Talent building is a ‘long game’. But how long and how difficult is it? Efficient factories are daunting to build. First, is land assessment, acquisition, and preparation. Second, is technology selection, equipment purchase, layout, and installation. The third and toughest part is manpower planning, employee recruitment, and most important, skilling, training, and motivation to deliver. Fourth comes the grand concertino of assembling parts of the jigsaw before commissioning the factory. Final, is operation of the new plant on an optimum basis for efficiency and effectiveness. All this can take a decade—maybe more.
An experienced manufacturing/project manager will confirm that the first two of the above five steps follow the logic or science of engineering. But the last three concern people and follow the art of human engineering: how to recruit, train, and continuously motivate people for quality and productivity improvements.
To build and sustain a company management cadre from top leadership downwards is difficult and time-consuming. The talent process follows the rather imprecise art of judging how to develop human beings—from recruitment to evaluation, from creating talent density to achieving talent portability, defining what a manager’s responsibility is to hold the manager accountable, and finally, to advance the best talent out of well-honed bench strength. These processes do not bear a direct cause-and-effect connection, unlike action and reaction in physics. Rather the response occurs to a series of initiations over a period with the law of unintended consequences operating.
The closest, though imperfect, parallel to leadership development in a company, is parenting in a family. As we all know, parenting continues all the way from infancy onwards. The parent is 24 X 7 at the job, mentally and psychologically. There is no intermission or remission. Indeed, a parent’s involvement with the progeny never ceases. Rightly or wrongly, even when the progeny reaches adulthood, the parent’s care and concern for their well-being continues.
In my experience, the two toughest jobs in the world are perhaps excellence in parenting and building leadership talent for the long-term. Just like parenting cannot and should not be left to just one parent or to grandparents, talent development cannot and must not be left exclusively to either HR or to the CEO. Talent development is a core part of the responsibilities of any manager. The distinguishing mark of a fine company is the glorious jugalbandi (duet) of the operating management and HR.
A rigorous discipline of planning and pursuit of talent excellence is weak or even absent in Indian companies. Quite often, there exists no defined process. Where there is a semblance of process, it tends to be personality-driven rather than process-driven. It is worthwhile for corporates to work on this potential weak spot.
Benchmarking processes against the best-in-class is a good way forward, just as management would do for total quality or productivity. Too often, the chief executive officer leaves this complex task to Personnel/HR, and deploys personal energies on other equally important corporate issues. The metaphor of comparing talent management and parenting imaginatively highlights why excellence in talent management is among the toughest of corporate jobs.
Both require a rigorous and sustained process discipline, soaked in a warm soup of empathy and emotion.
A few years ago, some faculty members of Bhavan’s SPJIMR and I conducted research on Shapers of Business Institutions. Six companies participated in the research: L&T, HDFC, Kotak, Marico, TCS, and Biocon. One question asked to the chief executive officers and leaders was about how much of their time went into “reflecting, thinking, and planning of management talent”. The answers that we got ranged from 25 to 40 per cent. Those numbers are astonishingly high, but the answers offered a clue about how much top leaders value their own contribution to developing other leaders. An individual becomes a top leader with a principal responsibility being to develop other leaders for the organisation.
I experienced how talent management was nurtured at Hindustan Unilever, and tangentially witnessed this aspect in companies like Tata Consultancy, Tata Steel, and Titan. I am certainly impressed by the care and time leaders and HR bestow on nurturing and coaching talent within these companies. One measure of success and capability is that, over several decades and successions, such companies can present more than one internal candidate to take over a vacancy without hesitation and without pause.
In both parenting and leadership development, there is a need for a rigorous process that has been fermented in sensitivity and compassion. The processes must be as thorough as business and financial budgeting—with tight timelines, milestone markers, evaluations, discussions, challenges, innovation and calculated risk-taking.
Execution is undoubtedly demanding. Just as the CFO is the custodian of financial budgeting, the CHRO should be the safe keeper of the talent planning process. Talent planning and review should form an integral part of the business planning process.
Too often in companies, these are two disconnected processes. Talent development demands intuitive considerations—the human element—to a much greater magnitude than working on budgets with numbers and figures. The cauldron is far more complex.
India is blessed to possess great leadership talent, but organisations must figure out how to cultivate and curate that talent.
R Gopalakrishnan
Author and business commentator. His fifty-year professional career was in HUL and Tata