The global talent war has seen organisational leaders scratching their heads to understand how they can attract and retain the very best talent that is going to directly impact their organisational worth to shareholders, stakeholders, employees and of course customers.
As the ever present headaches of…
- trying to balance focus on maximising profit and margin v investing for growth
- implementing short term high impact initiatives v long term strategic thinking and planning
- focusing on a business as a whole (“corporate think” and control) or on its constituent parts (functional, geographical, product/service streams)
…cause CEOs and their senior executives to consistently strive for the next big thing or the next big idea, all too often the obvious is overlooked.
What is so obvious? Leveraging the talent already within their organisations.
As options such as outsourcing have become commonplace as a means to cost cutting and handing over “non-core” activities to other specialists, the core value of what is left, people, processes and resources, is not always improved or optimised for future benefit.
When organisations downsize, restructure or reorganise again the main focus is often cost cutting and again this leaves fewer people and/or the “wrong” people to create for, deliver for and service customers.
With fewer of the “right” people, (right being of the right cultural fit, appropriately skilled and with the right “organisational DNA” to fit an organisation’s stated mission and deliver its objectives successfully) there may be a need to lead people through a transition programme to make clear what the future now looks like and/or to recruit more people to complement existing capability and acquire new capability.
Key to making the organisational choices work will be the behaviour and attitude of the people who choose to play their part. The cultural mindset – an organisation’s core values and principles – needs to be defined and recruited for; it cannot be trained and as fitting in with an organisational culture or not causes so many problems it is almost more important than skill – which can be trained.
This is an opportunity to create a culture where an “entrepreneurial spirit” is a core value. This is an opportunity to create a culture of “intrapreneurship”.
Should this be a chosen course of action there are 3 key elements to consider
1. What are the core attributes of intrapreneurs?
2. What kind of environment will enable intrapreneurs to flourish and create value?
3. How can individuals develop and be recognised as an intrapreneur?
In part 2 I will address these questions.