People processes fail to keep pace with changing business environment...

That's the word from The Conference Board after sharing insights from their "The State of Human Capital 2012" report. A joint effort between The Conference Board and McKinsey & Company, Human Capital (HC) professionals continue to be stymied by the environment and that is leading to frustration in the ranks. After a multitude of studies since McKinsey & Company's groundbreaking article "The War for Talent" that have shared the same insights as previous studies...we appear to find ourselves no closer than we were 10, 5 or even 1 year ago.

While the report does provide context on this state of our profession, it still takes the "glass half full" approach when looking at the opportunities available to the profession to continue to make impacts on the business first and the profession second. Those opportunities are:

1. Anticipate and plan for the HC of tomorrow: Workplace demographics changes and the "virtual" workplace are reshaping work today and will continue in to the future.

2. Secure a steady, reliable pipeline for skilled workers - and tomorrow's leaders: The acknowledgement that the war for talent continues and will only increase in the future.

3 Develop strategies to re-energize employees' attitudes toward what they do and what the organization stands for: Research continues to point to engaged employees being more productive. While it is considered "soft data" in many respects by senior executives and leaders, it is still an area to focus attention on in the future.

4. Ensure that HC becomes more agile: The business environment speed of change requires HC to be increasingly agile and adaptable. That does not mean faster at transactional activities, but those things that drive business impact.

All is not bleak and apocalyptic, though December 21st is right around the corner. It does require HC leaders to be more forward leaning. If you don't have those skills...find someone on your team who is...your survival may depend on it.

Cheers,
Keith

J. Keith Dunbar is a Global Talent Management Leader and Doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Chief Learning Officer (CLO) program...Creator of Talent, Leadership Capability, and Culture Change...He can be found connecting and sharing knowledge on Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter: JKeithDunbar
LinkedIn: J. Keith Dunbar
Google+: J. Keith Dunbar
Blog: DNA of Human Capital

The opinions or views expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the views of the SAIC.

Flexible Human Capital Response Options...

Greetings,

The world is filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) as I have discussed several times. This kind of environment makes agility and adaptability a premium in being able to deal with this environment and prevent what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "Black Swan Events." Taleb's theory "refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences."

The United States Intelligence Community (IC) and military understand the importance of trying to identify Black Swan events early and prepare plans that allow commanders Flexible Deterrent Options (FDO) in the deployment of available forces. These show of force operations usually involve the build-up or deployment of forces, an increase in readiness and level of activity. The concept of Adaptive Planning provides the following:

"The adaptive planning concept calls for development of a range of options during deliberate planning that can be adapted to a crisis as it develops. Where the crisis builds slowly enough to allow, appropriate responses made in a timely fashion can deter further escalation or even diffuse the situation to avoid or limit conflict. Where such options fail to deter or there is not time to execute options, a stronger response may be required to protect vital interests. The eventuality of attack without prior warning must also be considered."

So in understanding this approach and why it is used in the Department of Defense, I turn to Human Capital Management(HCM). The current economic environment has created challenges in looking at strategy as a "long-term" need. In some respects during the initial stages of the financial meltdown...strategy was emerging on a weekly basis in many organizations. In that context, it was difficult for HCM to be proactive and support the business and really precipitated reactive tendencies.

So this provides the context for application of adaptive planning in creating flexible human capital response options (FHCRO) in private and public sector organizations. HCM leaders must start by getting into the organizations strategic planning cycle. Playing a proactive role in this process by understanding the organizations short-, mid-, or long-term strategy allows for defining the human capital capabilities (knowledge and skills) required to execute the business strategy. This however, is just to start...to create FHCROs, HCM leaders should conduct scenario planning sessions that seek to identify the most and least likely human capital situations aligned to the strategy. This allows thinking about potential Black Swan events and their effect on the organization's human capital.

By combining scenario planning and business requirements definition, the HCM leader can develop a series of tailored FHCROs that are agile and adaptable enough to adjust to quickly changing events. Because in the future...organizations that can adjust the fastest to VUCA environments will be the ones best positioned to excel.

Cheers,
Keith

Twitter: JKeithDunbar
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jkeithdunbar
DNA of Human Capital: http://dna-of-humancapital.blogspot.com/

Real-time Brand Management...Implications to Real-time Talent Acquisition

In John Sviokla's Harvard Business Review blog about the horrible Virgin America's flight on March 13, he discusses the power of real-time brand management. This was driven by one passenger, David Martin, the CEO of Kontain.com creating a perfect storm around the incident.

During the four hours the plane was on the tarmac in Newburgh, NY, he documented and shared it with the world. This led to Martin negotiating on behalf of the other passengers a full refund and $100 voucher (Virgin America's CEO C. David Cush originally only offered the $100 voucher).

So that is the sordid story of the flight and passengers...The interesting part is Sviokla's statement below...

"Firms may "own" their brands, but brands really live in the heads of their consumers. Companies must constantly nurture and actively manage their brands at the speed customers form opinions about them."

In a world so globally connected at mind numbing speeds, implications of these type of incidents is "real-time" and can have a major impact on the bottomline for a company if it does not act quickly to address it...just ask Toyota.

While there are no studies, I suspect that these type of incidents also have an impact on "Real-time Talent Acquisition." How many people with the right knowledge and skills to help execute Virgin America's business strategy may have been thinking about joining the company and now are not? We will never know, but managing brand for talent acquisition can have similar short-term and long-term impact on an organization's growth, market share, etc.

Companies must manage their brands at the speed that talent, both inside and outside the organization, form opinions about them. CHCOs, CHROs, and CTOs must prepare to make adjustments in talent acquisition strategies at the same speed that these type of incidents occur for an organization. In the new talent war that is approaching...the ability for Human Capital Management leaders to be agile and adaptable in dealing with these types of incidents will be critical.