Talent management

Together with management, HR and the departments concerned, we clarify which roles are actually critical to success. This determines how target groups are prioritised. A talent programme following the same pattern for all positions would obscure the different requirements. Possible components include a skill inventory, development dialogue, specialist and management career paths, requirements profiles, competency training and 360-degree feedback. Which of these make sense depends on the specific strategy and the existing routines.

We connect the perspective on people with the question of function and future strategic task. Assessing potential is a joint leadership task: self-image, external perception, suitable procedures and experience are brought together in a respectful discussion. This gives rise to development perspectives and concrete learning steps. The decision on appointments and support remains with the responsible leadership and is not delegated to a test score.

Arbeitsergebnisse: Anforderungen an kritische Rollen; Gemeinsame Kriterien für Entwicklung und Besetzung; Abgestimmte Fach- und Führungslaufbahnen.

An assessment of potential is no guarantee of success. Development decisions need several sources of information and responsible handling of personal data.

Talent management connects strategy and HR decisions. First, the processes on which future customer benefit depends are identified. From these follow strategic job families and functions. For them, competence profiles and the need for suitable people are described.

A second perspective is availability on the labour market. A function can be important but easy to fill; another is both critical and hard to fill. This distinction results in different priorities for development and recruitment.

Possible building blocks are a skill inventory, requirement profiles, development dialogues, specialist and leadership career paths, competence training and 360-degree feedback. They should not be used indiscriminately. For each target group, we ask what contribution the people are expected to make and what support they need for it.

Potential, competence and current performance are explicitly kept apart. Assessing potential as a joint leadership task combines experience, observation and suitable procedures. It requires a culture of conversation based on openness, directness and respect. Talent management thus becomes a sequence of comprehensible decisions about functions and people, rather than a secret list of supposed top performers.

In addition, the assessment of a person should never stand detached from the function. The same strength can be particularly important in a strategically critical role and merely complementary in another. Leadership and HR therefore first describe the task and then observe how a person has dealt with similar requirements so far.

For future tasks, learning ability and development opportunities are discussed separately. The result may be a specialist career path, a leadership role or the decision to make greater use of a person in a different function. A transparent conversation about criteria is more important here than a seemingly objective talent label.

A development dialogue can connect the manager’s view with the goals of the person concerned. The next steps are related to the specific function and reviewed later.

One distinction is important for the later decision: the importance of a function for the strategy and the difficulty of attracting suitable people for it are two different questions. An area can be thinly staffed without being particularly critical for the new direction; a strategically central role can be well staffed today and still need succession planning.

Leadership and HR therefore consider both dimensions. Building on this, it becomes visible where a skill inventory is sufficient, where a development dialogue is needed and where the organisation should design a specialist or leadership career path. The result is a well-founded view of functions, people and development paths. The terms potential, competence and observed performance remain separate, so that today’s results do not hastily serve as evidence of future suitability.