Satindra Sen started his life as an entrepreneur, fresh from an engineering degree. After an MBA from XLRI, Satindra joined the corporate world and stayed there for 15 years. He worked his way through larger and larger roles in the world of financial services with Mashreq bank and Amex. In his last assignment with American Express, Satindra led all off shore outsourced voice operations across Asia for the English speaking world of Amex meaning US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. He lead a team of 500 direct employees and another 1500 through partner organizations. He had a reputation for being an excellent mentor, executive coach and managed to keep attrition levels in his business at remarkably low levels.
He has since decided to pursue ‘la dolce vita’ at the age of 42, leaving his rather fast paced and upwardly mobile life for the “outbound training” world that he now roams. When he is not consulting (and that’s pretty often) he enjoys reading (any thing that’s published, barring management books!), single malts, discovering and tasting new as well as tried and tested cuisine, theatre and traveling to places where he can get all of the aforementioned!
What are the principles of talent management?
The principle of talent management is to be able to categorize talent in a meaningful way so that you can strategically and tactically address the development needs of each category . A talent management process should:
a) Be as transparent as possible
b) As objective as possible
c) Lead to talent planning ( at a minimum at both ends of the talent spectrum)
How do you measure its success?
By the following:
a) Retention of your high potential – high performing employee base over time
b) Internal promotions tinto larger roles ( rather than having to hire from outside )
c) Exiting identified talent mismatch
Is talent management an organisational process or is it about individual leadership style?
Clearly an organisational process …else different people within an organisation will handle it differently and there won’t be a uniform talent management system. The pluses of organisation wide talent management:
1. Uniform approach
2. As an organisational process it gets done
3. Objectivity through thumb ruling (not a one man decision)
4. Transparency is easier to achieve
5. An organisational view that identifies both your stars and lets you know your lemons across levels
6. Ability to strategically and tactically manage top talent at all levels rather than only at the top
In your opinion, how good are the talent management processes in India based organisations? Please talk from your experience of companies you have worked with in India, companies outside the country and your own ex employers.
Large Indian corporates hardly have any organised approach barring some front line people practice organisations ( TATA s ) …a lot of talent management is synonymous to performance management . MNC’s of course are piggy backing on imported talent management processes and tools …a lot of organisations (GE, Amex) use one version or the other of the 9-box talent blocker;
1. Categorize Talent into a 3 X # matrix on Potential (Hi, Medium, Low) and Performance (Hi, Medium and Low)
2. Develop an organisational growth principle for folks in the top category and address their development needs systematically
3. Develop development tactics and time bound improvement plans for the bottom end with the end goal of improvement or redeployment / exit
4. Make the process and the individual positions clear (on the Talent grid) at least for folks at a “senior management” level
Will the principles or strategy for managing talent differ for ‘creative businesses’?
Essentially if talent is defined as a combination of potential and performance then it should not differ in the approach …the development planning process, career pathing etc. that fall out of this will need to be mapped to the industry of course
How large a role does ‘ego’ play in the process?
None if you do it at an organisational level. The transparency (whether you tell people explicitly on which block they lie in) is another matter.. a function of
a) Organisational culture
b) Organisational readiness
c) How has it been communicated etc. Definitely the process of making it transparent should be top – down…. try it out at the top (the transparency piece …the approach and method should be applied across) …and then roll it down
The communication industry is facing a severe crisis of talent. The bright experiened talent have many options outside the industry and are taking them, the quality of the pool at entry levels has dropped dramatically. What suggestions can you make for the industry heads to help them combat this trend?
I dont know the industry and hence these may sound too simple and in fact may not be practical but here goes….
1. Make the industry sexy again (advertise maybe..look at the army )
2. Address pay scales and compensation …get creative about it!
3. Show talent management and growth potential
4. Invest in training and learning …and use that as an edge to hire and retain
5. Provide global learning and practicing opportunities
6. Adopt an institution where raw talent is good and partner from the education stage itself!
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