Assessing Executive Talent

We have recently completed the planning and design for a major executive assessment project in the resources sector.  This global organisation is realigning itself to pursue major opportunities in emerging markets and has chosen Talent Solutions to help establish and measure leadership talent at all levels throughout the organisation. This exciting project is a long-term commitment to developing a deep understanding of the key attributes that define high performance at the executive level. 

Our approach has been to align a customised assessment regime, consisting of ‘best-in-class’ personality and abilities measures supplemented by semi-structured behavioural interviewing, with a future-orientated capability framework. This approach was established following extensive research and consultation with the business to optimise the need for reliability and validity with the practical concerns around time and cost.

The project will involve up to 100 executives including the CEO and will be integral to establishing a benchmark that will guide the organisation for the next three to five years. Extensive data analysis and profiling will help managers with recruitment, promotion and development decisions for emerging and current leaders.

Establishing HR Business Partners

Several companies have approached us recently in response to the scarcity of HR talent in the marketplace. Of particular concern is the challenge many HR teams are facing in a changing environment whereby traditional transactional HR service models are straining at the response to meet more transformational business requirements. David Ulrich, amongst others, has foreseen the emerging need for HR professionals to help their organisations anticipate and adapt to change (see for example, Role Call, Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005). In a candidate scarce market, organisations are turning to assessment and development solutions to help HR practitioners adopt what Ulrich describes as a focus on the ‘Strategic Partnering’ role which encompasses a focus on enabling change.

Our work in this area spans both the financial services and resources sectors.  In one particular project we have been engaged to design and deliver a holistic action-learning solution. Our program focuses on developing the business partnering, consulting and functional expertise required by HR practitioners facilitating change. This organisation has recognised the need to focus both on external talent acquisition concurrently with up skilling the existing HR team.  Our approach involves a number of innovations including establishing a community of HR practitioners as well as leveraging internal coaching and mentoring (by both HR experts and line managers). The program is based on contemporary research and is modularised to facilitate workshop delivery by both external and internal subject matter experts combined with practical workplace application and review.

The first of these workshops is due to roll-out in early 2007.

Managing Change at a Global Bank

A major global bank approached us with the challenge of merging several business units together and aligning the new structure to best meet the needs of key internal stakeholders. At the surface level this exercise seems clear and relatively straight forward. However, as many of us have come to experience – real change can be difficult to do. As is often the case, change brings with it new challenges and unexpected outcomes. In this particular example, ‘resistance’ to change has taken many forms. At the leadership level, numerous ‘passive-aggressive’ behaviours have come to the fore and this has created considerable delays in getting individuals to understand the new direction and the role each of them play in this.

Of course, change is rarely straight forward and a little confusion is often to be expected. In this situation, however, managers are describing a lack of structure, clear direction and alignment with the new structure as well as frustration with the leadership team dynamics. As Tuckman would describe it, the leadership team still appears to be in the ‘storming’ stage of development. Clearly, most teams aspire to moving along and arriving at the ‘performing’ stage as quickly as possible. So what to do when faced with such a predicament?

Our initial approach has been to meet with the leadership team members one-on-one to understand their perspective of the change (ie. ‘what’s in it for them and how are they impacted by the change’). Our Managing Director facilitated a team workshop to help team members make sense of the change (ie. ‘the need for change, where are we now and where do we need to be’) as well as eliciting practical actions to take in order to move the team forward. This has established a ‘road map’ for the change process and individual teams are working towards achieving this. In the meantime, we have commenced executive coaching with the leadership team to help facilitate the change at three levels.

Firstly, to help individual managers identify how they are responding to the change as a leadership team member and identifying helpful strategies for working with their colleagues and immediate manager to more effectively work throughout the transition phase. Secondly, to identify self-management strategies to help process their personal ‘change journey’ and keep themselves on track and responding to the change in a productive fashion. And finally, to problem-solve and implement effective strategies to help guide their teams through the change. 

In many of the teams we are witnessing numerous points of conflict as team members readjust their own expectations of what the change means to them.  Passive-aggressive behaviours come to the fore and present managers unaccustomed to such behaviours with difficult challenges. A large part of our work involves helping managers identify such behaviour and work constructively with individuals to reduce unhelpful conflict and promote more collaborative behaviours.