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MODEL TO INCREASE CUSTOMER VALUE THROUGH HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT

By Marco Baratta, M.A

The market is conforming by all of us, potential customers, more abstractly it could be referred in economical and financial terms as a behavior of consumption. And it is in this cloud of emergent behaviors and trends that ultimately define the market, to which corporations attend and supply the products and services for such demands. Being the market a rather complex social structure obeying too many variables and conditions dictated by culture, countries, societies, consumers, etc. is valid to ask: how organizations could respond to such complexity? What structure (if any) is needed to creatively and actively cope with market variations, with the mentality of customers, and with the ups and downs of the present economy? Going even further and inside organizations, how knowledge could be acquire and preserve to foster talent development that will assure organizations to stay in business? To respond to such questions, organization must answer first: in what business is my organization in? to what values and beliefs this business market responds to? That is the Organizational Nuclei from which everything else will emerge from.

The Organizational Nuclei. To what very basic idea your organization responds to? And in what terms can you define it? What are the set of experiences that you as a business are providing to your customers? Is it quality? Is it self expression? Is it comfort? What is it? What experiences you are delivering in your products as an excuse to serve your customers? Remember your product is the excuse to the values you wish your customer to experience. Your product is not an end itself; your product is a mean, the instrument to become human, not the instrument of humans to become products. If you love bicycles and you want to start a manufacturing business of bicycles just because you like how different parts are set to together to create the attractive whole called a bicycle, you are already broke in this time. What is the most important thing from you to have a bicycle, when you purchase it? What do you like to experience: freedom? Speed? Open air and nature? How those questions now will affect the manufacturing of bicycles? Indeed in a great way, because those words with experiential and social meanings are what consumers are going after, not merely the bicycle. Once you define precisely in what business are you in, then only you know who you are in the experiences of your customers and from that compass you can move forward.

I will not get into this article on finances; this is about human resources, so let us assume that you are the expert on the topic of finance and that you have that variable under control as an expert entrepreneur.

What is the next step then: People. Of course! You cannot do anything without people, you need people to start your business and keep it moving. Whether you call them: employees, associates, human resources, human capital, it does not matter, what it does matter is that they do not work for the president or the general manager of the company or for their direct bosses. They work for the Organizational Nuclei, they work for the organizational reason of existence not for an organizational chart. How these people are going to enhance the organizational potential? These People Profile then is very important! What character, personalities, abilities, knowledge, skills and experiences are needed to have an outstanding performance in which business added value contribution will expand the organizational nuclei? What Organizational Design will aloud employees to develop and help the organization expand possibilities? This design is a key point because in the Organizational Design is embedded the matrix in which employees will interact and this interaction is a key point to determine the Organizational Structure. Design is an ongoing process, Structure is a meanwhile step needed to respond to the environment. None of them are static, and should not be, they most continuously have a placid “conversation” to aloud organizational development. Static or rigidity are not compatible with development, this business paradox can kill organizations because it signifies the time in which employees stop to be motivated. How can you move an organization with depressed people working for it? The behavior organization aloud or not to happen is determine by the Structure, this defines peoples roles, until a new Design emerges and a new structure is needed.

The dance between Design and Structure will determine the way the organization acts, thinks, performs, reinvent itself, which is called: Organizational Culture. In the continuum of this process of reborn and destruction of Design and Structure, agreements between people are reached and define: “how we do things around here.” Processes and Procedures are set as common points of interactions. Design and Structure will aloud these agreements to happened, if Structure is hold to the extreme or the process of Design have not feedback from the Organizational Nuclei, the organization could enter in a never ending loop or be paralyzed completely. Cultures can aloud or hinder organizational development, so this latter construct is key to define the Path of Development of employees. A culture of development and contribution will aloud to define precisely Talent Acquisition, Talent Development and Talent Retention. This type of developmental culture must permeate all levels of the organization. In Talent Acquisition the employee profiles are determined by the Organizational Nuclei and this will set the special characteristics needed by the organization. Is not merely to hire experience people, is a matter of examining with detail that this person profile keeps congruency with the organizational culture and values. A “Communion” must exist between candidate’s needs and organizational needs in terms specifically of development, a congruency of values in terms of contribution and experiences, and a congruency of vision in terms of growth.

Wrapping it all, there is the Organizational Nuclei which leads to Business Philosophy, there is the Organizational Design and Organizational Structure that leads to Organizational Architecture, not of walls or rooms but the architecture that will aloud Design and Structure to create the Organizational Culture of development. Culture responds to patterns of behaviors, ways of thinking and beliefs settle and embrace by the organization (Organizational Psychology)

It is a BIG RISK to get people with the congruencies explained if the Organizational Structure will not change to aloud Talent Development. You are putting in jeopardy the organizational development itself, and more importantly the Organizational Nuclei Potentials. If the organization develops its talent this talent is retained, if organization recognizes intrinsically (Organizational Design) and extrinsically (Organizational Structure) this talented employee will be retained. Talent Retention closes the “circuit” coming from Employees Profile to Business Philosophy. Because Business Philosophy grows not in the turnover indicators nor in the new hiring’s, is born in the process of employees development and retention, how will you keep a Business Philosophy if your employees are leaving and quitting every time for new opportunities because the organization will not create the conditions for retention? This will put a big stress to the Organizational Structure and all that is coming after it.

So, when talent is developed Organizational Potentials are increased, this means that the lines in which the Organizational Nuclei are first established will be diversified and be more sensitive to customer needs. If this sensitivity which is explain by the dual process: business identity—customer experiential needs, is identified, then Customer Value is Increased and a Rich Product Experience is achieved. On the other hand when this opportunity of dual process is felt on the hands of a talented employee, also Employee Value is Increased and employees Experience of Contribution is achieved.

When these two social and organizational torrents: Customer and Employees get together in a process of increased value and contribution, the resultant is nothing but more Emergent Business Experiences for both, hence business grows.

miércoles

TALENT MANAGEMENT

By Marco Baratta, M.A.

Organizations nowadays are far more complex than 20 years ago, to say a number, complex in a way that things have to be done faster, technology has put a fast pace of working, customers want thing faster therefore but not only that, they want not just a product or service, they want the product or the service, and “The” is what they uniquely want.

So, how an organization in a fast pace technology, fast delivery market and a demanding customers are going to survive? The answer: Talent Management.

Talent responds to the natural ability as well as how an individual organizes the skills, abilities, knowledge possessed to a particular outcome. This process not always happens in an orderly fashion, most of the time is chaotic, this mean that is not planned, it just happens. On the other hand most organizations still standing in the paradigm that everything has to fall in place to be successful. Everything has to have the element of predictability, as everything has to have in the organizational chart a logic pattern of commands.

Let us just examine the three scenarios, first we have a fast growing economy, with a fast demanding market, with a fast technology, second we have that talent happens metaphorically speaking out of chaos, and third we have a centralized very structured organizations. What kind of mingles is that? How is that we are going to align market-technology-employees-and-organitazions?

THE FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL

Managers are so afraid of loosing control; they do not want employees to know more than then, to create more than them, to be smarter than them. This management culture can undermine the talent of any organization that has permeated it and even worst, can make thing so slowly that even profit can be jeopardized. That management culture self centered has its roots in the organization from which it comes. If you have a hierarchy organization that is the management style you are going to have, if you have a clan culture organization that is the management style you are going to have and so on.

NOT ALL CULTURES ARE CREATED EQUAL

Indeed every organization is a different world full of different philosophies of working and therefore different thought patterns which create different policies, rules etc. Now, in today’s world does not matter in what kind of business you are, the process of unleashing your talent is more and less the same. This is not magic is very simple, and is so simple that what is preventing of seeing that is the type of organizational cultures you have. Organizational Culture is a process as talent, but the first one must change in order that talent emerges.

If we say that is a common process such process in what consist? is basically one word:

Opportunity. This word is very important because implies the environment been organized in order that talent can emerge. Let us suppose that not all our employees are talented, then how you create this opportunity? But if the channel is not open, how are you going to know if you have or have not talented employees? So before jumping to conclusions you must find out. Now coming back to opportunity, if we get deep on this concept we discover that to organize an environment in which employees show and develop their talent is very dangerous. That is, if your management style is autocrat or hierarchical. If you have a flat organization it will be easier (may be) and this ideas will sound proper to you. But if your organization has a lot of bottle necks, this is all nonsense.

WHEN TALENT MANAGEMENT BEGINS TO LOOK COMPLEX

When you are aware for whatever reason that you organization needs a shift in leadership and you have to let talent take over, a change process has just started. Just the fact that this ideas is been proposed as a Talent Management Program, or Coaching Program or Career Development Program, or just a change in the way your organization do things, will make the present culture think twice about itself. Is your culture prepared for these changes? Does this mean employees will be in command? Shifting culture is a very hard process because old beliefs must be transformed or substitute by new ones, and not only beliefs but your whole organizational framework will have to change.

Once you create the opportunity for people to express their ideas, or propose new ways of doing things, and decisions are taken not individually but in consensus, also you take care that your talented employees grow in knowledge and become more specialized through training. As soon as all that begin to happens the ladder of employee development begin to escalate also. Job descriptions are aligned to your employees; they obey your employees not the other way around.

Recognition is now present in your activities, talented employees want to become valuable and their efforts recognized the want to feel they are contributing in their work and adding value to the organization. As employees begin to develop they will ask for more opportunities and that will be inevitable, although you can have some individuals that will be in flow (Mihaly csikszentmihalyi, 1996) a state in which opportunity and abilities are perfectly aligned with capacity and produces altered state of consciousness among some are: sense of completely involvedness, time disappears, the activity produces immediate feedback though is highly rewarding (no extrinsic motivators), ego disappears etc. Once the activity is completely a domain of your employee, boredom could emerge, what we say before, then becomes a reality, what new tasks or challenges is your employee going to be assigned to? What career program has the organization prepared for talent individuals, other wise after employee boredom comes employees turn over is a risk if the organization is not creating more opportunities for development.

Talent management is a fascinated journey, you just have to be prepared that once you unleash the conditions for it to happen you must be prepare for what comes next.