Tyre Asia April/May 2018 35
suited to the demands of the job/organization at a point in
time.
Autonomy refers to the sense of freedom in deciding on
what to achieve and how to go about achieving it. While
every job would have its set of tasks and duties, in a
dynamic business environment, talented employees should
be provided the opportunity to constantly redefine how they
are going to go about the job.
This brings in a great sense of psychological ownership to
achieving results. Learning is enhanced when there is a
sense of challenge and mastery, where employees are able
to hone their skills or knowledge on a constant basis.
All these changes call for doing away with the dominant
paradigm of measuring-controlling-rewarding employees
and creating an alternate paradigm of acknowledging-
empowering-engaging employees where shared purpose,
commitment to collaboration and involvement inspire
people to perform and strive in the organization.
When asked what kind of organisational structure CEOs
would need to create institutional meritocracy, Dr Krishnan
is of the view that such a structure should be able to do two
things. Differentiate performance and reward and recognise
people based on the performance they showcase.
Differentiating performance could be a challenge, especially
when there is a strong cohort influence on performance
evaluation and promotions.
“In one of the firms that I was consulting with, the HR Head
recounted how there was a strong batch influence in setting
expectation on the hierarchical position a person should be
in, translating into, “if one is of this batch....he/she should
be at this level”. This would not work well in a context
where one is trying to differentiate performance based on
efforts or achievements.”
A concerted effort should start at the top in articulating
the vision for the organization and making sure that these
are cascaded down to the employees of the organization.
Managing performance should not be seen as an activity
in appraising individuals once every six months or every
quarter, but a constant engagement with employees on how
they are doing at work and understanding what areas need
to be improved.
“Evaluating performance should not be seen as a
perfunctory activity but an important source of competitive
talent to the organization.”
Two challenges
Dr Krishnan says companies struggle with two central
challenges in talent management. The first is with regards to
the basic approach the organization should adopt in talent
management. There could be two approaches – inclusive
and exclusive.
While the inclusive approach holds the view that all staff
can potentially contribute to competitive advantage and
that everyone should get their share of development,
the exclusive approach holds that a set of high potential
individuals differentially contributes to the performance of
the organization and hence are worthy of higher investment
in development.
Central to the latter approach is the belief that talent must
be identified, nurtured and placed in pivotal roles that are
crucial to the competitive advantage of the firm. While
exclusive approach is dominant in multinational enterprises,
many domestic firms and SMEs have an inclusive view of
talent where every employee is considered as a talent or
potential talent.
The lack of objectivity in evaluations of both performance
and potential are possible risks in adopting an exclusive
approach and may also undermine the egalitarian and
informal work culture in organizations.
The inclusive approach on the other hand fails to invest in
development based on potential of employees and is also
likely to gloss over meritocratic performance and talent
management is just a pseudonym for traditional human
resource management practices.The second challenge is in coming out with a shared
understanding of what talent means in a firm. While this is
very important when a firm adopts an exclusive approach,
even in an inclusive talent management approach there
are individuals who are going to adorn senior management
positions.
In those cases it is important to have a mutually
agreed notion of what leadership talent looks like in
the organization. While companies are able to more
clearly identify technical talent in terms of their domainproficiencies, many of them struggle in creating a well-
recognised notion of what leadership talent looks like in
their company’s context.What is an effective leader in one company could be a
potential disaster in another and also what is an effective
leader during one time period may not be so in another
time period for the same company as the biographical
experiences of Steve Jobs highlights.
It is found that talent management strategies differ among
big corporate set-ups and small and medium industries. “In
the recent article that I co-authored with Hugh Scullion and
published in the journal Human Resource Management
Review, we argue that big corporates and small and
medium enterprises differ primarily in their institutional,
resource and economic contexts which impact their
approach to talent management.”
Research on talent management in large firms have
established two conceptual realities –most of them adopt
an exclusive approach to talent management by identifying
high potential talent pools and identifying key positions or
strategic roles to be occupied by the identified talent pool.
“We contend that as organizations grow in size and
complexity, the changing structural forms along with
resource constrains makes it harder for SMEs to
systematically identify key positions and the development ofT
alent could also be in certain niche or
technical areas where the passion and
learning agility in a particular domain
could be key indicators of potential
talent. Once we have the right talent
in the organization, engagement and
retention become a key concernContinued on page 38