Catalyst | Dexterity
D
How to
realign your
talent
Jonathan Trevor
For your organisation to thrive in the face of disruption, bold
realignment will be necessary, writes Saïd Business School’s
Jonathan Trevor.
Out of the disruption stemming from the global COVID-19 pandemic
comes a rare opportunity for established businesses: to change the
fundamentals of their enterprise for the better, and in ways that might
not ordinarily be possible or palatable. Whether your organisation is
a commercial, public-sector or social enterprise (or a hybrid of all
three), the question to ask is “what should be different (potentially
radically) about it and its talent to ensure it is equipped to succeed in
the long term?”
All leaders should adopt a strategic approach to aligning their organisation
over the short and long term. Strategic alignment is where all elements
of an enterprise – including its business strategy and its people – are
arranged (and rearranged) in such a way as to support the fulfilment of
its purpose.
These and other elements form an enterprise value chain, which is only
as strong as its weakest link. While a business’s purpose is its enduring
‘north star’, other links in the value chain are dynamic and should change
in step with the external environment, especially in times of disruption.
Misalignment
between an
enterprise’s business
strategy and its
talent limits its
performance
Considerations for talent leaders
There is no universal, one-size-fits-all prescription for effective talent
management. When realigning their organisation for the long term, talent
leaders should be guided by their unique circumstances, plus the two
fundamental principles of vertical and horizontal alignment.
1
Vertical alignment. Vertical alignment refers to the degree to which
the enterprise’s valuable organisational resources and functions,
including talent management, support its business strategy. For
instance, what are the talent requirements (in the form of employee
behaviour, skills and knowledge) of your business strategy over the
next five to 10 years?
Strategies maximising economies of scale (selling as much product
as possible at the least possible cost of operation) require very
different employee attributes to, for example, a strategy emphasising
customer responsiveness and customisation (even personalisation)
of products and services.
Efficiency-based strategies typically require high levels of routine,
close teamwork, intense productivity and error-reducing behaviour.
By contrast, customer-centric strategies require people who are
nimble enough to respond to different or changing customer
preferences, who show a tolerance for ambiguity and who are
self-starters, able to show initiative. Misalignment between an
enterprise’s business strategy and its talent limits its performance.
How are you trying to respond to the demands of customers and
stand apart from competitors? What is the ideal form and function
of your talent?
2
Horizontal alignment. Horizontal alignment refers to the degree to
which an organisation’s talent – its core human capital – is integrated
with other valuable resources. For instance, how well is your talent
strategy integrated with your technology strategy?
Beyond the automation of routine tasks, advanced artificial
intelligence will be used, increasingly, to augment complex nonroutine
and cognitive tasks that were previously solely performed
by humans. Different functional strategies and capabilities – from
HR (human capital) to real estate (physical capital) and operations
(organisational capital) to informational technology (technological
capital) should complement each other as much as possible. Together,
they support the development of a business’s core capabilities,
allowing it to implement its strategy effectively.
However, in reality, functional strategies often collide due to
fragmented working, cross-functional ‘turf wars’, competing
assumptions and the absence of shared strategic direction. The result
is to introduce harmful misalignment into the engine room of your
enterprise. How well aligned are your corporate functions? How well
does your talent strategy support your organisation’s technology
strategy and vice versa?
Be bold
Of course, diversified enterprises with multiple lines of business may
require more than one talent strategy. Each needs to be vertically and
horizontally aligned to be fit for purpose. Talent leaders should segment
their human capital – their talent – to the same degree as their colleagues
in marketing segment their customers.
Times of upheaval often result in significant change and in new ways
of doing things. Some organisations will always emerge from severe
disruption stronger than others; some will even emerge stronger than
they were previously. Where they do, it will be because their leaders have
embraced change and envisioned how to realign their enterprise to enable
it to thrive in the future.
Dr Jonathan Trevor advises leaders in all sectors and is an associate
professor of management practice at the University of Oxford’s
Saïd Business School and author of Align: A Leadership Blueprint
for Aligning Enterprise Purpose, Strategy and Organization.