“Is Your Organization Committed to Talent Management? – part 1”

One of the key success factors in creating a world-class supply management organization is devoting time, effort and budget to talent management. Done well, talent management is not viewed as an administrative burden to be dumped on the HR department. On the contrary, this is a subject that should attract the personal interest and direct involvement of the CPO.

Furthermore, talent management should be a continuing priority year-in, and year-out, regardless of swings in business conditions.

Any administrator can cut training and coaching budgets to “save money” in the short term. A real leader has the vision and the fortitude to stay focused on building the organization’s capabilities, since they are what ultimately deliver business performance. That leader will find ways to protect and enhance the talent management budget, and communicate the logic to senior management for their support.

Assessing the current skills and competencies in an organization, and using that as input to a training and competency-building plan, are important first steps. In our experience, it is helpful to use various frameworks, one of which appears below, to guide, organize and structure the thought process.

In this framework, there is recognition that there are four categories of knowledge and competencies worth assessing and developing:

(a) the market- and functional-level (this includes a wide variety of strategic and tactical areas)
(b) cross-functional skills
(c) cross-cultural skills
(d) “soft-side” skills

More on this subject in part 2.

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