Lesson 10 - Managing Talent

The tenth and fiinal lesson: Managing Talent.

According to McKinsey & Company, a new wave of digital tools can help companies to focus not only on hiring but also on managing, retaining, and developing employees. Digital labor platforms can pull these tools into an integrated whole as companies widen their labor pools, refine their recruiting and screening methods, and deploy their employees more effectively. Such tools, and the platforms that include them, can put the right person in the right job, identify gaps in skills, help employees as they gain new capabilities, chart career paths, and nurture the development of the next generation of leaders.

There are nine core IT capabilities:

1. Leadership--ensure the IT org. aligns with biz purpose & activities.
2. Biz systems thinking--envision the biz processes made possible through technology.
3. Relationship building--create strong relationships throughout the org. & ensure the org. is engaged in IT issues.
4. Architecture planning--create a coherent technology blueprint.
5. Making technology work--ensure a strong technology innovation, implementation, & maintenance process that creates reliable & effective technology provision.
6. Informed buying--develop & manage the IT sourcing strategy.
7. Contract facilitation--ensure the success of existing IT contracts.
8. Contract monitoring--protect the biz’s current & future contractual position.
9. Vendor development--identify & build the potential added value of IT vendors.
   
   

5 steps in developing IT capabilities. 

1. Create a capability management office.
2. Identify essential IT capabilities.
3. Subdivide capabilities into processes.
4. Assess the maturity level of IT capabilities.
5. Map IT skills onto IT capabilities.

Capability management office should carry out the following activities:

• Define & assign responsibility for all capabilities.
• Develop strategies for capability development.
• Ensure adequate resources & funding.
• Obtain software support.
• Implement a continuous capability improvement approach.
• Develop org.al training plans.
• Report on the status of capability performance.

 Factors in IT work & its context that put pressure on managing IT workers.

• technology is ever evolving & often at a rapid pace of change.
• IT work is project-centric; team members are often juggling dem&s & moving targets for multiple projects.
• specifying the end product of IT work can be challenging, so IT projects may be more of a discovery process than a engineering project.
• in maintenance & support work, workers must use a process of inquiry, intuition, & testing that is difficult to make explicit.
• in IT project work, workloads are often hit by intense bursts of activity as team members try to make project deadlines.
• IT workers may be virtually distributed yet interdependent.
• org's demand a lot from their technology in terms of reliability & availability; this puts significant stress on IT workers.
• the evolution of technology has created an increasingly complex IT architecture that dem&s significant levels of knowledge to maintain.
• the highest value IT workers are those with both general technical knowledge & firm-specific knowledge.

Important human resource goals for managing IT workers.

• provide IT workers a high degree of flexibility, as well as discretion in maintaining the balance between this flexibility & completing work accord. to schedule.
• provide the resources to ensure skills keep pace with evolving technology.
• align the needs of IT professionals with both the org.’s goals & culture, & the technical work.
• span boundaries (that is, build relationships with IT clients) to anticipate & manage IT work dem&s.
• manage performance to ensure IT workers underst& their work priorities & have the tools they need to perform their work.
• work to reduce turnover in IT workers; retain workers with firm-specific knowledge.

 Elements of an org.al culture to nurture talented managers.

• well-articulated & instantiated values
• a climate of trust
• empowerment
• clear & frequent communication
• accountability

  5 sets of behaviours can be considered indicative of IT professionalism.

1. Comportment. This is one's appearance & manners on the job. IT workers should be aware that perceptions of professionalism are sometimes just as important as actual behaviour on the job.
2. Preparation. For an IT worker, preparation means having not just the technical skills to do a job, but also a good underst&ing of the biz context in which the work is taking place.
3. Communication. Good communication skills are a fundamental part of all professional relationships, contributing a great deal to the effectiveness of IT work. Good communication comprises a number of subskills. First, IT workers must know how to write. “Responsiveness is another much-desired trait in an IT professional, & living up to a reasonable st&ard in this area ensures that the IT worker is perceived as being in control of his or her work & able to manage commitments. Communication concerning commitments is especially important. IT workers should document important commitments in writing & include any caveats that might change what they have promised” (McKeen & Smith, 20one2, p. 256).
4. Judgment. “IT workers need to know how to make the right choices for the org. as a whole, which means being able to take a strategic view of what they are being asked to do. . . . Good judgment involves being honest about the full implications of a decision, stating concerns & objections, listening to the other points of view, negotiating a direction forward that everyone can live with, & documenting what was agreed” (McKeen & Smith, 20one2, p. 57).
5. Attitude. Attitude is an important part of professionalism, which is “about doing a job to the best of one’s ability & about doing the right thing for the company. People who care have a ‘can do’ approach to their work, seek to constantly improve their skills, take reasonable risks, & take responsibility & accountability for their work. They are willing to invest their time & energy in helping others & ‘go the extra mile’. The best people are those who believe they can do it & look for challenges, rather than those who just have particular skills. “A professional is also willing to accept criticism & coaching for personal growth & works well in a team, sharing the credit & not blaming others when problems arise. Other characteristics of a positive attitude include calmness, stability, & self control” 

Ways IT managers can promote professionalism among IT staff. 

• Get consensus on the meaning of professionalism. Because it is a "soft" skill, professionalism means different things in different org's. A team meeting to identify the key elements of professionalism in a particular company can help clarify expectations & develop group values around these behaviours.
• Articulate values. It is pointless to preach one set of values & reward others. Ideally, corporate values should be consistently upheld throughout the company. However, where they are not, try to articulate where they differ & help IT workers to make effective judgments.
• Provide resources to support professionalism. Ideally, these should include training, but where this is not possible, make books or speakers who will address this topic available to your staff. Similarly, providing some administrative support can be very useful in helping people to appear professional to those outside IT. At a minimum, ensure that resources such as document templates, editors, & guidelines for e-mail are made available for staff to use.
• Grow professionalism in small steps. People will not develop these skills overnight. Managers should work with individuals in their groups on specific areas of professionalism then provide them with the coaching & support they need.
• Offer intensive mentoring for staff who are willing to change. Employees who appear to be more malleable & willing to listen should be given attention from a manager. This can help them develop professional skills more rapidly.
• Help people find their niche. No employee (even those who appear to be unwilling to change) should be sidelined; doing so will only leave them increasingly further behind in a rapidly evolving workplace. A better strategy is to help them identify where they feel they can best make a contribution & to help them develop the particular professional skills they will need.
• Weed out people whose attitudes are destructive. If people are not willing to change, managers must try to get rid of them or at least contain them in the short term. A longer-term plan must be put in place for dealing with these individuals, or they could risk poisoning their whole team's effectiveness. .

Finally, McKinsey & Company states,online labor platforms are already useful for more than just recruiting. Beyond the hiring process, companies can use digital tools to develop a pipeline of employees with diverse skills. As a result, organizations can not only get smarter about the workers they team together and deploy for specific initiatives and tasks but also address the capabilities they will need in the future.

References

Austin. R.D., Nolan, R.L. & O'Donnell, S. (2009). The Adventures of an IT Leader. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. 

Lund, S., Manyika, J., & Robinson, K. (n.d.). Managing talent in a digital age. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/managing-talent-in-a-digital-age

McKeen, J.D. & Smith, H.A. (2012). IT Strategy: Issues and Practices (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.