How to Know if You Have the Right Talent to Accelerate Growth

EXcuse me, is this seat taken?

The largest asset any organization must manage is its people. Employee Experience (EX) should be the cornerstone and fundamental value that drives your organization to success. In consideration of determining if you have the right talent to accelerate growth, look in the mirror and ask yourself the following:

Do I have the right people in the right seats?

This is fundamental for business success and growth. Whether you’re a start up lacking strategic talent, or an anchor that is scaling, strategic and superior talent is hard to find. Why is this? Not knowing what you are looking for or how to develop existing talent are a couple that come to mind. In improving business performance, you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your teams, increase the value that they add to the business strategy, and most importantly, determine how this adds to your competitive advantage.

A focus on how you compete, coupled with strategic priorities, are the recipe for success. With strategic priorities defined, talent development can be executed with success.

In determining a successful talent development program, these basic areas apply:

• Skills – Understand the skills required for the job
• Knowledge – What kind of knowledge is required inclusive of vertical, experience, products, services, customers?
• Behavior – Leadership, operator, culture
• Results – What are the results that are applicable to each seat?

   

Ask yourself these questions to determine if the right people are in the right seats:

• What are your strategic priorities and how do you measure up against your competition?
• Does the skill seat of your people support your strategic priorities? If not, why? If so, what do they need to go to the next level?
• Does your leadership team have the skill set to grow or maintain your business?
• Do your key people have all four of the right characteristics listed above?

   

After the assessment of your seat selection, now you’re ready to execute on the fundamental areas of:

• Effective Growth Planning – the effectiveness of this process will deliver strategies to grow the business, supported and aligned by the leadership team
• Exceptional Customer Success/Experience – when people in the right seat understand the customer experience, the ability to provide customized solution is consistent
• Complete Processes – the right people understand how to define and develop efficient core business processes
• Products and Services that Differentiate Your Core Business – superior, innovative, or differentiated products or services are led by people in the right seats
• Core Values – the EX factor is driven by leadership, driving fundamentals, standards, beliefs, driving decision making and motivation
• Ability to Execute – without the ability to execute, performance and growth will be stagnant

   

Areas of focus to improve the ability to execute:

• Define Tangible Objectives – analytics and metrics for measurement
• Balance Objectives with Resources – less is more, align objectives with leadership resources
• Link Incentives to Performance – successful objective accomplishment to incentives, 1:1
• Develop a Culture of Accountability – accountability = extreme discipline

   

 For more assistance with Talent Development, download the Talent Enablement Tool. Or come visit me and my colleagues in .

Additional Resource 
For additional help evaluating your Revenue Enablement process, click here to take SBI’s .