Friday, April 21, 2017

The New Book “Digital IT - 100 Q&As” Chapter X Digital IT Talent Management Q&As

With increasing speed of change, the performance of Performance Management needs to be continuously assessed and adjusted.

Digital workplaces are diverse, dynamic and digital workforces are multi-generational, multicultural, and multidivicing today. Due to the fast-growing information and disruptive nature of technology, IT skills gap is not a fiction, but a reality. CIOs need to think constructively about IT talent competencies at both strategic and operational level. Because IT leaders play a crucial role in identifying talent gaps and align talent skills and collective human capabilities with strategy execution. The best or next digital talent management practices should encourage innovation, inspire learning, spur healthy debates and take a structural approach to make the digital transformation.


IT talent gap - Why does it happen and how to fill it? Due to the changing nature of technology and the accelerating speed of business changes among the most pervasive and persistent concerns or complaints from IT leaders is the skills gap, such as they can’t find the right skills to fill the positions or their non-IT partners do not understand IT, etc. The effective solution is to start educating by opening the doors to true knowledge. The premise is that you should hire mindset, capability, and intelligence, not just specific skill, as the skills change so rapidly due to the shortened knowledge and technology life cycle, train for skills. The knowledge (skills) acquisition issue is a systemic problem. Overall, technology tends to be more dynamic in a company as well as across the industry, while leadership/management/ industry changes more slowly. The key is to recognize that they both change and demand everyone to continuously maintain and grow their expertise/skills. While there are clear opportunities to better prepare HR partners, as well as IT managers on how to more effectively manage talent life cycle to ensure the right people with the right capabilities in the right positions to solve the right problems.


How to define IT talent competency: Measuring knowledge workers’ performance is perhaps much tougher than measuring IT performance because there are many variables and intangible factors to leverage. Most of the performance management systems today rewards mediocrity rather than encourages excellence. Traditional competency model puts too much focus on the quantified result, with ignorance of taking qualified or innovative effort, or only measures the short-term productivity or silo result, without taking enough consideration of the long-term potential realization. IT staff’s collective competitive necessity will “Keep the Lights On,” but their collective uniqueness and amplified innovativeness can help grow and even transform the organization. Hence, the management needs to pay more attention to those shining spots: Who can bring unique POVs, who can find better way to solve problems, who can delight customers; who has the courage to debate with bosses, with the intention to innovate and discover the better way to do things, or who are those transformers to push the business up to higher maturity. That said, both attitude and aptitude count. Well define the updated competency model, assess the talent’s overall capability to solve problems, strike the right balance of learning capability, character, skills, communication, and energy within the team. Organizations should recruit the right mindset, with the ability to learn and grow for the long-term business prosperity.


How do you take the long-term view to driving workforce performance? At its core, performance management is about creating a work environment that helps your company meet its business goals. It’s more than just a collection of tools and processes, although there are many that can help you meet your goals. There isn’t any general rule on how to drive workforce performance. It’s the management practice that doesn’t have hard-coded programming like other business systems but directly drives corporate mindset, attitude, and behavior. A process could be put in place to understand what flaws are in place, impeding the good performance and its improvement. Designing a performance management system that makes sense for your company depends on many factors, including the nature of your business, your company culture, and your strategic goals. With increasing speed of change, the performance of Performance Management needs to be continuously assessed and adjusted as well. The best performance management system needs to tie everyone in the organization to the company’s profit and also company’s rewards, and at the same time, there are individual performance incentives which are measured against personal goals. This keeps all employees working together while at the same time push the individual to exceed their personal goals, to create a win-win situation for both individuals and the organization.

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