Mining the Potential

Points to ponder upon

1.    Talent matters – more than ever before

2.    Managing talent – can and must be improved. It is complex and multidimensional activity. Can’t be bound by process rigor.

3.    Performance is hard to judge

4.    Future potential – is harder to judge

5.    Past performance – is not an accurate predictor of future ability

All about performance management:

Organizations put humongous efforts in the process. The main purpose of this process is to align the people and ensure they succeed thru robust feedback, coaching and course corrective actions as may be needed. 

This takes up most of the management time and somehow the part of potential and helping people for tomorrow is somewhere completely ignored or not well done.

Putting so much organizational effort into a process that is, at its best, “retrospective” in nature, no longer makes sense in a world where uncertainty reins and where the conditions for success are changing daily.

Performance Management is only valuable when it is balanced by an equal emphasis on what really matters – the future!

What also matters is the ability for continued excellent performance, in ever changing business context the - Continuity of business.

I believe that most organizations are negligent when it comes to their responsibility to the future. Performance matters – we are not arguing that point, it is very obvious. It’s just that there is an even more important consideration which receives far too little emphasis – “the managing of Potential”.

So let us talk about the potential:

All of us are aware of the GE‘s 9 box matrix wherein we plot performance and potential. I am sure many of us are aware of or have used the assessment tools to evaluate / assess the human potential. While we do this we don’t realize few points:

1.    Future potential of human beings is very hard to judge

2.    Human potential is just not measurable, yet several consulting firms make an attempt to do so with certain products and tools.

3.    Human potential is unlimited – it has no boundaries and no upper limits.

It is almost impossible or difficult for anyone to live up to his / her full potential in one life time. It is like an ocean.

The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s. This was formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believed lie largely untapped in all the people across the world.

The movement took as its premise, the belief that through the development of "human potential", humans can experience an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment.

The definition of potential & what we can really do: 

All of us can have different views of the definition of potential and also about the potential that exists within ourselves. None of us know what we are capable of in the future. We keep discovering ourselves as move on with our lives and most of the times we are surprised with what we can do. Future realities can be very different from today and also our own assumptions of our capabilities.

Thomas Edison said, “If we did everything we were capable of, we would literally astound ourselves”. He obviously had a high standard in the definition of potential.

·         Think and contemplate what you could do if you really wanted to.

·         What could be the ways to do a thing, if you were truly committed?

·         What could be the definition of your own potential be if you just decided?

…… The answer is basically anything.

All of us are conditioned throughout our lives with statements from parents / elders / bosses such as:

·         Be realistic

·         Focus on grades and marks rather than acquiring and internalizing the knowledge, skills and capabilities.

·         Getting admission in the right college is crucial. Degree is a means to having a satisfactory life rather than a means of acquiring skills, knowledge and capabilities that will lead to a fulfilling life.

·         Focus on making the CV look good rather that exploring and developing various facets of the persona.

·         Quickly get a job, get married and settle down

·         Do this course or that course, even if you don’t like it, since this has better job prospects vs. do what you like most

·         This is not our area of focus.

·         Remain focused – You are almost expected to be paranoid.

·         Persons from our background / education can’t do this

·         This is not for us

·         No one in our family has ever done this.

…….And so on.

Our social and family systems just do not permit the people to explore full potential and similar ethos percolates down to the corporate world.

In corporate world we tell people what the processes and systems are and what the expected outcomes are. List of Dos and Don’ts. List of FAQs, well defined SMART goals and objectives, well defined business plans, well defined JDs, etc. Very little room is left for the imagination of the people.

Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, put forth the idea that self-actualization (the fulfillment of self through reaching one's potential) is the highest expression of a human's life.
In his research Maslow found that self-actualized people were those who are:

1.    Creative and spontaneous,

2.    Possess a good sense of humor

3.    They are able to tolerate uncertainty.

4.    They have an appreciation for what life has to offer,

5.    They have a deep concern for others, and are

6.    Able to enjoy close, meaningful, personal relationships.

Quotes:

Brian Tracy -  “The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean un-sailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.”

Dale Carnegie - “We all have possibilities we don't know about. We can do things we don't even dream we can do.”

Let us talk about the potential assessment in the corporate world:

When it comes to assessing the potential we depend a lot on the inputs from our managers and supervisors.

Now let us see the fallacy of this process. These people make their recommendations based on what they have observed or have known, AND this comes mainly from:

1.    Their own biases and beliefs on what is a high potential

2.    Immediate past performance demonstrated by the person becomes a main deciding factor.

3.    Criticality of the person as assumed by the managers.

4.    Some demonstrated behaviors appropriate for the next role.

Now if you really look at this critically none of them constitute potential. At the most it may indicate current capabilities or ability to take up next higher role.

Even if a manager is able to spot the potential, in most cases due to the tendency to hoard the talent we don’t allow or people to blossom.

Managers, supervisors and in some companies even the senior leaders are very tactical – completely focused on completing the tasks on hand. They just don’t have time / training or interest on potential spotting, they just are paranoid about the day to day affairs.

If you look at the traits that a high potential person has, it will tell you how in routine, most of the managers are just incapable of identifying / recognizing or spotting the high potential.

Traits of High potential people:

1. They have high curiosity. They have a need to continuously explore and learn. They may at times be mistaken as nosy.
2. They have an open mind. They try new things.
3. They question the statuesque. They think out of the box.
4. They are honest and are willing to take risks.
5. They are willing to take unpopular decisions.
6. They are willing to disagree and walk away from well-trodden path.
7. Their passion to achieve the goals can become obsession.
8. They use intelligence and work hard at whatever they do.
9. They are not afraid to open up to new experiences – willing to experiment.
10. They are generally mavericks – they think differently.
11. Take responsibility for their own lives and their own actions.
12. They do rebel when necessary
13. They are comfortable with ambiguity.

It is very clear that employees who exhibit the traits listed above are likely to get poor performance ratings. These people will be noticed for all the wrong reasons.

“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to use full suite of knowledge and capabilities - - these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal potential and reach excellence.”

In reality paradoxically the organizations tend to favor those who are:

1.    Process centric

2.    Execution focused

3.    Fall in line with company discipline

4.    Perform as per expectations of the managers – generally  - compliant

5.    Tend to work well in teams

6.    Risk averse.

7.    Role and goal focused.

8.    Follow the organizational decorum

9.    Generally recognized and rewarded for hard work and goals achievements

In summary - Organizations have to adopt very different strategies to identify high potential and develop them.

The HR Function a big problem:

This seems to be another wrong group of people to identify top talent and help potential of people in the company is fully realized. Now let us see what is wrong with HR:

1. The very name – Human resource management. Here the people are deemed as resources / commodities. In BPOs and high attrition industries sourcing talent is like any other materials management function. They can’t do the job of helping people realize the full potential
2. The next name – Human Capital management – here we again look at our people as assets and we want to ensure that we sweat the assets completely.
3. The terms used by HR professionals: Right person for the right job – Just in time talent – again we use the term exactly like the materials management function.
4. The whole arena of HR planning is like a materials management function.
5. Productivity, multiskilling, multi-tasking, utilization rate, etc. – All these terms are again looking at people as just the source of productivity or an item that is a means of production and output.
6. Most of the HR professionals themselves do not understand the business well, hence are not in a position to identify and help groom top potential.

May be the HR Function should be called – Talent management function and the head be called Chief Talent officer. Just name change will not help the attitudes and mindsets have to also change.

So what is the solution?

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being." -   Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In corporations we have to move away from an institutionalized method of mining the potential to a combination of multiple things.

First and the foremost - The leaders of the corporations have to personally play a significant role in this arena. Leaders must create an environment wherein people are allowed to blossom, and experiment with themselves and try out new avenues:

1.    Just get close to the people. Find opportunities to mingle with as many people as you can. Just break the psychological barriers that prohibit interactions.

2.    Create many deliberate and many informal forums for people to express their thoughts and ideas.

3.    Create opportunities for people to get spotted for who they are rather than what their managers want to project them as.

4.    Create an open culture wherein participation and free flow of communication is supported.

5.    Regular job rotation – There is no substitute. Free flow of people on regular basis wherein the people are expected to challenge themselves and experience different roles. A must.

6.    Provide opportunities in form of: multiple cross functional projects, several stretch assignments and exposures to multiple aspects of management.

7.    Encourage people to take sabbaticals / long vacations so that they can rest, relax and do some introspection.

8.    Recognize and reward people for out of the box thinking that makes significant difference to the company.

In a right environment the High potential people will automatically get noticed. Once noticed they need to be nurtured and developed.

Disclaimer: Images in this blog are downloaded from Google images