Tag Archives: Learning

WHAT IS TOP TALENT AND HOW IS THAT IDENTIFIED?

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As a part of our talent acquisition engagements, we ask our clients how they define “top talent” and how they would assess those traits in the interview process. Reflecting on the insightful comments we hear every day, we thought there would be great value in a new blog in which senior executives/thought leaders share their “Take on Talent.”

This is the sixteenth in a series of blogs/interviews with senior executives who are thought leaders in the areas of Talent Acquisition, Career Development and Leadership who will share their perspectives on this ever present question.

Phil Fersht is the CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research

Phil is an acclaimed author, analyst, and visionary in IT Services and BPO, the Digital Transformation of enterprise operations and cognitive automation strategies. Fersht coined the terms “The As-a-Service Economy” and “Digital OneOffice”, which describe HfS Research’s vision for the future of global operations and the impact of cognitive automation and disruptive digital business models. Phil was named Analyst of the Year in 2016 (see link) for the third time by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations, which voted on 170 other leading IT industry analysts.

Prior to founding HfS in 2010, Phil has held various analyst roles for Gartner (AMR) and IDC and was BPO Marketplace leader for Deloitte Consulting across the United States, UK, and Singapore.  Over the past 20 years, Fersht has lived and worked in Europe, North-America, and Asia, where he has advised on hundreds of operations strategy, outsourcing, and global business services engagements.

Phil is also the author and creator of the most widely-read and acclaimed blog in the global services industry, entitled “Horses for Sources” now entering its eleventh year.  He regularly contributes to media such as Wall St Journal, Business Week, Economist, The Times of India and CIO Magazine and is a regular keynote speaker at major industry events, such as NASSCOM, ANDI, ABSL, Global Sourcing Association, SSON, Sourcing Interests Group and HfS Summits.

He received a Bachelor of Science, with Honors, in European Business and Technology from Coventry University, UK and a Diplôme Universitaire de Technologie in Business and Technology from the University of Grenoble, France. He also has a diploma from the Market Research Society in the UK.

Please share with us the top characteristics of the most talented people you have encountered during your career, and your definition of each. Continue reading →

The best of both worlds – how to brew a blended culture

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by Ravi Saligram

Building and maintaining a high-performance work culture can be a test of wills and expectations even within a tightly knit organization. Those efforts and struggles only deepen within the context of a corporate merger or acquisition where it takes vision, fortitude (and a solid dose of humility) to orchestrate the movements of two cultures into one.

I’ve orchestrated a number of acquisitions over the years and have found that assessing a target’s culture and planning for cultural integration is an often undervalued dynamic. Typically, culture is not given the same level of importance in M&A due diligence as financials, growth drivers, synergies and valuation models. We focus on the things that are crunchy and tangible, so the human factor is left out of the equation. It isn’t until we get into integration that we see the intense effect culture has on the short-term gains and long-term success of the new organization. Continue reading →

How humble leadership really works

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By Dan Cable

When you’re a leader — no matter how long you’ve been in your role or how hard the journey was to get there — you are merely overhead unless you’re bringing out the best in your employees. Unfortunately, many leaders lose sight of this.

Power, as my colleague Ena Inesi has studied, can cause leaders to become overly obsessed with outcomes and control, and, therefore, treat their employees as means to an end. As I’ve discovered in my own research, this ramps up people’s fear — fear of not hitting targets, fear of losing bonuses, fear of failing — and as a consequence people stop feeling positive emotions and their drive to experiment and learn is stifled.

Take for example a UK food delivery service that I’ve studied. The engagement of its drivers, who deliver milk and bread to millions of customers each day, was dipping while management was becoming increasingly metric-driven in an effort to reduce costs and improve delivery times. Each week, managers held weekly performance debriefs with drivers and went through a list of problems, complaints, and errors with a clipboard and pen. This was not inspiring on any level, to either party. And, eventually, the drivers, many of whom had worked for the company for decades, became resentful. Continue reading →

WHAT IS TOP TALENT AND HOW IS THAT IDENTIFIED?

Posted on

As a part of our talent acquisition engagements, we ask our clients how they define “top talent” and how they would assess those traits in the interview process.  Reflecting on the insightful comments we hear every day, we thought there would be great value in a new blog in which senior executives/thought leaders share their “Take on Talent.”

This is the fifteenth in a series of blogs/interviews with senior executives who are thought leaders in the areas of Talent Acquisition, Career Development and Leadership who will share their perspectives on this ever present question.

 

Jacqui Canney is executive vice president of the Global People Division for Walmart Inc. She is responsible for attracting, retaining and developing talent within the nation’s largest private workforce.Jacqui joined Walmart in 2015 after more than 25 years of experience in global human resources. She has the unique role of engaging more than 2 million associates globally.

She’s focused on making Walmart the best place to work and shop through delivering an experience that gives associates access to the best technology, training and education opportunities. She’s modernizing the company’s total rewards and performance programs, and is also driving Walmart’s inclusive culture through the work done by Walmart’s Global Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Office.

Prior to joining Walmart, Jacqui led the strategy and implementation of programs at Accenture to attract talent, and transformed its workforce to strengthen business capabilities and industry focus. Continue reading →

These 5 Barriers Prevent You From Being a Better Leader.

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by Alison Davis

Here’s What to Do Differently

I spend a lot of time asking employees about how leaders can be more effective communicators. Just yesterday, in fact, I moderated a focus group with employees at a fast-growing consumer products company.

The people in the group provided the same feedback I hear time and time again: Leaders are pretty good at sharing information, but they’re lousy listeners.

As a leader myself, I know how hard it is to slow down and actually pay attention to what your team member is saying, especially when you’re thinking about the 87 other issues you have to address and you’re pretty sure you already know how to solve the team member’s problem.

But you can’t be a great leader if you’re a terrible listener. As Matthew McKay, Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning write in How to Communicate, “Listening is a commitment and a compliment.”

“It’s a commitment to understanding how other people feel, how they see their world. It means putting aside your own prejudices and beliefs, your anxieties and self-interest, so that you can step behind the other person’s eyes.”

And listening is a compliment because it says to the other person, “I care about what’s happening to you; your life and experience are important.”

Continue reading →