A real-world Talent Management Strategy - Just do it!

I'm speaking at the CoreNet Global Summit in Sydney on June 30.  Its the global network of corporate real estate practitioners from fund managers and other intstitutional owners, to managers, agents, advisors and financiers.

I am there as part of the Colliers International case study on the journey they've taken to build a unique, knowledge-sharing and remarkably consistent culture with a strong pipeline of professionals wanting to join.    My part is to talk about how my company helped them harness all of the great things about the company to sell their story to potential employees and achieve 20% organic headcount growth per annum in a mature business and a mature industry.

Anyway - to my central point... We're tightening up the presentation at the moment and the flow of the various speakers, when the CEO remarked:

"I think I've got to be honest about this: what we've done comes out like a perfect strategic plan when we look back at it, but it really just came about by fixing one thing at a time. It was a collision of a business goal, a workplace strategy and a people strategy that we didn't ignore and hope it would go away. We were lucky to tackle it in the right order and get this fabulous result.  But I can't say that we planned it this way at all."

I think this is the best message that anyone could get out of their remarkable transformation story - just begin, and keep doing it.  It will start to snowball and make each new intitiative that much more effective. 

The other thing they did was let the business need drive each initiative, rather than do something because it was considered HR best practice. And each time they did it, they saw a positive business impact that emboldened them to take the next step.

I saw a quote somewhere from the guy who runs SouthWest Airlines who summed it up this way:

"Yes we have a strategic plan.  Its called doing things."

We all know what needs to be done, but very few of us actually do it.  And that includes companies.

Comments

[Recruitment Software]

You've made some good arguments, but I'm sure there are people who will disagree with some points.