Optimize Performance by Aligning Talent and Culture

Talent Matters

Great strategies make great organisations. But without careful attention to aligning people and strategy, the strategy is just a set of intentions. High performance depends on having talented people to execute the strategy.

But having talented people isn’t enough—not if their talents, values, and motivations don’t align with your organisation’s strategic intent and organisational culture. That lack of alignment may be hidden beneath the surface. It’s important to surface it and manage your talent development processes with that in mind. The goal? To move employees from understanding the strategy to owning the strategy. Mobilizing the organisation means mobilizing people.

Connected to Culture

High performance, talent management, and organisational culture are intrinsically linked. Culture—“the way things are done around here”—translates your organisation’s vision, mission, and values into mindsets and behaviours. When culture is healthy, it inspires employees’ performance in order to achieve superior business results. Understanding your culture and then aligning your talent processes with it are crucial to creating and sustaining high performance. To achieve this, it’s critical that you implement talent management processes and systems throughout the employee life cycle, both through leaders and through peers.

Employee Life Cycle

Employees pass through five distinct life cycle phases during their employment: (1) recruitment, (2) integration, (3) development, (4) recognition/retention, and (5) promotion. To be effective, talent management needs a systemic, portfolio-based approach focused on the different stages of the talent life cycle, beginning in Phase 1 and continuing in different forms through all five life cycle phases.

The Importance of Leaders

Mobilizing your talent is the role of organisational leaders. If leaders put the right people in place—who understand the values driving organisational performance, and who trust their leaders—the organisation will be able to drive high performance.

The Importance of…Everyone

Why is this important? Employees who own the strategy are committed and engaged. They bring others along to help forge the culture needed for the organisation to succeed. Building and supporting this team approach is another part of the Employee Life Cycle talent management process.

We Will Help You Align Talent and Culture

Culture, Talent, Engagement, Trust, Commitment, Performance…none of these means anything in isolation. But when they are properly connected, they create critical interdependencies that drive organisational performance.

Is there a “disconnect” between those who design your organisational strategy and those who are expected to carry it out? Do your employees believe your strategy is aligned to the needs of the marketplace? Are employees, teams, and business units coordinating their efforts to maximize organisational impact? Do subcultures exist that might be barriers to execution?

Denison’s team of consultants can help you with tough questions like these and help you connect talent management, culture, and performance. With our portfolio of the world’s premier assessment tools, combined with clarifying analytics and over 25 years of global experience, Denison provides you with the insights needed to help you best manage and leverage talent to improve organisational performance.

For more about aligning talent management with the employee life cycle read the full TRANSFORM article.
https://www.denisonconsulting.com/docs/transform/15.pdf

Contact us to explore how we can help you.