Become a PowerPoint Guru by Dave Tracy
Learn the methodologies, frameworks, and tricks used by Management Consultants to create executive presentations in the business world.
Mediocre people occupying senior Leadership positions is one of the chief reasons for the fiasco and humiliation that organizations like Enron and WorldCom faced. The practice of recruiting average people at the top is omnipresent and often goes unnoticed until the results begin to surface, which is typically too late for any intervention.
Smart people decisions matter a lot in achieving profitability. Research indicates that a return on average human asset of 5% is typical in many industries. However, a senior executive selection of 2 standard deviations below the average yields -15% return on asset. An executive selection with 2 standard deviations above average causes 25+% return, which is 5 times the average. Increased investment in finding and hiring the best senior executives fetches returns to the magnitude of 1000%.
Attracting and selecting the best people for senior leadership positions isn’t a small feat. The future of organizations depend on it. However, not too many organizations succeed in getting the right people at the top. The reason for this failure is attributed predominantly to 3 critical obstacles that hinder in making the right recruitment decisions at such a crucial level. Wrong Executive Selection decisions due to these 3 obstacles bring about losses and negative returns:
- Obstacle of Rarity
- Obstacle of the Unknown
- Obstacle of Psychological Traps
Let’s talk about these obstacles in a bit of detail.
Obstacle of Rarity
The first barrier to finding outstanding executives for senior positions is their scarcity, as excellent executives are a rare breed. Sophisticated skills that make an executive standout aren’t common. They are distributed in a given sample.
Outstanding people perform at a much higher level than that of their peers, particularly at the top positions. A blue-collar executive with 1 standard deviation above the mean translates to 20% more productive individual than an average executive. With increasing complexity of job, the difference between the top performer and an average performer increases considerably.
Appointments at the senior positions do not go without assessment errors, which can prove to be extremely costly. Even an accuracy level of 90% in executive assessment isn’t satisfactory. This results in a number of mistakenly categorized top performers and rejection of outstanding candidates.
Obstacle of the Unknown
Another barrier to the Executive Selection process is the predictive assessment of candidates on the skills and attributes required and the actual delivery capabilities of the individuals. It is difficult to assess the unknown.
Competencies at the junior levels are easier to define, but it gets difficult to pinpoint the skills required at the top level. The skills required at the top keeps on changing due to the evolving political, technological and economic landscape. The skills required today get obsolete over time. In case the exact requirements for a position are fully known, it isn’t certain whether a candidate meets the requirements in their entirety.
Accurate assessment of the candidates’ behavior and competencies is difficult but worth investing efforts and resources. “Soft” skills—e.g., leading people, coaching and developing teams, teamwork, and managing Business Transformation—are what differentiate the senior leaders, but gauging these skills necessitates thorough evaluation and considerable time, which is difficult at senior levels.
Obstacle of Psychological Traps
A number of psychological traps are associated with cognitive biases in humans that hinder the decision making abilities in people and incapacitate the hiring process. 8 types of psychological traps are most common in individuals:
- Procrastination
- Assuming incorrectly
- Impulsive judgment based on first impressions
- Discounting the warning signs
- Covering mistakes
- Bonding with familiarity
- Emotional anchoring
- Tendency to follow the majority
For more information on selection and hiring “the best of the best,” take a look at the Fiaccabrino Selection Process (FSP). Download a free primer on FSP here.
Interested in learning more about the 3 critical obstacles that hinder right Executive Selection? You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Executive Selection here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
A job consists of various critical elements that are essential to achieve enterprise outcomes—i.e., talent and behavioral requirements, role, and responsibilities. Jobs that are configured inadequately bread disputes, negative perceptions, inequality, and frustration. On the other hand, structured jobs, appropriate distribution of work, justified authority levels, and correct estimation of value of individual jobs are the signs of effective Human Capital Management function.
The lack of a structured job design—or ill-defined jobs—renders the organizations ineffective and burdened with excessive staffing and payroll costs. This warrants from the leadership to plan and undertake a Job Leveling initiative. Job Leveling is a disciplined approach to gauge the value of work for individual positions across the organization. It entails ascertaining the nature of work done by each position, authority levels, and the effect of each job on business results. The initiative is critical in administering rewards structures.
However, Job Leveling is a concern at most organizations—not many people are satisfied with the value assigned to their roles. The absence of proper—or inadequate—job levels yields grave consequences for the entire organization. Jobs valued higher than their actual value lead to wastage of resources, whereas low valued jobs are perceived as offensive and inculcate demotivation.
Job Design and Job Leveling is essential when organizations consistently encounter these issues:
- Constant employees complaints and demands to reclassify jobs
- Excessive job titles
- Widespread dissatisfaction with remuneration
- Task / processes redundancy
- Financial outflow
- Staffing imbalances and top heavy structure
Workforce planners should use a Job Leveling Framework to methodically benchmark the value of jobs at their organizations. To accomplish this, they need to first analyze all the activities required under each position, the professional competences and demeanor essential to perform those activities, and gauging the effect each position has on business results.
Implementing a Job Leveling Framework simplifies the allocation of jobs in a harmonized job hierarchy, establishes consistency across the HR Initiatives, develops clear paths for growth, and improves decision making.
Human Resources practitioners need to follow these 5 key phases to implement a Job Leveling Framework and structure job levels at their organizations:
- Ensure Readiness of Pre-Implementation Groundwork
- Engage Business Leaders in Implementation
- Set up Clear Governance Structures
- Employ User-friendly Job Evaluation Management Tools
- Establish Clear Communication Mechanisms
Let’s dive deeper into the first 3 phases of the Job Leveling Framework Implementation, for now.
Ensure Readiness of Pre-Implementation Groundwork
Human Resource practitioners should first analyze their existing job architecture, job natures, roles and responsibilities, and Organizational Culture to initiate the Job Leveling process. Specifically, they have to answer these queries to identify the right Job Levelling method:
- What is the key objective to be achieved by implementing the Job Leveling initiative? Is it to improve compensation, shape career paths, or alleviate pay equity concerns?
- Who will be the users of the Job Leveling system? Will it be managed by Human Resources experts or business leaders?
- The Job Leveling exercise will impact which employees? How many roles, their nature of jobs, locations?
- Define the organizational culture and values. Is it hierarchical, centralized, or cost-focused?
Engage Business Leaders in Implementation
Effective Job Levelling Implementation necessitates involvement of business leaders from the onset of the exercise. Engaging business managers and employees can hold back the pace of implementation because of conflicting views and ideas, but this is essential for the success of Job Leveling. The right engagement involves:
- Getting agreement and support from senior business leaders.
- Including business leaders in calibration of key roles for support later during execution phase.
- Coaching key line managers and including them in job evaluation sessions to ensure adequate understanding of the roles and to develop program sponsors during implementation.
- Including key employees during the design phase of Job Leveling to remove any suspicion and win their agreement.
Set up Clear Governance Structures
Establishing effective control mechanisms is essential to avoid any glitches in implementing coherent job levels. Job Leveling initiatives in large multinational corporations fail because of dearth of appropriate governance mechanisms in place. A few organizations adopt centralized controls whereas others employ decentralized, locally-driven governance protocols. To execute clear yet robust governance mechanisms, organizations should follow these key tenets:
- Governance principles should correspond to the organizational culture.
- Stakeholders should be held accountable with clear roles.
- Authorities should be assigned to ensure proper control mechanisms.
- All concerned people should be engaged in the initiative.
- Decision making authorities should be clearly defined.
- Resources should be effectively deployed.
- Promote fairness by applying rules equally, or if not, rationale is clearly explained.
Interested in learning more about the other phases of Job Leveling Implementation and Job Leveling methods? You can download an editable PowerPoint on HR Strategy: Job Leveling Framework Implementation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Inadequately structured jobs create disputes, negative perceptions, inequality, and frustration among employees. On the other hand, well-articulated jobs, appropriate distribution of work, justified authority levels, and correct estimation of value of individual jobs elevate employee engagement levels, productivity, and job satisfaction. Organized job levels are a sign of effective Human Resources Management function.
The lack of a structured job design—and ill-defined jobs—renders the organizations ineffective and burdened with excessive staffing and payroll costs. This warrants from the leadership to plan and undertake a Job Leveling initiative. Job Leveling is a disciplined approach to gauge the value of work for individual positions across the organization. It entails ascertaining the nature of work done by each position, authority levels, and the effect of each job on business results. The initiative is critical in administering rewards structures.
However, Job Leveling is a concern at most organizations—not many people are satisfied with the value assigned to their roles. The absence of proper—or inadequate—job levels yields grave consequences for the entire organization. Jobs valued higher than their actual value lead to wastage of resources, whereas low valued jobs are perceived as offensive and inculcate demotivation.
Job Design and Job Leveling is essential when organizations consistently encounter issues, such as:
- Constant employees complaints and demands to reclassify jobs
- Excessive job titles
- Widespread dissatisfaction with remuneration
- Task / processes redundancy
- Financial outflow
- Staffing imbalances and top heavy structure
Workforce planners should lay out a clearly-defined Job Leveling Framework to tackle these issues and methodically benchmark the value of jobs at their organizations. To accomplish this, they need to first analyze all the activities required under each position, the professional competences and demeanor essential to perform those activities, and gauging the effect each position has on business results.
The 4 core benefits to developing and executing an efficient Job Leveling Framework include:
- Establish Consistency across the Human Resource Initiatives
- Develop Clear Paths for Career Growth
- Improve Ease of Administration
- Increase Flexibility for M&A
Let’s delve deeper into 3 of these benefits, for now.
Establish Consistency Across the HR Initiatives
A standardized job evaluation approach enables a consistent job structure terminology. It makes communication and Job Leveling related decisions easier. A Job Leveling Framework aids in defining relative placement of various jobs, using elements, such as, knowledge, problem solving, interaction, impact, and accountabilities. Alignment of jobs through a Job Leveling Framework helps in developing consistency across other HR initiatives and make better talent related decisions.
Develop Clear Paths for Career Growth
Organizations use clear career pathways to enhance employee engagement, meet employee expectations, and provide opportunities for their development. A Job Leveling Framework provide clear-cut job structure to inspire the employees. Career pathways developed through Job Leveling Framework helps the leaders as they strive to improve the amount of mobility across teams, units, and divisions.
Improve Ease of Administration
A Job Leveling Framework assists in developing efficient methods to administer HR initiatives. A Job Leveling Framework enables improved efficiencies and decisions related to key talent and their work. For instance, it streamlines pay grades and salary structures; standardizes job titles; simplifies short-term incentive criteria and objectives definition; and structures long-term reward eligibility criteria and nominations.
Interested in learning more about the Job Leveling Framework and benefits associated with its implementation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on HR Strategy: Job Leveling Framework here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Organizations typically focus on Customer-centric Design in their Strategic Planning and overlook the critical driver of Performance, Growth, and Operational Excellence—their employees. With cut-throat competition now the norm the realization has become clearer that employees are:
- The face of the business and create lasting—or perishing—brand impression.
- Sources of innovation and organizational knowledge.
- Representation of the company’s service philosophy.
- Expected to live by its Organizational Culture and values.
Employee Engagement has emerged as one of the significant pillars on which the Competitive Advantage, Productivity, and Growth of an organization rests. What, exactly, does it mean when an employee is engaged? Employee Engagement, over the years, has been thought of in terms of:
- Personal engagement with the organization.
- Focus on performance of assigned work.
- Worker burnout.
- Basic needs (meaningful work, safe workplace, abundant resources).
- Attention on Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral components related to an individual’s performance.
Although Employee Engagement is widely seen as an important concept, there has been little consensus on its definition or its components either in business or in the academic literature.
Kumar and Pansari’s 2015 study define Employee Engagement as:
“a multidimensional construct that comprises all of the different facets of the attitudes and behaviors of employees towards the organization”.
The multidimensional construct of Employee Engagement has been synthesized into the following 5 components (or dimensions).
- Employee Satisfaction
- Employee Identification
- Employee Commitment
- Employee Loyalty
- Employee Performance
The 5 dimensions of Employee Engagement have been found to have a direct correlation with high profitability, as substantiated by a number of research studies:
For instance, a study of 30 companies in the airline, telecom and hotel industries shows a close relationship between Employee Engagement and growth in profits. After controlling other relevant factors—i.e., GDP level, marketing costs, nature of business, and type of goods, the study found:
- Highest profitability growth—10% to 15%—in companies with highly engaged employees.
- Lowest level of profitability growth—0% to 1%—in companies with disengaged employees.
Research reveals that Employee Engagement affects 9 performance outcomes; including Customer Ratings, Profitability, Productivity, Safety Incidents, Shrinkage (theft), Absenteeism, Patient Safety Incidents, Quality (Defects), and Turnover.
The differences in performance between engaged and actively disengaged work units revealed:
- Top half Employee Engagement scores nearly doubled the odds of success compared with those in the bottom half.
- Companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share (EPS).
These 5 dimensions become the base for measuring Employee Engagement in a meaningful manner that permits managers to identify areas of improvement. To assess an organization’s current status of Employee Engagement, a measurement system is needed that includes:
- Metrics for each component of Employee Engagement.
- A scale for scoring metrics in each component.
- A comprehensive scorecard that pulls everything together.
Let us delve a little deeper into the first 2 dimensions of Employee Engagement.
Employee Satisfaction
Definition
Employee Satisfaction is the positive reaction employees have to their overall job circumstances, including their supervisors, pay and coworkers.
Details
When employees are satisfied, they tend to be:
- Committed to their work.
- Less absent and more productive in terms of quality of goods and services.
- Connected with the organization’s values and goals.
- Perceptive about being a part of the organization.
Metrics
The 5 metrics that gauge Employee Engagement in terms of Employee Satisfaction include:
- Receiving recognition for a job.
- Feeling close to people at work.
- Feeling good about working at the organization.
- Feeling secure about the job.
- Believing that the management is concerned about employees.
We take a look at another dimension central in significance.
Employee Commitment
Definition
Signifies what motivates the employees to do more than what’s in their job descriptions.
Details
Employee Commitment is much higher for the employees who identify with the organization. This element:
- Develops over time and is an outcome of shared experiences.
- Is often an antecedent of loyalty.
- Induces employees to guard the organization’s secrets.
- Pushes employees to work for organization’s best interests.
Research has found that employees with the highest levels of commitment:
- Perform 20% better.
- Are 87% less likely to leave the organization.
Metrics
The 3 metrics that gauge the Employee Commitment dimension of Employee Engagement include:
- Commitment to deliver the brand promise along with knowledge of the brand.
- Very committed to delivering the brand promise.
- Feels like the organization has a great deal of personal meaning.
Interested in learning more about these foundational pillars to Employee Engagement? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 5 Dimensions of Employee Engagement here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Traditional Talent Management practices fail to meet the high-potential talent requirements imperative to compete in the digital world today. In fact, they disappoint the key talent available in the market.
A 2016 Digital Business research by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte on 3700+ executives reveals attracting and retaining talent as the most pressing concern for organizations large or small. The study indicates that organizations that are still using traditional approaches to manage Talent face a number of pressing challenges, including:
- Building new competencies within limited resources.
- Alignment of culture, strategic initiatives, human capital, and hierarchies with organizational objectives.
- Attracting, selecting, and retaining key talent.
- Creating robust Performance Management, compensation, and benefits systems.
- Finding and developing talent with critical capabilities—such as forward thinking, transformative vision, and change focus—alongside technical skills.
- Providing opportunities that require digital skills, to attract and keep critical Talent engaged in the organization.
One of the findings of the 2016 digital business study demonstrate that it’s both the younger as well as middle management people who tend to look elsewhere in case they don’t find opportunities to develop digital skills in their existing organizations. Such results call for senior management to identify, evaluate, and implement more immediate and appropriate digital technologies methods to attract and retain key talent. Leading organizations are now incorporating these Talent Transformation efforts into their Digital Transformation programs.
Research on 3700 plus Digital-native respondents further reveals leading organizations to be using a combination of 2 distinct models to manage their Talent:
- Talent Markets for Contractors
- Digital Tools for Employees
Let’s discuss the first approach to Talent Management in detail, for now.
Talent Markets for Contractors
Acquisition of right talent necessitates fostering linkages with on-demand talent markets for the timely availability of required talent. Many organizations seek help from on-demand Talent Markets to attract and sustain talent in the digital business environment. These organizations pursue a flexible recruitment model using digital platforms to attract skilled contractors and consultants. Digital talent markets can be expanded or contracted depending on the quantity of work and skillsets required.
Digital talent markets can coordinate the work of full-time employees as well as cover live activities of contractors more nimbly and reliably. Digital platforms offer superior talent markets to assess and manage large talent pool of contractors. A few organizations are experimenting with developing their own on-demand talent markets while some have cooperated with other organizations to share talent markets. It’s up to senior management to decide if they want to leverage existing on-demand talent markets or cultivate their own to ensure availability of required skills when needed. Talent markets can be nurtured using 3 best practices:
- Manage on-demand talent markets as a community
- Strike a balance between full-time and part-time talent
- Create an environment where the best people want to work
Manage on-demand talent markets as a community
To make the availability of required key talent certain:
- On-demand talent markets should be considered strategic resources and cultivated carefully with future talent requirements in mind.
- Companies should devote resources and efforts to develop their own talent pool.
Strike a balance between full-time and part-time talent
Talent markets are meant to manage freelancers. However, a few organizations have also begun collaborating with them and deploying their full-time employees to project work that is critical to build new competences. A few considerations in this regard include:
- Companies need to strike an equilibrium between full-time and part-time talent.
- Some people prefer full-time employment while others fancy flexibility or work from home options.
- Some workforce providers even offer services of retired people with expert skills, who have proved to be a valuable asset.
- Firms can choose on-demand workforce providers to have full-time employees to maintain a steady employee base, or pick part-time contractors to handle workload surges.
Create an environment where the best people want to work
Setting up the right environment is central to attracting and retaining the best flexible, on-demand talent. A majority of companies consider freelancers or independent contractors inferior to their permanent employees. Organizations that want to attract great talent should think of contractors as valuable resources and treat them as such. To get top talent, organizations need to:
- Nurture an Organizational Culture conducive to support on-demand workers.
- Devise remuneration and reward systems that value contractors and full-time employees equally.
- Create an atmosphere that offers attractive work experiences for the employees.
- Deploy people on interesting projects and allow them to experience job rotations to improve their skills sets, problem solving abilities, cross-departmental team collaboration, and improve their engagement levels.
Interested in learning more about the 2 distinct approaches to Talent Management through Digital Transformation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Digital Transformation: Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
The Sustainability Performance of a firm can be viewed as a spectrum ranging from outstanding to inadequate. Firms rated as Sustainability Leaders are often proactive in addressing sustainability issues, exploring innovative solutions by mobilizing resources and actors interested in particular sustainability issues, and many times setting the sustainability agenda for their industry or geographic region.
Conversely, firms that are considered sustainability laggards often ignore stakeholder concerns about Sustainability and the need to change their behavior. Contrary to leading firms that usually direct their attention externally as much as internally, laggards are marked by a widespread lack of interest in Sustainability and tend to focus on their internal concerns and priorities
Corporate commitment to Sustainability-based Management is strengthening.
Even as organizations overall are strengthening their commitments to Sustainability, one cohort of organization is expanding its commitments far more aggressively than others. They have emerged as Sustainability Strategy Leaders, while others stand as Laggards.
A study conducted between MIT Sloan and BCG Consulting Group, addresses the reasons for the gap which separates Leaders from Laggards of Sustainability. The study found strategic approach to Sustainability is the main differentiator between Sustainability Leaders and Laggards:
- Sustainability Leaders — Leaders act on their belief that Sustainability is already at the core of their business and is a necessity to respond well to shifting customer preference.
- Sustainability Laggards — Laggards view Sustainability in terms of risk management and efficiency gains.
The strategic approach also acts as a differentiator as to how Sustainability Leaders deal with other business parameters, such as:
- Response to challenges and opportunities in Sustainability.
- Approach to “terms” of competition in the context of Sustainability concerns.
- Transformation of management practices in response to Sustainability requirements.
Making early moves even when all needed information around Sustainability is not in place is the first marked step of early adopters of Sustainability.
In a survey of global corporate Leaders conducted by BCG and the MIT Sloan Management Review, it was revealed that an economic downturn caused more emphasis to be placed on Sustainability in companies’ corporate agendas.
As more companies take up Sustainability, the report reveals a striking difference between two groups of companies, based on how they incorporate Sustainability into their business operations.
Brief Outline
Sustainability Leaders have high-leverage tactics and strategies that transform the way their organization competes on Sustainability. They have incorporated Sustainability into their Strategy Development and Strategic Planning process. Likewise, they exhibit a broader perspective of Sustainability and its implications to business. They have identified a range of business drivers that support their Sustainability Investments.
- Increased Margins
- Increased Market Share
- Greater potential for innovation in their business models, processes, and access to new markets
- Competitive Advantage
There are 7 key practices consistently followed by Sustainability Leaders.
- Move Early - Leaders take bold steps with an understanding that they need to make early moves even before they have all the answers in place.
- Balance Long and Short-Term goals - Sustainability Leaders strike a balance between their overarching vision and being specific about areas where they can gain a Competitive Advantage.
- Drive top-down and bottom-up – Leaders recognize that as much as it is a top-down exercise, Sustainability is also a bottom-up exercise.
- De-silo Sustainability - Leaders do not drive Sustainability in a silo, instead they integrate it into the very fabric of their business processes.
- Measure and monitor - Leaders establish metrics and baselines to measure their progress with Sustainability Initiatives.
- Value intangible benefits - Leaders are distinguished by their readiness to ascribe the value of intangible benefits to competitiveness due to Sustainability measures.
- Be transparent and authentic – Leaders are realistic with their Sustainability targets, and they openly communicate about their challenges and success around Sustainability.
Interested in gaining more understanding of Sustainability Leaders and their practices? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint about Sustainability-Leaders vs. Laggards here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Enterprises worldwide face problems selecting, staffing, developing, compensating, motivating, and sustaining their key talent. Building a sustainable Talent pipeline is quite strenuous even for large multinationals.
Replicating best practices from somewhere and applying them alone isn’t sufficient for organizations to build a Talent pipeline and achieve Competitive Advantage. This warrants overcoming arduous challenges associated with this digital age, including:
- Adjusting to varying dynamics in global markets
- Handling the expectations of varied customer segments in different geographies
- Managing the preferences of key Talent
- Acquiring new technologies
- Building novel capabilities
- Achieving Operational Excellence by streamlining operations and improving processes
- Exploring new markets
- Devising strategies to attract, select, develop, assess, and reward top Talent.
Developing Talent Management practices helps the organizations build and retain talented people available in the job market. The term was first used by McKinsey & Company in 1997, and it pertains to planning and managing strategic Human Capital through activities, i.e. attracting, selecting, developing, evaluating, rewarding, and retaining key people.
Executives use diverse Talent Management strategies and career pathways based on various departments, levels, and roles in their Talent pool. Multi-year research on Talent Management practices conducted by an international team of researchers from INSEAD, Cornell, Cambridge, and Tillburg universities studied 33 multi-national corporations, headquartered in 11 countries. The study revealed that successful Human Capital practitioners and workforce planners adopted 6 core principles. These principles act as the 6 pillars to effective Talent Management implementation:
- Alignment with Corporate Strategy
- Consistency of Talent Management Practices
- Integration with Corporate Culture
- Involvement of Leadership
- Global Strategy with Localization
- Branding and Differentiation
Let’s discuss the first 3 pillars in detail, for now.
Alignment with Corporate Strategy
Integrating Talent Management with Corporate Strategy is imperative as the need for future Talent depends on the company’s long-term strategy. Corporate Strategy should guide the identification of Talent required to accomplish organizational goals, since it’s the right Talent that drives the key strategic initiatives rather than strategic planning.
For example, GE’s Talent Management practices have been a great assistance in implementing their strategic initiatives. The organization regards its Talent Management system as their most potent execution tool and has integrated TM processes into their strategic planning process. To sustain its image as an innovation leader, GE targets technical skills as a priority in its annual Strategic Planning sessions. Individual business units lay out their business as well as the Human Capital objectives in GE’s annual strategic planning sessions. Significant time is spent on reviewing its Innovation pipeline, its engineering function’s structure, and Talent requirements. To achieve its vision, GE promotes more engineers in its senior management than its rivals.
Consistency of Talent Management Practices
Talent Management practices must be consistent and synchronous with each other. It is critical not only to invest in advancing the careers of key Talent but also to invest in processes to empower, compensate, and retain them. Human Capital practitioners utilize various tools to ensure consistency of Talent Management practices, including Human Resources satisfaction surveys and qualitative and quantitative data on TM practices implementation.
For example, the success of Siemens is based on consistent monitoring of its systems, processes, and key performance metrics across its subsidiaries. Every element of Human Capital Management is connected, continuously assessed, and linked to rewards. This goes from recruitment of graduates each year, to their orientation, to mentoring and development, to performance evaluation and management, and compensation and benefits.
Integration with Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is regarded as important as vision and mission by renowned global organizations. These companies hold their core values and behavioral standards very high and promote them among their employees through coaching and mentoring. They strive to embed this into their hiring, leadership development, performance management, remuneration, and reward processes / programs. So much so that they consider cultural adaptability a crucial element of their recruitment process—as personality traits and mindsets are hard to develop than technical skills—and evaluate applicants’ behaviors and values rigorously.
For example, among other leading companies, IBM has a special emphasis on values while selecting and promoting people. To ensure consistent values across the board, it organizes regular values jam sessions and employee health index surveys. These sessions encourage open communication and debate on values and organizational culture and their importance among employees.
Interested in learning more about the other pillars of Talent Management, the various approaches to TM? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Pillars of Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
VUCA relates to threats that people and enterprises often encounter. The acronym reflects the constant, dramatically-transforming, and unpredictable world. The concept originated in 1987, based on the theories of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus. The term was first used by U.S. Army War College to describe the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous general conditions globally.
The acronym found traction after 2002, when it was considered an emerging idea to be discussed among the strategic leadership. The term VUCA stands for:
- Volatility
- Uncertainty
- Complexity
- Ambiguity
The 4 VUCA challenges reflect the unpredictable forces of change that affect organizations, necessitating new skills, approaches, and behaviors to mitigate them. The 4 elements of VUCA relate to how people view the situations where they make decisions, formulate plans, respond to challenges, cultivate change, and solve issues.
VUCA is a practical code for anticipation, understanding, preparedness, and intervention in the wake of uncertainty and confusion. One of the biggest challenges of managing in a VUCA world involves team members who resist change. Simply training the leaders on key capabilities isn’t adequate to avoid failures resulting due to not handling the VUCA issues properly. What differentiates sound Leadership from mediocre management is the leaders’ ability to ascertain key elements that prevent them from adopting resilience and flexibility.
In this age of disruption, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity are widespread. These elements will be more prevalent across industries and enterprises in future, and if not managed properly can sap an organization’s and its employees’ strengths.
Let’s discuss these VUCA elements individually.
Volatility
The Volatility element of VUCA talks about the distinct situational categorization of people due to their specific traits or their reactions in particular situations. People react differently in specific settings due to social cues. Volatility describes the influence of situations on stereotypes and social categorization, which is the reason why people perceive others differently.
Two factors connect people to their social identities: Normative fit and Comparative Fit. Normative fit is the degree that a person relates to the stereotypes and norms that others associate with their specific identity. For example, a Hispanic woman cleaning a house does not get gender stereotypes from others in this situation, but when she eats an enchilada ethnic stereotypes emerge and the gender is forgotten. Comparative fit relates to specific traits of a person that are prominent in certain states compared to others, which are obvious as others around a person do not have those traits. For example, a woman in a room full of men stands out, whereas all the men are grouped together.
Uncertainty
The Uncertainty element of VUCA pertains to the unpredictability of information in events, which often occurs in the intention to indicate correlation between events. Uncertainty is often counteracted by using social categorization (stereotypes), as people tend to engage in social categorization when there isn’t much data about an event.
For instance, when there isn’t enough information to clearly appreciate someone’s gender—as in case of an author’s name when discussing written information—majority of people presume the author is a male. Social categorization also occurs in case of a race, when people stereotype a certain race to a particular trait. For example, basketball players are most of the time assumed as black people while golfers are expected to be white.
Complexity
The Complexity element of VUCA relates to the inter-relatedness of several factors in a system. Complexities due to interactions and dependencies within groups and categories bring unexpected results even in a controlled environment. There are certain identities in individuals that are more dominant than others. Other people distinguish these identities, make their assumptions about them, and create stereotypes. However, complexity in a person’s personality makes it difficult to socially categorize that individual accurately.
Different categories trigger in the mind of the observer, creating positive and negative perception. It is that positive perception that the observer is more open-minded despite stereotypes and think past the target’s dominant social trait. Complexities in social identities cause some identities to lessen the noticeability of other identities, making the targets unnoticeable and overlooked.
Interested in learning more about the elements of a VUCA environment, its mitigation, and Robert Johansen’s leadership framework “VUCA Counterweight” or “VUCA PRIME?” You can download an editable PowerPoint on VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Strategy and execution are the 2 critical elements that drive a business. However, leaders often struggle even with defining—let alone devising and executing—an effective strategy. Many of those who are responsible to deal with it fall short of describing how they typically employ it. This failure takes its roots from the fact that there is no clear path associated with strategy.
Strategy is about making sound decisions about unforeseen problems. It’s about selecting the right options—about matters that are often quite ambiguous today but have great significance in the future—based on thorough contemplation, detailed analysis, and creative ideas. Broadly speaking, strategy encompasses these 3 main elements:
- A vision and direction
- A certain position or pattern
- A deliberated Strategic Plan to achieve strategic goals and vision
Great strategists execute their plans, analyze the results, evaluate their actions, and perform course correction based on the outcomes. They are not afraid of even revamping their approach entirely. Senior leaders should clarify their understanding of the concept of strategy and draw attention to the importance of differentiating between the 3 distinct types of strategies before formulating their own course of action:
- General Strategy
- Corporate Strategy
- Competitive Strategy
Let’s delve deeper into the 3 types of strategy.
General Strategy
General Strategy indicates how a specific objective will be achieved, with well-thought-out plans. The focus of this type of Strategy is on ends (objectives and results) and means (the resources we have to achieve the objectives). Strategy and tactics combined bridge the gap between ends and means; where Strategy deals with deploying the resources at our disposal while tactics govern their utilization. A pattern of decisions and actions marks progress from the starting point to achievement of objectives in General Strategy.
Senior executives need to deliberate on the following questions before devising their General Strategy:
- What do we do?
- Why are we here?
- What kind of business are we?
- What kind of business do we want to become?
- What is our purpose? What are the results we seek?
- What is our existing Strategy, is it explicit or tacit?
- What Strategy and plans may bring about the results we want?
- What resources we have at our disposal?
- Are there any constraints in terms of resources that limit our actions?
Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy describes what a company does, the purpose of its existence, and what it aims to become. Corporate Strategy focuses on choices and commitments concerning the markets, business, and the organization. Corporate Strategy classifies the markets and the businesses in which a company will operate. This type of strategy is typically decided in the context of defining the company’s mission and vision.
A detailed assessment of the existing strategy, market, competition and environment is critical for devising the Corporate Strategy. Strategists indicate that there are critical elements that should be factored in while formulating Corporate Strategy. These elements include product or service offerings, resources, marketing and sales approaches, manufacturing capabilities / capacity, customers, distribution channels, technology, type of market and its requirements, and revenue and profit goals.
While formulating Corporate Strategy, senior executives should consider and seek answers to the following questions:
- What is our existing Corporate Strategy?
- Is our Corporate Strategy explicit or tacit?
- What are the critical assumptions that make our existing strategy viable?
- What is going on in the market—in terms of social, political, technical and financial environment?
- What do we seek to accomplish in terms of our growth, size, and profitability targets?
- What markets we are eyeing to compete in?
- What businesses we intend to operate in?
- What locations and geographies will we compete in?
Competitive Strategy
Competitive or Business Strategy specifies for an enterprise the core reason on which it contests its rivals. It depends on an organization’s competences, advantages, and disadvantages compared to the market and the rivals.
Interested in learning more about the General, Corporate, and Competitive Strategies? You can download an editable PowerPoint on The 3 Distinctions of Strategy here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
Manufacturing today entails immediate yet informed decision making. However, with increasing levels of sophistication and production, senior leadership often has limited time to make optimum decisions pertaining to the number of unanticipated issues surfacing from time to time. These issues—if not managed properly and timely—can lead to defects and wastes.
Top global enterprises are utilizing innovation and creative ways to enable prompt decision making. Specifically, they are using Internet of Things (IoT) to effectively handle critical aspects of manufacturing. Successful implementation of a Manufacturing IoT system facilitates in automating key tasks, decisions and processes; curtailing scrap and rework; and enhancing productivity.
People often object to implementing an IoT system by citing other important projects that they are already undertaking and the resource and time constraints as pressing hurdles. To work around these limitations, manufacturers can engage 3rd party consultants having proven expertise in end-to-end successful IoT, Asset Tracking, and manufacturing systems deployment.
Implementing a Manufacturing IoT System leverages immense benefits, including:
- Enhancing the ROI of other programs under way.
- Streamlined and Process Improvement and Robotic Process Automation help prompt informed decisions.
- Managing materials efficiently.
- Adjusting to customer requirements.
- Avoiding costly mistakes and rework.
However, harnessing IoT necessitates careful deliberation and planning. The core requirements to effectively implement a Manufacturing IoT system can be segregated into 2 broad categories:
- Functional Requirements
- System Requirements
Functional Requirements
Functional Requirements (FR) describe the system or its components. FR provide a description of services that the Manufacturing IoT system must offer. FR for Manufacturing IoT may include:
- Control Assets and Administer Asset Properties
- Track Assets Movement
- Setup Locations
- Maintain Equipment Duty Cycles for Maintenance
- Record Raw Material Shelf Life
- Maintain Asset Family and Digital Thread
- Extend Material Shelf Life
- Enable Cutting and Kitting
- Asset Search and Filter
- Maintain Assets Events
- Record History of Events
- Generate New Assets
- Record Cured Kits
- Document Assets
- Allow Synchronization with Current Systems
- Generate Real-time Production Maps
- Enable Integration with Cut Planning Optimization Systems
- Allow Production of Passive RFID Tags Internally
- Create Customized Alerts
System Requirements
All systems require availability of certain software resources, functionalities, or other hardware components. These prerequisites have to be met in the design of a system. Typical System Requirements for manufacturing IoT may include:
- User Authorization
- Quick installation
- Usability
- Integration to Next-generation IoT Platforms
- Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) Ability
Let’s delve deeper into some of the Functional Requirements for now.
Control Assets and Administer Asset Properties
The system should be able to manage multiple assets and add new assets. It should be capable of:
- Creating asset properties, e.g., name, ID and shipment date.
- Editing property labels and show / hide asset properties.
- Automatically adding materials’ expiry date, “remaining exposure time,” “tool autoclave cycles left,” and “tool usage time left.”
Trace Assets Movement
The IoT system should be able to:
- Follow assets location from one site to another during the manufacturing process.
- Allow integration of MAT with RFID and other floor sensors to gather real-time assets’ location and condition data.
- Enable asset location reporting manually, through barcode, or hybrid (barcode and RFID).
Setup Locations
The system should maintain:
- Asset data from multiple sites (locations).
- Assets movement to and fro various sites, reported using RFID or other sensors.
Maintain Equipment Duty Cycles for Maintenance
The IoT manufacturing system should record all maintenance needs and maintenance activity performed on an asset. Specifically it should:
- Keep data on all tools available at various sites with their duty cycles for preventive maintenance.
- Maintain record and generate reports on maintenance activity preformed on a specific tool.
Record Raw Material Shelf Life
The IoT manufacturing system should:
- Automatically calculate raw material and work in process exposure time and date of expiration.
- Maintain assets’ shelf life and generate automated screen notifications, alerts, emails, or SMS.
Interested in learning more about the details of other Functional and System Requirements of a Manufacturing IoT system? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Manufacturing: Internet of Things Implementation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Are you a Management Consultant?
You can download this and hundreds of other consulting frameworks and consulting training guides from the FlevyPro library.
