Talent Management in Practice: perspectives from the frontline
By Jane Wharmby
What is Talent Management? And what’s it like to be a Talent Manager? These are the
questions I asked senior Talent Management professionals as part of a recent research
project. The term Talent Management was popularised by a McKinsey article in Harvard
Business Review in 2001 and since then has become part of ‘management speak’. But what
does it actually mean in practice? The aim of the project was to talk to Talent Managers
themselves about how they define what they do, and what they see as the particular
challenges of the Talent Manager’s role. The initial research was undertaken with 15 Talent
Managers from a range of sectors including financial services, oil and gas, construction,
media services, the NHS and the charity sector. The emerging themes have since been
explored with larger groups at a series of events.
The ‘talented few’ or the ‘vital many’?
The first clear finding was that - despite the huge amount that has been written on the
subject (Google the term and you’ll get over 18,000,000 hits) – there is no one shared
understanding of what Talent Management is. Organisations are taking very different
approaches.
At one end of the spectrum, Talent Managers described Talent Management as an exclusive
activity, focussed on the organisation’s senior leadership, the top 100 or top 250 for
example, and their successors. For others the pool of talent was wider than this, but still a
subset of the organisation’s staff. As one Talent Manager put it:
“Where I’m trying to take the agenda is much more around ‘what are the business
critical roles?’... And that might not necessarily be just the most senior roles... So it’s
about looking at the business strategy and saying: ‘What are the roles that really
drive value for our organisation?’”
At the other end of the spectrum, Talent Management was seen as a totally inclusive
activity, developing the talent in everybody in the organisation:
“It’s about everybody. It’s about pushing everybody to be the best that they can be,
because if everybody becomes that 5% better at what they do, then the business as
a whole gets a real competitive edge.”
Talent Management in practice
The talent managers I spoke to were very enthusiastic about what they did, emphasising the
strategic and creative nature of their role and gaining significant personal satisfaction from
their one to one work with talented employees.
They also, however, described a number of tensions or dilemmas that they were balancing.
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Opaque or transparent?
The first was related to the lack of clarity around what Talent Management is. Most Talent
Managers felt there was confusion within their organisation around Talent Management
and exactly what ‘talent’ is. Some talked about ‘cloak and dagger’ approaches, ‘old boys’
networks’ and processes that happened ‘behind closed doors’ – and felt that organisations
needed to be introducing more transparency into a process that was currently too opaque.
Several people spoke about broadening the scope of their talent management activities to
address issues of diversity, inclusivity and employee engagement.
Global and Local, Long and short term
Many interviewees talked about the difficulties inherent in trying to satisfy both global and
local talent priorities. As the Head of Talent at a major corporate put it:
“I’m in the middle, between keeping the corporate bit going, and influencing HR
Directors for the business groups to kind of keep the peace and try to get them to
have a more corporate approach.”
… indeed, research has shown that tensions between central and regional interests are a
significant cause of talent management failure. Closely related to this, is the balancing act
involved in satisfying both long and short term talent management needs in the
organisation.
Process and action
A further tension that many people experienced, particularly in bigger organisations, was in
achieving the right balance between process and action:
“The talent identification process is hugely administrative. Last year it seemed to
take about 6 months. There’s far too much focus on that and not enough on what
are we actually doing this for.”
Or, as another Talent Manager put it:
“It’s really easy for Talent Management to be about putting people in a 9-box grid
and actually not doing anything with them – and that’s not Talent Management.”
Who is responsible?
There was also considerable tension around where responsibility for talent management lies
in an organisation. Talent Managers recognised the key role that line managers have to
play, but felt they were ill-equipped or not interested in doing so:
“You’re dependent on the line to deliver a lot. So the line manager is critical... and
yet the average line manager’s understanding of their role in Talent Management is
quite poor.”
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“I suppose my frustration is probably with line managers not doing their job. You
can do so much, but it needs to be supported and driven by the line manager.”
More surprising perhaps was how Talent Managers described their relationship with
colleagues in HR:
“One of the things that makes life a bit more difficult for us is that sometimes we’re
working through the HR managers. The HR managers can become a blocker.”
“I struggle at times to get close enough to the business because the HR business
partners feel very precious about their business areas.”
A challenging role
So, what is Talent Management? From talking to Talent Managers it is evident that the term
means very different things in different organisations. It is widely held to be critical to an
organisation’s success – yet clearly there is no one successful talent management formula.
Successful Talent Managers have to have a good understanding of their organisation’s
business strategy and the ability to design and implement talent management strategies
that will contribute to that. Well-developed stakeholder management and influencing skills
seem to be vital in order to work successfully with the range of priorities and personalities
involved – as well as the personal ability to live with, and navigate through, the ambiguities
and tensions that are inherent in the Talent Management role.
Jane Wharmby is Business Development Director at the Centre for Customised Executive
Development, Cranfield School of Management
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