Talent Management

Diving into the complex world of Project Management has openned my eyes to a whole new world of processes, principles, and practices. Fortunately for the young and energetic PM student there are many resources available to click through. One in particular is the Project Manager Institute. This web site is chalked full of information, links, courses and learning blocks. Everything you might need to know about PM can be found on this site or directly linked to it.

For my first blog of this course I have chosen to report on Talent Management. Discovering the TM portion of PMI led me to a page that describes the benefits of TM for organizations, career paths for project and program managers, and online training and tutorials to sharpen management tools and techniques. I can imagine the importance of not only recruiting and hiring talented PMs, but retaining the talent within an organization. After all, Processes do not drive programs... people do. The better an organization manages the talent they have the better the organization becomes.

I found an interesting conference paper written by Ellen Decker titled, People matter: Know your talent which served to identify talent management as an offshoot entity of traditional human resource management. Decker boldly states that "Without talented, motivated individuals, project management processes mean nothing" (Decker, 2014). She quoted a study conducted by Korn-Ferry that discovered almost half of global executives cited TM as the single most important corporate strategy, yet 35% have no strategy in place. It is interestng that such a high value is placed on TM with such a low percentage of execs actually incorporating TM strategies. 

Decker defines the term talent management as "the sum of strategies, processes, and systems designed to attract, develop, and retain employees in general and more specifically, project managers" (Decker, 2014). For me, the key word in that definition is retain. It is not enough to develop, train, and attract talent to an organization. That seems to me like half the battle. The other half is in retention. What good is it to build up good talent only to see them move on to your competitor?

"Success is dependent on leaders understanding that better talent management does not come from having better HR processes or department. I t comes mostly from having leaders and management at all levels who embrace a talent management mindset" (Decker, 2014). In other words, talent management is everyone's responsibility wihin an organization. Sir Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic, was quoted, "Train your people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to". His leadership philosophy can be attributed to the success of his company. Treat people well, create an environment that makes them want to stay, and continuously seek to get better at what you do. 

Decker makes a fine arguement for taking care of your people. She discusses a broad range of techniques and tools that can be employed to retain talent. In the long run, it is not enough to have good people working for you on a short term basis. Managing your talent is a vital aspect for growth and prosperity in all markets.

JP