Talent Development in A-Maze-ment
🎢 What is your favorite ride at an amusement park?
Is it a🎢 or 🎡 or 🎠 or maybe 🚂 ?
🎢 What is it about that ride that gets you all positively jittery with excitement?
🎢 Now think about talent development, respectively career development, now answer honestly …
🎢 Do you have the same sense of excited anticipation … or does it rather fill you with 👹 trepidation?
Well, in my not so humble opinion, career growth should be exhilarating — not debilitating. So what is getting in the way of the positive excitement?
As we think of amusement park’s design, the approach to have something for everybody, the attention to the needs / wants / desires of their park visitors, the ability to interlay familiar experiences with new and novel ones, what insights can we glean and apply to talent development?
My wonderful co-captain for this A-Maze Transformation Passport port-of-call Martin Mason, CEO and Co-Founder of Unleashed and The Arena Network and I think: Quite a lot!
The Tale of Two Parks: 🛂 Traditional vs. 🎢 A-Mazement
🛂 The Traditional Talent Development Park
🛂The traditional talent development park… so uhm, does anyone even know how to get a park admission pass?
Many organizations built up their talent development processes based on a supply chain model of talent. This aim of this model is that, talent readily available, to be able to slot into an open position, at the time of an organization’s need.
So basically, it is kind of like Elf on a Shelf, but only with 2–5% of an organization’s population. Often referred to as Goldfish, so well, these are the Goldfish on a Shelf.
The assumption is that the Goldfish being taken off of the talent shelf are solely vested in upwards career (or title progression) and will say “yes” when offered positions of upward, internal mobility are made available. AND that their current manager will let them go into this career promotion with a smile, handshake, and without stressing too much as to what this move means for their particular team or organization.
Unfortunately, this traditional model is fraught with a number challenges. One of the biggest one, is that the 🛂 Traditional Talent Development park has rules kind of like Fight Club, e.g. “You do not talk about Fight Club”. So basically, it is a super secret park, that everyone knows about but nobody really knows what goes on. What folks see of the 🛂 Traditional Talent Development park is that executive fly in, ensconce themselves in a conference room, have some super secret way of sorting their Goldfish into 9 different bowls, and then they fly back out and leave the park; and no one outside of the executives knows what was decided. The least of which are the Goldfish on the Shelf, who unfortunately more often than not, do not even know that they are in a bowl and being developed.
In our A-Maze Talent Development in A-Mazement session, we asked our attendees to get creative and draw some metaphors as to how they would redesign the 🛂 Traditional Talent Development park.
In summary: “Watchout 🧸, there are 🦹🏽♀️ employers, ready to help the 👑 across the bridge 🌁”
🎢 Talent Development in A-Mazement Park
So based on these learnings and insights, what WOULD a 🎢 Talent Development in A-Mazement Park look like?
Well, like our wonderful a-maze shipmate Jane Moors, from Outerbox Thinking aptly said, it is “facinating: each one of us lean into our favorite park rides in real life — and in learning”
So, want to know more about what a Talent Development in A-Mazement park would look like? Well, get out your 🍿 as here is your…
Ticket to Ride: Talent Development in A-Mazement
Further Thoughts on Talent Development & Career Growth
RCIRCLE Talks to… Martin Mason (SE01E10) — www.youtube.com
A collaboration and pairing for the ages as two passionate devil’s advocates for talent get together and give a spontaneous master class in talent management.
In my role as RCIRCLE co-host, I interviewed Martin Mason, CEO of Unleashed, a talent & inclusion management business. You can easily see why Martin was on my major wish list to be a co-captain for the #amaze #transformationpassport. More to come for sure!
What does a successful talent management strategy look like in the hybrid era? | theHRD — www.thehrdirector.com
“Talent management has often been overlooked or seen as only an HR function. It took a global pandemic and mass disruption to the labour market for businesses to understand how particular elements can drive innovation within a team, impact a business’s growth strategy and help an employer be positioned favourably in a competitive market. ‘The Great Resignation’, which has seen record numbers of people switching jobs after the peak pandemic ended, has been evidence that the way organisations are retaining talent is broken and needs fixing.”
Yeap. A good overview article for HR as you start the rethinking process.
Margaret Heffernan: The human skills we need in an unpredictable world | TED Talk — www.ted.com
“The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected”, says writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. She shares why we need less tech and more messy human skills — imagination, humility, bravery — to solve problems in business, government and life in an unpredictable age. “We are brave enough to invent things we’ve never seen before,” she says. “We can make any future we choose.”
Pivoting and professional growth in today’s (and tomorrow’s) workforce — www.chieflearningofficer.com
“By cultivating curiosity, resilience and informed agility we can help our professionals embrace the willingness to keep learning. And by cultivating divergent thinking, teamwork, and emotional and social intelligence we can help support the ability of our professionals to pivot successfully.”
We are all so multifaceted — what side do we choose to polish next?
The state of the labour market and the rise of internal mobility — Optamor — www.youtube.com
This was a great panel discussion on internal mobility (read talent management) with Will Crandle, CEO at Horsefly Analytics, John Frith, Chief People Officer at Checkatrade, my friend Felix Wetzel from Pocket Recruiter (now Cera) and me, Elizabeth Lembke, Chief Talent Navigator at Transforming Talent.
Elizabeth Lembke
Your favorite Chief Talent Navigator at Transforming Talent
