Tag: talent

due diligence, M&A, organization design

We Sign Tomorrow – Inside A Tech Acquisition

We Sign Tomorrow? Inside a Tech Acquisition | A Paddle Documentary

In February, I met the team at Paddle to explore contributing to their acquisition of – and integration with – ProfitWell. It’s not common to be able to share much about the work we do in due diligence, organization design, and integration. This is an exception.

The team at Paddle (inclusive of ProfitWell) is amazing. I am very proud to work closely with the team, of the work that’s being done, and of the organization that’s developing! In their efforts to be the most helpful brand in SaaS, they filmed the journey to share their experiences as an insider’s view of a tech acquisition.

Talent Management

The Right to Win (and Retain): Earning x Learning Value Proposition

As we navigate 2022 talent realities, opportunities to change your work are abundant. Many are evaluating their options. In fact, employees increasingly quit their jobs while still contemplating the value that their work adds (or does not add) to their lives. Others are the survivors holding the pieces together in the wake of attrition. Obsessing over retention of scarce and valuable people is top priority for organizations and the Earning x Learning matrix will be a helpful addition to the Talent Management toolkit for most organizations and individuals.

For Individuals: You are evaluating options of where to contribute your time and talents going forward, and should assess what will be gained beyond compensation. What will your options be two moves from now? Finding a team willing to pay you competitively to stretch and expand your capabilities, making you more valuable in the future, is most often achieved in the organization that knows you and wants to keep a good thing going. There are a lot of people with buyers remorse after their 2021 employer change.

For Organizations: You seek to engage, develop, and retain key talent. Differentiating your value proposition beyond (i.e., including) compensation to offer learning opportunities through developmental assignments will improve your retention and development of talent.

Skeptical of the value of developmental cross-moves? In January, MIT Sloan published Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation: Research using (empirical) employee data revealing the top five predictors of attrition and four actions managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition. From the analysis, the number one (#1) action identified that managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition, “providing employees with lateral career opportunities… is 2.5 times more powerful as a predictor of a company’s relative retention rate compared with compensation.”

Individuals have a great opportunity to move beyond “should I stay or should I go?” to assess “how do I stay and grow?” as a potentially more rewarding option.

Organizations are likely to have more openings than you built into your Annual Operating Plan (AOP) due to attrition and perhaps growth. Before looking externally and without lowering your standards, look across your current team. While further destabilizing the business through internal moves may seem unmanageable, you have much more control of the change happening on your terms and timing, and you are selecting someone you know will work in your organization.

A practical recommendation for leadership teams: regularly (multiple times per year) talk Talent candidly and confidentially as a team:

  1. WHO: What key talents (each leader to prioritize top 1-3 from across the team) require action to best retain your assets and steward the team?
  2. WHAT: From the Earning x Learning matrix, what action is needed as we obsess over retaining our best assets?

Not every team member will be retained. You’ll be happy for some as they take opportunities beyond your organization and you are happy to have a team that is a great place to be from. But, for many, this extra proactive step will make a significant difference.

At scale and over a multi-year time horizon, this will also support improvements in collaboration, strengthening informal networks and increasing the speed and agility with which organizations can adapt and make change. Development occurs through experiences. Offer your best people your best experiences as a differentiating capability to earn the right to win and retain talent through a differentiated value proposition.

Change, technology

I4.0 Panel Event: How Labor and Tech are Accelerating Industry 4.0 Adoption

In February, Brandon Curry was invited to contribute – as Fellow of CGS Advisors, Study Lead & Co-Author of the Insights Report – to a public panel event hosted by the Industry 4.0 Orchestration Collaborative. In this event he shared the key insights from the 2021 Labor and Technology Adoption study followed by an engaging panel discussion with executive leaders from Waste Management, Siemens Digital, Plex Systems and Verizon Wireless. The study commissioned by the Collaborative to understand the effects the accelerating labor shortage will have on I4.0 technology adoption. Catch the full replay above.

Arts We Like, Uncategorized

Michael Walsh, Ph.D. in Work Arts Interview

Dr. Michael Walsh is an industrial and organizational psychologist, author, professor and leader of human resources and people analytics. In this Work Arts Interview, he shares some of the foundational ideas of his 2021 book, HR Analytics Essentials You Always Wanted To Know, discusses how changes in work are impacting organizations and their HR professionals’ efforts to build healthy communities that retain talent, and leaves us with practical steps we can take to make better decisions.

Michael currently leads Global Talent Management and Organizational Effectiveness for Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group. He also teaches graduate students at the University of Illinois and Wayne State University. Previously, Michael started and led the Global People Strategy and Analytics function at Bloomberg and the People Analytics and Insights Function at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Michael began his professional career as a client facing consultant for Mercer’s Human Capital practice focused on HR Strategy, Organizational Design/Development and Human Capital Analytics. He worked for Mercer in Chicago, Dubai and New York.

Arts We Like is a series of posts spotlighting great thinkers, ideas, products and partners that we share to help enable remarkable performance through more effective and engaged organizations. Contact Us about how to deploy these solutions as a part of a broader HR Strategy or engagements to develop your organization, capabilities and talent.

Development, Leadership, Management, Talent Management

The Rest of the Meeting

pexels-photo-260689.jpegFor many of us, being invited to contribute more broadly to leading a business, at times beyond our domain expertise, is the greatest compliment we can receive in our work. I lead a global function within an organization and contribute to several cross-functional leadership teams that manage the business. I work with a team of others that do the same – lead a part and contribute to the whole. What this typically equates to is that in a given 2-hour team meeting, 10 minutes will be planned for review of the KPIs, updates and decisions that need to be taken for my part. It is important to be well prepared to effectively manage your part of the agenda, but it’s been my experience that this time is usually cut in half through the normal course of the meeting. Or, if you’re allocated more time, it’s not because it’s going really well. The most effective colleagues I have worked with over the years adapt to accomplish their objectives AND actively contribute to the rest of the meeting.

Being able to accomplish your objectives in this normal course of business should be anticipated and is a team member’s responsibility. If it’s our meeting then we are accountable for the whole agenda. How we engage in the rest of the meeting can be analogous to how we operate within the organization. We can just show up, we can only focus on our tasks and lament when our agenda isn’t granted priority over others, or we can view ourselves as a member of the team accountable for the whole agenda and make a difference in the rest of the meeting. Having the perspective and preparation to succeed in the rest of the meeting can be developed in both process and content.

To be effective in the process, we have to develop our perspective and skills. Our perspective (i.e., attitudes or paradigm) on the team, our role on the team and our individual and shared objectives informs what we endeavor to do. We also have to be skilled in our preparation and interactions to show up on the job beyond intentions.

Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful:

As we learn the various facets of the work of the team and the relationships and dependencies that exist between them, the content (i.e., business acumen) of the team’s work can be the most daunting gap to bridge. When transitioning to a new role, the content is new and you will have a lot of questions. One example to illustrate this is in how a company manages finished goods inventory. In order to contribute to the rest of the meeting for a team that has to manage finished goods inventory effectively, the questions you have to understand include:

  • Why is it important? What happens if we have too much? What happens if we have too little?
  • Where does it come from? Is it sourced or made internally? What are the lead-times to receive more? What is the capacity of the supplying producer?
  • What causes or triggers it to be sourced?
  • How do we pay for it? How do we get paid for it?
  • If we have too much and need to reduce, do we have the right commercial team to increase consumption and what does that do to our production workforce and for how long?
  • If we have too little, do we have the right talent in the right quantity to ramp up?

Beyond the perspective and skills to effectively contribute to the rest of the meeting, we need to understand the content of the meeting.  Curiosity is the key. Do not believe enduring ignorance will go unnoticed. By noting what you do not understand to research and seek mentoring from your colleagues to better understand their part of the business, you can both improve your knowledge and build your relationships.

It’s a choice. You can fixate on your part of the agenda and hope the space you’re given fulfills your expectations or you can take accountability to contribute to the rest of the meeting and make a difference.

Career Development, Development, Engagement, Leadership, Learning, Models, Strengths

Personal Best Performance: Learning from Your Successes

Personal Best Concept
Personal Best Concept

I love to succeed. I love to do things that I’m good at for as many people as possible, providing me plenty of examples (or evidence) that I am successful and high levels of esteem are justified and secure. Building this self-efficacy is both important and constructive to motivation. Individual satisfaction and meaning occur when we are contributing Personal Best Performances.

Applying the Hedgehog Concept (Jim Collins, 2001) to our individual careers yields higher performance and more Personal Bests.

A Personal Best has 3 components:

  1. Talent – what you are good (even great) at.
  2. Passion – what you like and want to contribute; what you want to be good at.
  3. Organizational Value – the contribution needed or opportunity to create value.

I have developed a tool for helping clients identify Personal Bests. I have used this approach with a broad group of customers with favorable results. If you’re a consultant, helping a client through this self-discovery process is impacting. In my experience, clients have valued the exercise and some have used the process with those that they lead. If you’re a leader, using this process with your team members is an effective way to support their development and build a stronger relationship, both supporting higher levels of engagement.

Personal Best Interview

Purpose: The purpose of the Personal Best Interview is to guide your thinking about personal development to help you make your greatest contributions through efforts that are personally meaningful and satisfying.

Directions: Answer the questions below to help you identify high-impact development goals for your personal development and to prepare for development discussions with your Manager, mentor or other coaching resource.

Personal Best Examples: Describe 2 – 3 examples of experiences when you felt most enthusiastic and positive about your work.

For each Personal Best Example above, what about that experience made it such a positive and motivating experience for you?

What are your talents (those things you’re good at and can constructively apply at work)?

What are you passionate about (Those things you are motivated and enthused to do at work)?

What contribution can you make to the organization leveraging your talents in an area of passion?

What do you not want to do? (What would you like to avoid doing? (e.g., relocating, shift changes, roles)

What are your career goals and plans? Do they position you to contribute more personal bests?

Short-Term:

Long-Term:

What do you need to learn, become more skilled at, and experience to make your best contribution to the company and achieve your goals?

  • Focus on WHAT to develop or change rather than HOW at first.
    •  Example – “develop the ability to develop and communicate strategic plans to align your team and achieve objectives” rather than “complete strategic thinking training.”

What barriers or development needs could keep you from making your best contribution and achieving your goals?

Career Development, Change, Development, Engagement, Learning, Models, Strengths

4 Stages of Contribution

A common area of opportunity to help many of the technically brilliant people I enjoy working with – scientists, engineers, supply chain experts, even financiers – is career development.  These colleagues become frustrated with their perceived inability to engineer and control career advancement when transitioning beyond individual contributor roles where relationships, interest-based negotiation and influence skills become important to get results. In my experience, this results in a presenting problem like (generalized examples):

Career paths are not established and communicated clearly enough…

The organization doesn’t value the technical skills that create value here…just look at who gets promoted…

There doesn’t seem to be any opportunity for me in this organization…

each of which may be true. The problem with these beliefs is that they are totally passive and the expectation is to fix “them” or change how “they” do things. These are difficult expectations to fulfill. However, there is a change that each person can make that is totally under our control and with a much higher probability for success.

A model that I have found helpful is Novations’ 4 Stages of Contribution. I first saw this model in a conference session jointly presented by one of Novations’ consultants and a learning & development manager from Intel. It has influenced the career development processes and tools I have designed and implemented. Since the model focuses on the contribution or performance of an individual rather than position, it integrates well with strengths-based approaches, which I advocate.

Careers are moving from position focus to contribution focus to increase impact and influence. Flatter organizations and critical individual contributor talents need not mean career ceilings. High-performance is achieved by aligning talent with opportunities to deliver greater contribution in-position, laterally, through advancement, or in a role that’s currently undefined. In fact, it is this ability to mine the greater contribution that can be made from each role that truly differentiates top talent and their organizations from the status quo.