Here is an excerpt from an article written by Jac Fitz-enz for Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.
* * *
While we talk about millennials and globalization as today’s big driving forces, it is great individual events that truly change our culture.
I have the irritating habit of looking past current development programs to issues that should be shaping talent management. When people ask my opinion regarding the latest program of the month, I can’t comment, because all activity from programs to rewards should be a reflection of the organization’s unique needs and problems, not what someone else is doing.
That is not a brilliant idea. Seminal thinkers in motivation and management psychology are being supplanted by researchers claiming to have found the secret. Among them are Tom Peters and Jim Collins, both of whom suggest that what worked for famous companies should be copied.
Unfortunately, a review of those holistic remedies often shows that the exemplars of yesterday have fallen away today.
Most of these companies found a set of factors that worked for them and never wavered. In effect, they designed their management system based on the vision they had of the market and the culture they wanted. This second point is the closest thing to ultimate truth we have: They stumbled or fell because they failed to realize that the market’s culture had changed.
When benchmarking became popular in the 1990s, some companies said they were unique; therefore, the benchmarks did not apply to them. They may have been onto something. These companies recognized that the benchmarked firms were likely very different. Even those firms in the same industry could be — and often were — weak comparisons.
What is it that makes example companies so successful for longer than the average organization? Vision and culture — not programs. Today, the issue of market culture is paramount. Who would argue in the world of big data and changing values that culture is just an esoteric platitude?
We talk constantly about millennials, globalization, and big data as today’s driving forces. We’re right. But there is something more. These phenomena are looked at as discrete events, trends and conditions. I submit they are, en masse, the collective definitions of the new market culture.
* * *
Here’s a direct link to the complete article.
To learn more about Jac Fitz-enz, please click here.