state of affairs.  Instead of changing the organogram, core organizational issues should be prioritized and confronted first.  Structure will adjust accordingly once the issues resolve.

4. Don’t Overlook Top Talent

Top talent often go unnoticed when it comes to Reorganization.  The skills and traits of the senior leadership has a profound impact on Organizational Design.  Mapping of technical capabilities and leadership abilities of top leadership is an important step to Reorganization.

Interested in learning more about the guiding principles critical for Organizational Design?”  “You can download an editable PowerPoint on 10 Principles of Organizational Design here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

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– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one area considered by many executives to enable Automation and steer positive growth.  A couple of years ago, most executives thought that deployment of Artificial Intelligence isn’t a big deal.  However, revamping traditional systems, implementing AI, and scaling it, in reality, is not as simple as it seems.

A survey by PwC Research in 2020, which gathered responses of 1062 business leaders, validates that scaling and industrializing AI is not straightforward at all.  Only 4% of the respondents asserted that they plan on implementing organization-wide AI in 2020.  A year earlier, the same survey revealed 20% of the executives planning to do that.  The survey shows a significant decrease in the number of senior leaders thinking of executing AI.

The reason for this dwindling interest in AI deployment is mainly because of the tough prerequisites necessary—contemplation, resources, preparedness, overhauling legacy systems, and integration of technology applications—for enterprise-wide AI implementation.

A robust AI Implementation Strategy needs to be first devised in order to assist the organizations in moving forward with their AI deployment plans.  Research reveals 5 key priorities of AI Strategy that businesses should follow to position themselves as AI leaders and reap value from Transformation in future.  These priorities not only highlight the key requirements for AI deployment but also pinpoint ways to maximize pay offs associated with the initiative:

1. Boring AI
2. AI-ready Workforce
3. Responsible and Ethical AI
4. AI Operationalization
5. Business Model Innovation

Let’s delve deeper into a few of these key priorities.

Boring AI

One of the key reasons to employ AI, as cited by PwC research, is to automate routine administrative functions—e.g., using AI to pull information from tax forms, bills of lading, or invoices that can otherwise take up long hours of human effort.  44% of respondents revealed that AI will help them operate more efficiently.

To ensure AI adds value to the business, leaders should develop a strategy to identify the areas where AI can have a much deeper impact; build capabilities to do that; develop AI solutions, govern them, and embed them with existing systems.

AI-ready Workforce

Building or enhancing the capabilities of the workforce to become AI ready is critical today not only for technology enterprises but also for other businesses.  Organizations should identify the skills required for AI and train their people to deploy AI solutions.

However, thinking of achieving this through traditional means of offering training sessions isn’t a viable strategy to tap the opportunities offered by AI.  In addition to training people, organizations should cross-skill their people in multiple trades and provide them the opportunities to apply and hone in the skills learnt.  In fact, organizations should reward people who apply what they learn into real-time problem-solving and productivity enhancement.

Responsible and Ethical AI

AI can be perilous if adequate understanding of its responsible use and necessary procedures to protect against its risks and negative usage are not taken.  There are growing apprehensions around AI related risks e.g., biased algorithms, facial recognition tools, and deep fakes.  As per PwC survey, a large majority of respondents, using AI routinely, declared readiness in their organizations in terms of taking sufficient measures to protect against AI risks.

However, in reality most organizations are quite far from implementing controls around data and decisions generated using AI.  Just about 33% businesses mentioned having the ability to fully tackle risks associated with data powering AI, AI models, outputs, and reporting. It is imperative to have rigorous Risk Management processes in place to effectively use AI in the workplace and address the risks associated with it.   AI risks can be mitigated by integrating processes, tools, and controls needed to address AI bias, explainability, security, accountability, and ethics.

Interested in learning more about the other key strategic priorities essential for AI deployment readiness?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on Artificial Intelligence Strategy: Top Priorities here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.  For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

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– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Agile is a robust approach to value creation.  More and more organizations are adopting Agile Software Development approach.

Becoming Agile is imperative to meet and exceed customer expectations and emerging business trends.  Implementing the Agile approach to Software Development leverages significant benefits, including:

• Rapid design and development of new product and service offerings
• Revolutionizing processes
• Managing talent
• Reforming organizations

However, Agile alone is not enough.  Agile Transformation can slip-up as Agile teams can stagger while working together and depending on others.  In order to become an effective Digital organization, companies have to steer clear of the obstacles that bog down the rapid progress of Agile software development.  These organizational obstacles to Agile include:

1. Rigid Technology Architecture
2. Poor Talent Management
3. Lack of Product Mindset

Overcoming these barriers necessitates sincere harmonization, persistent effort, and commitment from the business and technology leadership.  Anticipating and addressing these major organizational obstacles is integral to becoming Agile.

Let’s discuss these obstacles in detail.

Rigid Technology Architecture

Using and expanding the same old codes and plugging gaps with software patches renders the IT Architecture cumbersome and unyielding, at most organizations.  Many organizations have outdated systems to manage operations and facilitate their customers.  The integration of these outdated systems with modern applications and IT architecture isn’t easy, making them inflexible.  Most of these systems and aps are inter-reliant and connected.  A small change in a code has serious implications on other connected applications.

IT executives have to consider a number of factors before modernizing their IT architecture.  These factors include potential value envisaged from the new architecture, requirement for new functionalities, risk of disruption, complications involved in the process, extent of fragmented data, and costs.  Based on thorough evaluation of these factors, executives select one of these 4 common approaches to revolutionize their IT architecture:

• Inaction – The investment in overhauling certain applications is thought to be nonviable as their impact is considered insignificant in the overall architecture.
• Integrate – Uncover the old system’s essential function / elements and connect them with modern systems using interfaces (APIs).
• Overhaul – Modify the design of applications—e.g. dissecting the code into distinct, autonomous sections and eliminating any hard-coded values.
• Replace – Design innovative applications and deploy latest architecture (e.g. micro-services).

Poor Talent Management

Most leaders understand the importance of finding and staffing top talent in becoming Agile.  However, outdated HR Management practices at some organizations become a major hurdle in attracting and retaining talented individuals.  The issue with IT management at most technology firms in the recent past was their shortcoming in visualizing the problems through a business perspective.  This led to the depletion of technical capabilities due to hiring of more and more people with strong business sense, but inadequate technological prowess.

Another factor compounding the talent deficit is entrusting the hiring function to external contractors by scores of IT organizations.  This practice, although, assists in staffing talent and gaining new capabilities promptly, but diverts much of the executives’ time in supervising the external contractors.  This leaves little time for them to acquire new technical skills and gives the contractors too much control over innovation.  Outsourcing the software maintenance to 3^rd parties is another factor that leads to poor accountability and Talent Management.

To mitigate these issues, technology companies need to transform, strengthen their technical capabilities, eliminate dependencies on 3^rd parties, and clearly define responsibilities.

Interested in learning more about the obstacles to becoming Agile?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on 3 Organizational Obstacles to Agile here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.  For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Most organizations aren’t ready to deliver great Customer Experiences across all channels.  Many of them have invested heavily in conventional methods of doing business, backed by in person or over-the-phone customer experience.  This has led to creation of siloed operational structures within companies, where each silo operates individually.

With the advent of digital channels, these organizations set out to use and proffer their services via digital channels.  They did this by creating discrete digital-product groups in their existing operational infrastructure.  However, their siloed infrastructure falls short of meeting customers’ requirements in terms of seamless communication and interaction across all channels.  The reason being:

• Customers’ utilization of multiple channels and touchpoints across Customer Journeys.
• Requirements of personalized services / products by the customers.
• Anticipation of impeccable coordination and communication by the customers no matter how they interact with the business.

This necessitates the businesses to not only provide great Customer Experiences at each channel, but also make the transitions across these channels simple to improve the overall Customer Experience (CX). However, improving the overall Customer Experience isn’t that simple a feat, especially with silo-based operational infrastructures.  Providing consistent amazing Customer Experience warrants:

• Creation of a robust operational ecosystem through Transformation of internal operations, to respond quickly to customers’ expectations.
• Meticulous design and delivery of Customer Experiences.

Most organizations understand the significance of Transforming their Customer Experience—however, they lack the direction and support required to realize this goal. Organizational leadership can make use of the Customer Experience Pyramid to guide their CX Transformation.

The Customer Experience Pyramid is an empirical research based framework, which is quite effective in not only improving individual touchpoints but streamlining the entire Customer Journeys.  The CX Pyramid entails 2 core dimensions:

• Focus Areas – the organizational spheres that must change to enable provision of amazing digital Customer Experiences.
• Strategic Building Blocks – the strategies that define how this change can take place and made part of the organizational processes to deliver exceptional Customer Experiences.

The 4 Focus Areas crucial in a business to change in order to deliver top-quality Digital Customer Experiences at scale are:

1. Vision and Strategy
2. Talent Management
3. Operations
4. Technology

Let’s discuss the first 2 individual Focus Areas of the CX Pyramid in detail for now.

Vision and Strategy

Redirecting focus on making Customer Experience a part of the Organizational DNA necessitates creating a Vision statement and Strategy to depict, clarify, and plan out the purpose and objectives of serving the customers.  The senior leadership needs to come up with a short and crisp Vision statement.  The Vision sets out the foundation that reflects the leadership’s focus, importance the organization gives to Customer Experience, and the high-level objectives associated with the provision of quality Customer Experiences.

Next, the leadership should work on developing strategies to build fundamental competencies within the 4 CX Building Blocks—i.e., CX operations, metrics, CX-centric culture, systems and governance protocols.

Talent Management

Once the Vision statement has been agreed upon, it’s time to work towards carrying out the required actions to produce customer-centric outcomes.  The first step in that direction involves linking all employees who work in discrete silos (in conventional structures).  To align all employees, there is a need to create a Transformation team and define new roles / CX groups.  The Transformation team should train and direct teams responsible for the different stages of the Customer Journey, instill new ideas, and foster desired behaviors in them.

Senior Leadership need to also assign a CX Team to run the CX program.  The CX Team has to lay out processes and yardsticks to foster cross-functional collaboration and coach functional units to adopt customer-centric design practices in their operations.

Interested in learning more about the other focus areas of the CX Pyramid Framework?  You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Customer Experience Pyramid here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

Do You Find Value in This Framework?

You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

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Mediocre people occupying senior leadership positions is one of the chief reasons for the fiasco and humiliation that organizations like Enron and WorldCom faced.  The practice of recruiting average people at the top is omnipresent and often goes unnoticed until the results begin to surface, which is typically too late for any intervention.

Smart people decisions matter a lot in achieving profitability.  Research indicates that a return on average human asset of 5% is typical in many industries.  However, a senior executive selection of 2 standard deviations below the average yields -15% return on asset.  An executive selection with 2 standard deviations above average causes +25% return, which is 5 times the average.  Increased investment in finding and hiring the best senior executives fetches returns to the magnitude of 1000%.

Attracting and selecting the best people for senior leadership positions isn’t a small feat.  The future of organizations depend on it.  However, the Human Resource Management function at most organizations fail in getting the right people at the top.  The decision to hire at the senior positions necessitates deliberate effort and commitment.  Identification and onboarding of right people at these levels can create a substantial competitive advantage and profitability for the organizations.  Leading companies invest a lot of time in these decisions and conduct careful assessment of a pool of candidates.  They evaluate the opportunity costs associated with onboarding wrong people at critical senior positions and those associated with performance that could not get delivered due to selection of incompetent individual(s).

To prevent the disasters caused by psychological barriers and biases and to onboard competent executives, organizations need to religiously follow these 8 guiding principles:

1. Outline requirements
2. Prepare a large candidate pool
3. Benchmark rationally
4. Appraise systematically
5. Overcome resistance in decision making
6. Keep the evaluation team small
7. Finalize the deal in time
8. Support assimilation of new hires

Let’s discuss the 4 guiding principles in detail, for now.

Outline requirements

Defining the job requirements clearly before initiating the executive search process is an imperative for finding and appointing the right persons at senior positions.  The board should take out time to hold meetings to sift through the organizational strategic objectives and prioritized initiatives.  The outcome of these sessions help the recruiters develop a list of critical skills and behavioral competencies.

Prepare a large candidate pool

Restricting executive search to specific geographies or industries limits the chances of finding the most suitable candidate(s).  For instance, to hire the country head for a computer hardware firm in Asia, a company may identify all C-level executives at specific large hardware and software providers in the region; target former top executives of all relevant companies; consider senior executives outside the hardware sector; and shortlist about 10-12 top candidates to be interviewed.

Benchmark rationally

Having a fair comparison of shortlisted candidates is possible by creating consistent benchmarks.  This helps all the appraisers to follow a defined approach and rating criteria.  External and internal candidates should be assessed without any biasness.  Likewise, comparison of soft skills—which are obvious to internal candidates but unknown to outsiders—should be done on equal footing.

Appraise systematically

After shortlisting potential candidates, it’s time to evaluate their suitability on the required competencies through rigorous interviews using behavioral-based questions.  The evaluation should constitute in-depth reference checking—through the nominees as well as those who have worked with the candidates in the past—internally or through executive search firms.For more information on selection and hiring “the best of the best,” take a look at the Fiaccabrino Selection Process (FSP).  Download a free primer on FSP here.

Interested in learning more about the other guiding principles critical for selection of competent senior executives?  You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Executive Selection here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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A job consists of various critical elements that are essential to achieve enterprise outcomes—i.e., talent and behavioral requirements, role, and responsibilities.  Jobs that are configured inadequately bread disputes, negative perceptions, inequality, and frustration.  On the other hand, structured jobs, appropriate distribution of work, justified authority levels, and correct estimation of value of individual jobs are the signs of effective Human Capital Management function.

The lack of a structured job design—or ill-defined jobs—renders the organizations ineffective and burdened with excessive staffing and payroll costs.  This warrants from the leadership to plan and undertake a Job Leveling initiative.  Job Leveling is a disciplined approach to gauge the value of work for individual positions across the organization.  It entails ascertaining the nature of work done by each position, authority levels, and the effect of each job on business results.  The initiative is critical in administering rewards structures.

However, Job Leveling is a concern at most organizations—not many people are satisfied with the value assigned to their roles.  The absence of proper—or inadequate—job levels yields grave consequences for the entire organization.  Jobs valued higher than their actual value lead to wastage of resources, whereas low valued jobs are perceived as offensive and inculcate demotivation.

Job Design and Job Leveling is essential when organizations consistently encounter these issues:

• Constant employees complaints and demands to reclassify jobs
• Excessive job titles
• Widespread dissatisfaction with remuneration
• Task / processes redundancy
• Financial outflow
• Staffing imbalances and top heavy structure

Workforce planners should use a Job Leveling Framework to methodically benchmark the value of jobs at their organizations.  To accomplish this, they need to first analyze all the activities required under each position, the professional competences and demeanor essential to perform those activities, and gauging the effect each position has on business results.

Implementing a Job Leveling Framework simplifies the allocation of jobs in a harmonized job hierarchy, establishes consistency across the HR Initiatives, develops clear paths for growth, and improves decision making.

Human Resources practitioners need to follow these 5 key phases to implement a Job Leveling Framework and structure job levels at their organizations:

1. Ensure Readiness of Pre-Implementation Groundwork
2. Engage Business Leaders in Implementation
3. Set up Clear Governance Structures
4. Employ User-friendly Job Evaluation Management Tools
5. Establish Clear Communication Mechanisms

Let’s dive deeper into the first 3 phases of the Job Leveling Framework Implementation, for now.

Ensure Readiness of Pre-Implementation Groundwork

Human Resource practitioners should first analyze their existing job architecture, job natures, roles and responsibilities, and Organizational Culture to initiate the Job Leveling process.  Specifically, they have to answer these queries to identify the right Job Levelling method:

• What is the key objective to be achieved by implementing the Job Leveling initiative? Is it to improve compensation, shape career paths, or alleviate pay equity concerns?
• Who will be the users of the Job Leveling system? Will it be managed by Human Resources experts or business leaders?
• The Job Leveling exercise will impact which employees? How many roles, their nature of jobs, locations?
• Define the organizational culture and values. Is it hierarchical, centralized, or cost-focused?

Engage Business Leaders in Implementation

Effective Job Levelling Implementation necessitates involvement of business leaders from the onset of the exercise.  Engaging business managers and employees can hold back the pace of implementation because of conflicting views and ideas, but this is essential for the success of Job Leveling.  The right engagement involves:

• Getting agreement and support from senior business leaders.
• Including business leaders in calibration of key roles for support later during execution phase.
• Coaching key line managers and including them in job evaluation sessions to ensure adequate understanding of the roles and to develop program sponsors during implementation.
• Including key employees during the design phase of Job Leveling to remove any suspicion and win their agreement.

Set up Clear Governance Structures

Establishing effective control mechanisms is essential to avoid any glitches in implementing coherent job levels.  Job Leveling initiatives in large multinational corporations fail because of dearth of appropriate governance mechanisms in place.  A few organizations adopt centralized controls whereas others employ decentralized, locally-driven governance protocols.  To execute clear yet robust governance mechanisms, organizations should follow these key tenets:

• Governance principles should correspond to the organizational culture.
• Stakeholders should be held accountable with clear roles.
• Authorities should be assigned to ensure proper control mechanisms.
• All concerned people should be engaged in the initiative.
• Decision making authorities should be clearly defined.
• Resources should be effectively deployed.
• Promote fairness by applying rules equally, or if not, rationale is clearly explained.

Interested in learning more about the other phases of Job Leveling Implementation and Job Leveling methods? You can download an editable PowerPoint on HR Strategy: Job Leveling Framework Implementation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Enterprises worldwide face problems selecting, staffing, developing, compensating, motivating, and sustaining their key talent.  Building a sustainable Talent pipeline is quite strenuous even for large multinationals.

Replicating best practices from somewhere and applying them alone isn’t sufficient for organizations to build a Talent pipeline and achieve Competitive Advantage.  This warrants overcoming arduous challenges associated with this digital age, including:

• Adjusting to varying dynamics in global markets
• Handling the expectations of varied customer segments in different geographies
• Managing the preferences of key Talent
• Acquiring new technologies
• Building novel capabilities
• Achieving Operational Excellence by streamlining operations and improving processes
• Exploring new markets
• Devising strategies to attract, select, develop, assess, and reward top Talent.

Developing Talent Management practices helps the organizations build and retain talented people available in the job market.  The term was first used by McKinsey & Company in 1997, and it pertains to planning and managing strategic Human Capital through activities, i.e. attracting, selecting, developing, evaluating, rewarding, and retaining key people.

Executives use diverse Talent Management strategies and career pathways based on various departments, levels, and roles in their Talent pool.  Multi-year research on Talent Management practices conducted by an international team of researchers from INSEAD, Cornell, Cambridge, and Tillburg universities studied 33 multi-national corporations, headquartered in 11 countries.  The study revealed that successful Human Capital practitioners and workforce planners adopted 6 core principles.  These principles act as the 6 pillars to effective Talent Management implementation:

1. Alignment with Corporate Strategy
2. Consistency of Talent Management Practices
3. Integration with Corporate Culture
4. Involvement of Leadership
5. Global Strategy with Localization
6. Branding and Differentiation

Let’s discuss the first 3 pillars in detail, for now.

Alignment with Corporate Strategy

Integrating Talent Management with Corporate Strategy is imperative as the need for future Talent depends on the company’s long-term strategy.  Corporate Strategy should guide the identification of Talent required to accomplish organizational goals, since it’s the right Talent that drives the key strategic initiatives rather than strategic planning.

For example, GE’s Talent Management practices have been a great assistance in implementing their strategic initiatives.  The organization regards its Talent Management system as their most potent execution tool and has integrated TM processes into their strategic planning process.  To sustain its image as an innovation leader, GE targets technical skills as a priority in its annual Strategic Planning sessions.  Individual business units lay out their business as well as the Human Capital objectives in GE’s annual strategic planning sessions.  Significant time is spent on reviewing its Innovation pipeline, its engineering function’s structure, and Talent requirements.  To achieve its vision, GE promotes more engineers in its senior management than its rivals.

Consistency of Talent Management Practices

Talent Management practices must be consistent and synchronous with each other.  It is critical not only to invest in advancing the careers of key Talent but also to invest in processes to empower, compensate, and retain them.  Human Capital practitioners utilize various tools to ensure consistency of Talent Management practices, including Human Resources satisfaction surveys and qualitative and quantitative data on TM practices implementation.

For example, the success of Siemens is based on consistent monitoring of its systems, processes, and key performance metrics across its subsidiaries.  Every element of Human Capital Management is connected, continuously assessed, and linked to rewards.  This goes from recruitment of graduates each year, to their orientation, to mentoring and development, to performance evaluation and management, and compensation and benefits.

Integration with Corporate Culture

Corporate culture is regarded as important as vision and mission by renowned global organizations. These companies hold their core values and behavioral standards very high and promote them among their employees through coaching and mentoring.  They strive to embed this into their hiring, leadership development, performance management, remuneration, and reward processes / programs.  So much so that they consider cultural adaptability a crucial element of their recruitment process—as personality traits and mindsets are hard to develop than technical skills—and evaluate applicants’ behaviors and values rigorously.

For example, among other leading companies, IBM has a special emphasis on values while selecting and promoting people.  To ensure consistent values across the board, it organizes regular values jam sessions and employee health index surveys.  These sessions encourage open communication and debate on values and organizational culture and their importance among employees.

Interested in learning more about the other pillars of Talent Management, the various approaches to TM? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Pillars of Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Inculcating productive workforce behaviors is of utmost significance in Business Transformation, successful Strategy Execution, and Performance Improvement.  However, making people embrace productive behaviors involves a concerted effort across the organization.

The realization of Transformation, Strategy, and Performance improvement goals can become a reality by developing a thorough understanding of the 4 components of Organizational Behavior.  These components act as powerful levers in shaping the desired behaviors in the workforce:

1. Organizational Structure
2. Roles and Responsibilities
3. Individual Talent
4. Organizational Enablers

These Organizational Design levers work effectively when combined and aligned.  Let’s discuss the first 2 levers in detail now.

Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure represents the management reporting lines that create the organization’s spans of control, layers, and number of resources.  Organizational Structure is a foundational driver to Organizational Design, which also has a strong positive bearing on promoting the behaviors critical to improve the overall performance of the enterprise.  This is owing to the power that a position exerts on the subordinates based on factors that are important for individuals—e.g., work, compensation, and career ladder.

The Organizational Structure indicates an enterprise’s priorities.  An organization is typically structured in accordance with its top most priority.  For instance, functional organizational structure is adopted by enterprises having functional excellence as a priority.  In present-day’s competitive markets, most organizations have to deal with several priorities at a given time, which could be conflicting.  However, this does not mean adding new structures on top of existing ones, thereby increasing unnecessary complexity.  Creating overly complex structures to manage multiple priorities results in red tape and delayed decisions.  All roles are interdependent, necessitating cooperation.  This means taking care of the needs of others—instead of just watching over personal priorities—and encouraging individual behaviors that boost the efficiency of groups to achieve collective objectives.

Roles & Responsibilities

Roles and responsibilities deal with tasks allocated to each position and individual.  Organizational Design depends heavily on redefining clearer and compelling roles and responsibilities—to avoid any duplication of efforts or creating adversaries among team members.  In a collaborative culture where cooperation is the mainstay of an organization, individuals should not only be aware of what is required of them, but also appreciate the responsibilities of their team members, the authorities their roles exercise, the skills required, and the metrics to measure success.

A methodical way to outline roles and responsibilities effectively—while minimizing complexity—that encourages cooperation and empowerment is through the “Role Chartering” technique.  The technique requires distinctly identifying all roles on the basis of 6 key factors:

• Describing shared and individual accountabilities
• Outlining indicators to track success
• Specifying who has the right to decide what
• Indicating the capabilities critical for roles
• Assigning the leadership traits valuable for the roles
• Charting the abilities required for accomplishing personal and team goals.

Interested in learning more about these components to Organizational Behavior?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on Organizational Behaviors here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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