The Chapman Consulting Group co-hosted an excellent Talent Management leaders gathering with GroupM in Singapore. We were joined by a fantastic group of regional and global heads of talent, leadership development and L&D, to discuss and share their thoughts on the talent challenges we face today. Representatives from a range of organisations were present, including Standard Chartered, BlackRock, Hilton Group, Beiersdorf, Applied Materials, Energizer, Schneider Electric and International SOS.
We initially heard from the GroupM team on their recent talent challenges sparked by a major new business win. We were also introduced to their new concept of 'Unimaginable', introduced to encourage their talent to push boundaries and set bold and innovative ('unimaginable') goals linked to overall business strategy. We then learnt about the media industries changing approach to talent acquisition, replacing the traditional resume submission process with a bespoke application, allowing applicants to submit a more creative 'resume' via social media channels. This has allowed them to more effectively evaluate the less tangible characteristics such as attitude, audacity, collaboration, passion, agility and entrepreneurialism, traits that are important in the industry.
Four more speakers then shared their own experiences on a range of topical talent challenges they face in their organisations. One interesting concept that was highlighted was the 'know grow flow' model, a simply packaged concept which helps to combat the succession issues around high potential individuals leaving the organisation prematurely. The importance of ensuring that high potential talent is made more visible within the organisation was summarised effectively in 'Know your talent, grow your talent and flow your talent'.
On a regional level, the discussion centred around increasing strategic rotational assignments and exposure to group headquarters, in conjunction with the right levels of mentoring and support. The group discussed the importance of moving away from a reliance on expatriate talent and the need to embed mechanisms to ensure local talent is developed effectively. Often there is a need to remove the layers that can block career development and the deployment of a local 'talent council' to facilitate rotations and champion talent development was one such approach.
We then covered the globalisation of talent and acknowledged that a more tailored approach is needed to determine what specific leadership qualities are required at a local/ regional level, in order to allow us to identify high potentials accordingly. There are different views in organisations as to what leadership qualities look like. There is also a need to look at talent through a different lens and to educate global leaders on the nuances of the region. Other ways of promoting the flow and upward mobility of local talent included utilising short-term assignments, rather than 2-3 year placements, and selecting local talent on talent councils to foster this home-grown progression and development.
There was further discussion around the challenges of leading talent through change and how to give lower level talent more exposure to senior leaders and vice versa. It was a great group with some really interesting sharing of best-practice approaches from a range of multinational organisations and we look forward to bringing the group together again soon.
