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Panel Detail:
Monday, April 24, 2006
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Rising Stars: Who is Grooming Tomorrow's Leaders?
Speakers:
Jeffrey Cohn,
Founder and Managing Partner, Bench Strength Advisors
Greg Lee,
Former Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Scott Randall,
President and Senior Consultant, BrandGames
Rusty Rueff,
CEO, Snocap Inc.
Mary Anne Walk,
President, Walk & Associates Inc.
Moderator:
Laura Morse, Human Capital Partner, Atlas Venture
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Mary Anne Walk tells the audience that to attract the right people, companies should integrate their recruiting strategies with their overall business strategies. Listening is Rusty Rueff.
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The most important strategy for companies in attracting and grooming the best talent is for those companies to understand who they are and what specific skills their future leaders will need in order to help the company succeed.
According to Scott Randall of BrandGames, the companies that succeed in attracting and retaining talent are those that have a strong culture and a strong sense of where they’re going. Companies have unique needs, suggesting that the skills required to accomplish one company's goals are not necessarily those required for another's.
The panelists discussed two sides of the question of grooming future leaders: recruiting and recognizing those leaders, and what to do with them once they're in the fold.
A key to hiring the right people is, as Rusty Rueff of Snocap pointed out, understanding employees' dreams, ensuring that those dreams and motivations match the company's mission, and finding ways for employees to achieve their dreams. At the same time, Mary Anne Walk of Walk & Associates explained that in order to attract the right people, companies should integrate their recruiting strategies with their overall business strategies, so that the hiring processes and priorities support strategic planning. Too often, as Jeff Cohn of Bench Strength Advisors stated, companies have "broken" success processes. Integrating recruitment strategies with company missions dictates a different way of thinking about who the "right" people are and what to do with them.
What should a manager do with a talented new hire? Although the panelists agreed that training and development are crucial, Randall also pointed out that overtraining can be evidence of insufficient business and human resource strategy. The panelists agreed that the younger generations of workers want to have control over their career paths and may be less receptive to employer efforts to set those paths.
In addition, the panelists discussed the difficulties of helping employees transition from "professional doers" to supervisory roles; they addressed the "disconnect" between the skills required for certain jobs and those required to succeed in managerial roles. The panelists also agreed that bringing outsiders into an organization can improve competitiveness and creative capacity, but that this transition can be difficult and should happen gradually and with support from longer-term employees.
Moderator Laura Morse of Atlas Venture brought up the question of how to compensate rising stars, and the discussion quickly moved toward ways to handle the balance between training and rewarding "high potential" employees, and retaining those who work hard but may have more limited potential. The panelists also commented on how human capital issues are changing in an increasingly globalized world, and agreed on the importance of exposing employees to other cultures and reducing restrictions on immigration in order to maintain American competitiveness.
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