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According to the citation of a French novelist, Gustave Flaubert,“God grants you genius – but talent is up to you.“ Only literary words or a future-orientated statement with greater significance than ever? Looking at the current hype around the topic of talent management clearly speaks for the latter. Always wanting to identify talents and binding them to the company, while also having to keep an eye on market developments, has become even more widespread.IN SMEs as well as large national and international companies from industry, finance, IT and pharma, the furthering of talent is virtually “bubbling”.No modern company with according vision, mission and strategic statement without measures and programme for talent management. Basically a very positive development, both from the company´s, employees´ and, last but not least, customer´s point of view, with meanwhile increasingly successful implementation examples.Yet looking behind the scenes shows that, in spite of conviction and good will of the local decision-makers and doers,“well-meant” does not necessarily mean “well done”.
Setting out to enable potential carriers to make a career in increasingly flatter hierarchical structures while binding them long-term to the company can quickly turn into a dead-end.Much more, everybody starts running in a state of euphoria, with much too little thought given to planning from the beginning.Determination of talents according to personal preferences instead of a competene-based selection and recruitment process embedded in a sustainable job and succession planning.Lacking connection of the comprehensive measure to vision, mission and strategic corporate goals.Incorrect evaluation of necessary conceptional, capacity and monetary resources.In many cases, the “spark´s gone out” after a short time, and the project comes to a halt.Unpleasant to communicate and most likely exculpated with operational topics or more important strategic measures. Which leaves us with irritated talents and frustration on the HR side, specialist departments, and, last but not least, in the management.Instead of jointly securing the achievement of the strategic and operational corporate goals in an increasingly complex market environment with significantly shorter cycles, in the worst case, formerly motivated potential carriers are lost.Additionally, it can no longer be avoided at some stage and the multi-dimensional building sites must be, at least superficially, eliminated at a high cost and with much effort.
So, talent management, the beginning of a success story or rather a problem child?No, certainly not a problem child, but rather a highly effective instrument that is increasingly being better understood, and is self-confidently growing out of its infancy.But decisive parameters must always be observed during introduction and integration into the corporate measures, like for examplecareful preparation and/orfurther development of the vision, mission, as well as corporate goals as a key condition for the successful realisation of a talent management programme. The creation of function-related target profiles with regard to the potential carriers within a competence-based selection/recruitment process is to be highly recommended.In addition, a realistic evaluation of necessary resources for a programme with a frequently international group of participants that often lasts 12 to 24 months is essential.As well as the continuous close monitoring of talents on their path, with motivation anchors, mentoring and task transfer. The companies, and especially the responsible HR departments, that pay heed to these principles can look forward to success; provided they have a top-class training concept with according trainer and coach team.The sentence quoted at the beginning “Talent is up to you” applies equally as a motto for company management, HR department and specialist departments, and selected training partners.And “last but not least“ for the talents themselves which, within the framework of the measure, must successively take over responsibility for the design of their career path. As an experience advisor, Frankfurt School supports the conception and introduction of talent management programmes as an-inhouse measure and additionally offers seminars at offenes modulares Seminarprogramm.
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