Is talent management a strategic priority for CEOs?

Spoiler? A set in stone strategy is not enough, but some good advice helps. What’s sure is that you need a strategic talent management approach to manage talent and comply with ever-evolving needs in a fast-paced world.

What follows is a short summary of the points that each of the participants brought to the table as answers to the questions we posed to them. This piece of work is not intended to be comprehensive on the topic, but rather to raise awareness and interest, to be able to put in motion people within specific organizations to search for their own paths.

 

Why CEOs need to prioritize talent management

Let’s start by acknowledging the elephant in the room: half the battle in effective talent management for CEOs is won when a company, starting from its CEO, recognizes it as a strategic priority. Without this buy-in at the top, no system, tool, or HR process will suffice, and the company is likely to fall back soon. This is true more than ever in today’s fast-paced, complex and open world, where competition is unpredictable, siloed processes no longer work and velocity is the standard.

 

Defining talent: what it means for leadership

But what exactly is talent? According to Didier Miraton, for example, talent is the ability to excel in a specific field of action, and he argues

A talented leader is somebody who transforms a group of people with diverse backgrounds and roles into a high-performing team, manages change and innovation to build disruptive business models and challenge the status quo.

Bernardo Bertoldi and Paolo Lazzarini add to the definition, again, the feature of velocity, the speed at which individuals and organizations adapt and perform.

 

How to enable talent expression within organizations

Once we align (or not) on what talent is, the next question is: how do we enable people to express it? In Didier’s view, rather than focusing on developing perfectly rounded leaders, we have to accept that people are never prepared for the role they will take on. Citing his exact words: “They are never prepared, they are never the right ones.” Waiting for readiness is either a sign of poor selection or missed timing, which might seem awkward and uncomfortable.

Managing talent and preparing your organization for evolving implies deliberately taking a series of well-planned uncomfortable decisions, to destabilize from within the organization. Of course, it is easier to do so when your business is not in a compromising position yet.

 

The evolving role of HR in strategic talent management

So, if you thought talent management was something in pure control of Human Resources, you should have now understood you were wrong. Els Van de Water outlines four key roles for HR, none of which center on “control”:

• Facilitator: removing obstacles and helping the organization reach its goals. To do so, HR needs to truly live the organization at all levels and be close to people and the business.

• Connector: building bridges between people, functions, and geographies. By doing this HR enables talent to move across and maps transversal competencies.

• Orchestrator: designing agile, effective organizational models. The speed of the implementation needs to support the fast-changing strategy moves.

• And, most importantly, Constructive Provocateur: challenging the status quo to spark reflection and change.

In all four roles, HR definitely supports talent, but real ownership lies with executive leadership. To make sure a long-term approach is adopted and medium-to-short term objectives are met, Strategic Workflow Planning and the Talent to Value exercise are two powerful methodologies for taking those reasonable risks pointed out before. Through Talent to Value, the organisation's talent is aligned with its most critical business objectives, maximising the value derived from that talent. The right skills and capabilities are matched to roles that directly contribute to revenue generation, profitability and business success, rather than focusing solely on filling positions or managing talent in a siloed or layered approach.

 

Leadership ownership: the CEO’s critical role

Tools are supportive, as always, but they work only in organizations where culture enables them, taking us back once more to the role of the CEO, and of the Board of Directors. Bernardo Bertoldi points out good and bad examples he came across through his career. Good ones related to exceptional CEOs who were able on their own to make the difference and to pose the topic in the proper light: from Paolo Scaroni, asking and preparing his succession plan from day 1 in every company for which he covered the role, to Danny Winteler, who in Miroglio created an ad hoc talent management process, and Sergio Marchionne, who spent 3 days every 6 months to personally review all his 300 managers’ performance reviews, understanding in depth how each of them evolved biannually and trying to figure out where they could land afterwards.

On the contrary, fear of being replaced and a Board of Directors which does not pose the right attention to the topic, often paralyse the system. And this is true despite the size of the company or its geography.

 

A real-world example of effective talent strategies

What probably changes when dealing with less renowned firms, as Paolo Lazzarini states, is that talent retention is fundamental, also because relevant roles are less and resources are scarcer. In the case of Prima Industrie, for supporting their 5% of talents within the company, a strong process is in place to coach them throughout their professional path.

 

The impact of talent management on organizational growth

Overall, good examples of talent management have emerged across the meeting, showing that strategies cannot be improvised and that transparency of communication, alignment and talent care have indeed to be in the mind of the company's executive management to guarantee company success.

Ultimately, the growth of our organizations—and of Europe as a whole—depends on the development of its people. Talented individuals who are willing to rise to the challenge deserve the right conditions to thrive. By creating those conditions, we all contribute to a more resilient and competitive future.