The purpose of Talent Management Process (TM) is to create a competitive advantage in the dynamic VUCA environment. Another major purpose is developing leaders for tomorrow from within the organization.

In this quest, organizations first look at the 3×3 grid model for getting the talent pool. The next step is to go for development center to assess eligibility of members in the talent pool for elevation to the next level.

At this juncture, it would be helpful to look at the organization structure five years hence and actually plot the organization chart. This can be done by facilitating a group of senior people (Functional Heads) in the organization. Keeping the five year business plan in the context there need to be freewheeling on the ideas to develop a structure de-novo. This is a difficult exercise, however, will pay rich dividends once complete.

This organization chart can then be fine-tuned by the board of directors and the final version of the same becomes a North Star. This picture shows the slots which can be manned by existing people and those boxes (normally marked in red) which need to be filled up by either internal talent or external hiring.

What prompted me to write this article is that in my consulting experience, I came across a company which has not done this (or they had a nebulous idea of the future organization chart). The net result was that there were about eight people who were found eligible for elevation to the next position in the Development Center (DC).

In the absence of clear-cut position and roles, to which these people could have been moved, there was a problem now and while they were expecting and waiting for the promotion, four out of the eight people resigned from the company and went elsewhere to higher positions. The remaining four were then elevated and given different roles.

Thus the investment in the DC could not be realized and for the company it was really a loss of valuable assets. I had to then start the identification of talent pool from a fresh slate. While this was being done along with the board, future org. structure was curated, using organization design principles. Things are in better control now.

In addition to the above exercise two more processes were set in motion. One is critical skills gap analysis and the other one succession planning.

Moral of the story – Make the future organization chart (five years hence) in line with the five years business plan, before investing in talent management processes particularly DC.

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