Talent Development

In last few weeks, I have been in midst of some ‘talent development’ work.

A few thoughts have been running through my mind.

Someone is identified as ‘talent’ because s/he will be demonstrating differentiated performance consistently, behaviors/abilities that company is betting on in future, and/or demonstrating behaviors/abilities for higher order/critical roles for company.

Development options charted out for a 'talent' have to reflect atleast last two of above.

These options again can be in form of classroom trainings, development experiences (e.g: projects), and/or learning for leaders/coaching/mentoring.

What we attempted, as a first step, was learning from leaders.

We had 3 leaders speaking to ‘talent’ and what they left them with were clarity, inspiration, motivation, and reflection. Additionally having all ‘talent’ in one room provided them an opportunity to ‘extend personal networks’.

Question I am left with is ‘what’s next’.

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Sourav

 

Importance of Conversations for Change

Change formula nicely captures conditions required/necessary for change, viz:

D*V*F>R where D- Dissatisfaction with current state; V- Vision of the future; F-First Steps; R- Resistance to change.

What formula doesn’t seem to capture is ‘how of/process' for change.

‘Inclusion of’ and ‘conversations with’ affected parties are the two how's that seem to be important.

All affected parties/stakeholders need to be involved in change process. 

They need to see ‘need for’ change and be involved in ‘creating solutions’ for change. This involves ‘conversations’ with them.

‘Conversations’ need to invite two way flow of information and peer exchange.

These ‘how's’ form the bedrock of change process.

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Sourav

Pacing

Through work and life, you need to be able to pace yourself.

Visualize a bottle of water that’s full in the morning. Slowly water starts emptying out and by end of day there’s almost nothing left. In the night and during early morning of next day you fill up bottle again.  This cycle repeats itself every day.

Let’s visualize another scenario. Same bottle of water has an equitable inflow and outflow through the day. There might be slight variations in water level but overall water level remains constant. 

Which scenario is more sustainable?

I vote for second scenario. 

First scenario will work in a situation where you know that you will have enough time every day to fill bottle back again.  But that may be a flawed assumption – we may not have the dedicated time available every day.

Second scenario requires self-awareness- you need to know how to ‘pace’ yourself so that outflow and inflow rates more or less match. Secondly you need to know ways to ensure adequate inflow.

Both of these – self-awareness and skills at ensuring adequate inflow – can be worked upon by individual and hence are controllable by individual.

So how do you pace yourself through the day?

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Sourav

 

Contributions

Best ideas are best implemented ideas!

I do agree with statement above. The value of any idea is derived only once it has been implemented.

But does this mean you always should be in implementation mode? I don’t think so.

There are 3 different stages for an idea – ideation (or creation stage), building base (fleshing idea out), and implementation.

All 3 require their own space and time.

A good way of knowing whether you are doing all three adequately is to reflect on your workweek and see whether you got enough of all 3 in week.

Additionally you can pace yourself on different days – spending some days exclusively on one or more of stages. Else you can split day into periods and work on different stages exclusively during each period.

Implementation is important. But each of 3 stages require its own space and time.

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Sourav