Porter Novelli Case Study

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Porter Novelli Case Study

Companies spend a lot of money and other resources on training their employees and ensuring that they retain their best talent. Talent management in companies is important, as it helps businesses save a lot of money. The main objective of talent management is to ensure that companies retain their critical employees by initiating and implementing activities such as target training and talent mapping (Miller et al., 2007). Companies realize the importance of ensuring that they raise their talent to the next level of leadership. For them to do this, they have to recognize the need for internal transformation, and the company’s achievement towards the strategies and goals that it sets. Strategic leaders have an important role to play in performance management. They identify people with the potential for leadership, and they look for ways to engage the people by suggesting different programs to help them achieve their goals. Strategic leaders should identify the best and most effective programs of developing leaders. They should consider different individual traits, the available resources to initiate the changes, and the potential benefits that the company seeks to gain.

Porter Novelli’s senior management comprised of the CEO, president and chief strategy officer led the company’s strategic assessment and visioning process. They developed three initiatives, which would help them increase their business capacity on a global scale. They wanted to introduce a new approach to the way they handled the client approach planning, a structure that was more focused towards the client, and a greater emphasis on operating interdependence between the international offices and clients. The company did not have a leadership competency model, and their performance management was cumbersome. The company’s senior management recognized the role of the human resource department in ensuring the success of their strategy. They hired a chief talent officer, who would assist the human resource department in implementing the strategy. The talent officer recognized the need to include the employees in ensuring that the company would achieve its vision. The talent officer involved the senior management before beginning the process, and after completing the development of the strategy. He ensured that everyone in the company, regardless of their level, maintained individual responsibility. The talent officer used the Drotter’s Leadership Pipeline approach (Goldsmith & Carter, 2009).

The Drotter’s Leadership Pipeline is a result-based approach, which helps companies implement new business strategies. It emphasizes rigor and personal accountability in the company’s operations, and recognizes the importance of leadership in determining performance. The model not only looks at the leadership potential, but it also measures the leadership performance. It recognizes that the results of the measurement change as a person moves to different stages in the organization. It identifies different stages of a person’s development at the leadership passage. These levels include managing self, managing others, functional managers, business manager, group manager, and enterprise manager. People change as they gain more experience at the workplace. They acquire more skills, and they learn the most effective ways of doing their jobs. The model does not encourage the need to import leaders to the organization. Instead, it recognizes the need for the company to grow and develop its own leaders (Charan et al., 2001).

The company will not benefit if it uses simple training programs to develop leaders. Organizations do not benefit when they poach leaders from other organizations (Charan et al., 2001). Organizations, which have resulted to using this approach, have often failed, as the poached leaders do not ensure the same results. This is because the leaders experience a different organizational culture, and encounter different people in the organization. This is because the process of growing leaders requires commitment from the management, in terms of time and money resources that the company will use. For an organization to build leaders, it needs to identify potential leaders at an early stage, give them roles and responsibilities that will enable them to grow, give them useful feedback based on the work they have done, and coach them to achieve their potential.

This strategy is important in recognizing the abilities and capabilities of individuals in the organization. This is because of its emphasis the role of leaders in ensuring that the organization performs well, and that the employees deliver the expected results. Leaders take on challenges in addition to their present responsibilities. They are able to account for their own success, as well as for the success of others. The performance leadership strategy identifies seven standards of performance, which include customer, management, operating, and leadership results, relationships, social responsibility, and individual technical competence. An effective leader aims at ensuring that the employees are able to achieve these standards.

The model focuses on the results of leaders, and not their behavior. This enables the management to examine the shortfalls, which are causing the leaders to become ineffective and produce poor results. The model recognizes the importance, value and effects of change in a person’s career development. It recognizes that people change, as they get more accustomed to, and knowledgeable about their work. It supports the idea of advancement in work, and the desire of the employees to grow and develop in their careers. When managers use this model, it gives them a chance to show the employees that it notices their hard work and the contributions they make in the organization. The model recognizes that people need different skills at different levels. Managers have to ensure that employees have these skills before they advance to other levels.

In Porter Novelli, the talent officer recognized that implementing the company’s vision would be futile, if the management did not engage the employees at all levels. He engaged the employees by showing them and making them understand the company’s strategy. He showed the employees how this strategy would affect them. He specified the four entitlements to all the employees. Using these entitlements, the employees were able to know what the management expected from them, how they defined success, how the management would measure them, how they would benefit if they achieved the results, and whether the management would give them the resources they needed to overcome any challenges and achieve the results.

Different companies use various talent management strategies. The Drotter Leadership Pipeline strategy is just one of the approaches that companies use. This strategy is limited because it is oriented towards research, and it does not consider other elements such as behavior or environment, which can determine leadership. However, this strategy is effective if an organization adopts it in a way that suits it best, considering the unique elements of the organization. Talent management is important in organizations, because it helps the management recognize the different skills, capabilities, abilities, and the potential of the employees, in achieving the organization’s strategies.

Although the company will spend many resources in managing talent, it seeks to benefit in the end because the employees will improve the companies’ productivity, and ensure that the company remains competitive in the market. It encourages learning and development, as well as ensuring that the company gets value for its money. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the strategy used is effective, as this will ensure that there is no wastage of resources. Moreover, an ineffective and poorly constructed strategy can lead to disastrous results to the management (Silzer, 2009).

An effective talent management strategy is one that will retain employees in the company and reduces cases of staff turnover. The organization implementing the strategy must be sure of its objectives. This will help it define the roles and expectations of all the people in the organization. An effective strategy will increase the organization’s performance. When evaluating talent management strategies, one should consider the strategic, operational, customer, and financial perspectives. The strategy has to be in line with the organization’s strategy, values, mission, and vision.

The strategy has to integrate well with the organization’s systems. The management should consider the areas where it will apply and implement the strategy. An organization has to realize the changing role of the HR department, once it implements the strategy. Most effective performance strategies change the functions and roles of the HR department, by combining different roles. It has to consider the expectations of different stakeholders such as the customers and the employees. The management has to consider the financial perspective, in terms of the strategy’s contribution to the market shares, market expansion, and profitability (Silzer et al., 2009).

There are different types of data collection and assessment methods, which one can use. People choose between quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting data. Quantitative methods of data collection include surveys assessment instruments, and performance records. When one uses quantitative data, he or she has to analyze the data. This requires the use of descriptive statistics, graphical representation, and multivariate analysis. Qualitative data collection methods include data collected from interviews, and results from focus groups. A person can choose to use existing data such as previous surveys and interviews. One can also choose to collect and gather the data that he will need. He has to consider the required level of the data, and the period allocated to collect the data (Silzer et al., 2009).

References:

Charan, R., Drotter, J. S., & Noel, L. J. (2001). The leadership pipeline: How to build the leadership-powered company. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

Goldsmith, M., & Carter, L. (2009). Best practices in talent management: How the world’s leading corporations manage, develop, and retain top talent. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

Millar, B., Armstrong, D., & Zoehrer, R. (2007). Building and integrated talent management strategy. Retrieved from http://www.zanett.com/assets/pdf/wp_datasheets/Economist-White-Paper-building-an-integrated-talent-management-strategy.pdf

Silzer, R., Israel, E. S., & Dowell, E. B. (2009). Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons