Time Out: Develop People or Die?
What do a theater director, a ballet company director and a sports coach know that business leaders shouldn’t overlook?
According to Tom Peters they know they are only as good as their talent and he is right. Meaning, they have to develop people or their business dies. Imagine a ballet teacher whose students lacked basic foot techniques, or a theater director whose students could never remember their lines or a sports coach whose players lost every game. Who would buy their services? They must develop people or die and that principle holds true in any organization.
Technology be what it may, getting maximum results requires good people and good processes. Recruiting and hiring talent is just the beginning. The best employees who achieve maximum results are those that are actively engaged. When you see a company with a group of actively engaged employees you can be assured that there is a talented manager who has recognized a manager’s #1 job is to develop talent.
All to often the reverse is true. In companies with disengaged employees who are simply punching the clock and getting a paycheck you will find managers who are beleaguered and often overwhelmed with the feeling of running on a treadmill and going nowhere. As you work your way up the leadership food chain you will find layer upon layer of management that pour more energy into maintaining a broken system then they do in developing their people.
More meetings, more trainings, more metrics are not the answer. The answer begins with what the company values. A company that values developing talent pours into its people and the predictable result is often greater organizational capacity and thus, greater bottom line results. GE is a leading example of this principle. They are constantly on the cutting edge of developing their people and managers are held to account for this actively – most spending 30% of their time devoted to “people” matters.
Identifying organizations that do not value people is the easy part of the job. It is easy to spot and often reflected in high staff turnover, low moral or organizational dysfunction and the presenting problems are only the beginning of the trouble. The age-old maxim that “people don’t leave their jobs they leave their bosses” is played out for the world to see in these companies. The problems and solutions are often time consuming and resource intensive.
There reverse is true when we are engaged by and organization with a group of managers that value their people. When challenges come, people are the most valuable asset for solving them. In these situations we often find that the level of third party expertise required is limited and the answers become clear quite quickly. It is the equivalent of getting your car’s oil changed as opposed to needing a complete rebuild.
The bottom line: the greatest ROI an organization will ever realize is the return on investment in its people.
