Retention Strategy: Meaningful Motivation

Retaining and developing existing talent can be more important to an organization and less expensive than acquiring new talent.

Unfortunately, even if an organization already is focused on retention, chances are good it is following a misguided and expensive compensation approach. "Misguided" may seem like strong criticism, but while extrinsic rewards of money and benefits may cause a short-term burst of productivity, they often don't motivate. Further, they also contain the seed for demotivation long term because, once compensation is awarded, it becomes expected. So when revenues dictate that bonuses are smaller, people aren't just unmotivated, they are actually demotivated, making them less satisfied overall with their jobs and, subsequently, the organization.

This finding is at the heart of the work of Frederick Herzberg, who is known in organizational development circles as the father of modern motivation. Herzberg didn't say appropriate compensation isn't necessary. It is. In fact, Herzberg found that while the presence of certain basics such as good working conditions and an appropriate salary didn't motivate or increase job satisfaction, their absence contributed significantly to job dissatisfaction.

Herzberg's research makes it clear that monetary rewards don't motivate and don't compensate for ineffective management. Real motivation comes from work in the form of achievement, recognition, meaningful work, responsibility, advancement and growth.

Managers can't always change the work itself, but there are practical and simple steps they can take to provide a more motivating workplace and manage in a way that changes the relationships employees have with their work, their managers and their organizations.

Leverage the Power of Human Nature

Humans are natural problem solvers. We like to figure things out and determine how things should be done, especially when we're the ones doing them.

This is why when talent managers give people the opportunity to express their opinions and provide input into work processes, they enhance buy-in and ownership, effectively using human drive to an organization's advantage. People who feel ownership of their work are likely to find that work more meaningful than people who have no say in how things are done.

For example: The next time a talent leader assigns a project, make sure that leader knows that people clearly understand the desired end result and the parameters for the work and also provides the latitude for them to determine how they are going to achieve it. Recognizing this natural human drive to be a part of the solution is a critical first step to motivating people to do their best and enjoy doing it.

Manage Performance and Mentor People

Talent leaders also must recognize this human drive to problem solve in themselves, and then curb it. If a manager is focused on his group's performance, he or she will feel the need to provide answers and solve problems, making employees feel less necessary in the process.

The talent manager's most effective role is to empower and mentor. In this role, the leader will motivate people to do more, and performance will take care of itself. Plus, helping people realize they can perform job tasks with less help enables them grow personally and professionally while making the managers' job that much easier.

When a talent leader is compelled to provide answers, he or she should ask questions instead. Asking good questions is a great way to help people learn to problem solve and make good decisions. It gives people the opportunity to discover the answers for themselves, which gives their work meaning and provides the right environment for sustainable learning, adding to their personal skill set and growth, which also is great for the organization.

Focus on the Person, Not the Job

When talent managers make people feel like they care more about the work than the employees, it can promote feelings of insignificance. Conversely, an employee who feels his manager's concern for his well-being is more likely to experience the trust characteristic of high-performing teams and organizations.

Talent leaders should take time to get to know their employees. This will not only help to build trust, it will provide invaluable insight into what motivates them. Different things motivate different people. One person might be thrilled about new responsibilities as a project manager, while another might experience a greater sense of achievement when allowed to actually produce the desired end product.

In addition to being sensitive to individual role preferences, it pays to note the varying degrees of structure individuals need to be happy in those work roles. Some people need and prefer more direction and clarification than others. This is especially true in ambiguous or uncertain situations.

To assess individual need for structure, ask people to write down questions they have about their jobs. Someone with lots of questions probably needs more structure, while the person who has few questions almost certainly needs less.

Show Up When Things Are Going Well

Being the human problem solvers we are, it's natural for a manager to intervene more often when something is not working than when things are going smoothly. Unfortunately, in this type of environment, employees soon begin to fear every conversation with managers, viewing them as people who show up only when there's a problem.

Brain chemistry research shows this fear of criticism actually triggers the fight-or-flight response, bathing the brain in fear hormones that increase defensive behavior and actually inhibit learning. Talent managers that only talk to employees when something's wrong end up with defensive and withholding employees, and fewer opportunities to uncover the information they need to know about workers and their performance.

To avoid this common scenario, talent leaders should intentionally make time to recognize employees for what is working. Schedule regular meetings where people are invited to report their successes. This structured recognition date will prompt employees to look forward to seeing the talent manager, motivating them to share everything necessary about their performance, as well as how to mentor them and help them achieve even more.

Plus, in the process of learning what's working, the manager also will learn what's not working. But the interaction starts with attention on what the person is doing right, which creates an atmosphere in which people are more open to suggestion and learning can take place.

Publicly Recognize Great Performance

In addition to making time to let employees tout their own achievements in private, public recognition helps to reinforce a sense of accomplishment and accountability. When people are publicly recognized for a job well done, they experience that sense of achievement all over again, which makes them eager to get back to work and tackle the next problem even more skillfully.

When a manager sees good problem solving and decision making, he or she should acknowledge the success privately and in front of others. Timing is important, so don't wait for the annual awards banquet. Making public recognition spontaneous and frequent will motivate everyone, create an environment that supports and encourages ongoing learning, achievement and accountability for all. This motivational culture is good for the employee, the manager and the organization.

But when attempting to recognize and motivate employees to do better work, talent managers should ask: Will my actions contribute to the person's sense of achievement or recognition? Do they fit their individual preferences? Will my actions enable him or her to grow and be prepared to take on more responsibility? Do they make the work more meaningful?

If the answers to any of these questions is no, talent leaders should recognize that while they may make the person feel rewarded for a job well done, they probably won't achieve the long-term motivation they're looking for.


[About the Author: Chris Musselwhile, Ed.D., is president and CEO of Discovery Learning Inc. and author of Dangerous Opportunity: Making Change Work.]

Organisational Change - HR Practices

Best practices in managing organisational transformation.

Key learnings:

• Organisational change aimed at improving work methods, productivity and business profits must be coherent


• Enthusiastic leadership, flow of creativity and stability in procedure helps in reaching the goals
  

Jargons like organisational change and organisational transformation are often used theoretically and in management talk. The term organisational change is used in the context of companies that are undergoing or have just undergone a transformation.

However, organisational change management is not a 'one-month ordeal'. It is a process that involves rearticulating managerial, technical, financial and business aspects.

A McKinsey Quarterly online survey shows that only 38 percent of the global employees consider change as a positive effect on performance. And, 10 percent believe that most of such transformations are unproductive.

Change management

According to change management experts, two factors are critical for any transformation to click. One is vision or goal-the changes the company aspires to bring about. The second is sustainability. The sustainability factor refers to the unwavering energy, commitment and persuasiveness to reach the goal.

Defining the objective

A well-defined and comprehensive objective spells out the goal clearly for all the employees of the organisation. While different departments may have different approaches, the core aim of transformation remains unchanged. This distinctly clear system ensures an upbeat journey that promotes organisational health, participation of every employee and bottom-line profits.

Defining the role and time frame

A well articulated strategy ensures that there is no overlap of roles. It also rules out misinterpretation. Each employee has his defined role that is personal and challenging. Moreover, since the focus is on 'strengths', the definitive goal of 'effectual transformation' is accomplished.

When the time frame is set over a few months, the employees will be enthusiastic. Goals set over three or five years fall prey to dwindling employee interest. In such cases, the leadership of the organisation plays a very important part. For effective articulation of long term goals, involvement of employees and applying fair and apt metrics to track developments, it is important for employees to remain clued in to developments.

Sustaining energy and flow of ideas

Creativity and ideas are advantages that help sustain organisational change. Many a time, organisations discard ideas doubting their practicality. However, innovation is the key to reach people and bring about desired changes.

Most often, ideas from employees or leaders are considered deeply. Mutually inspiring organisations initiate creativity, responsibility and accountability. To encourage an 'idea sharing' work environment, leaders must espouse innovation and sharing thoughts that can bring about radical transformations.

Channelising energies

When leaders of an organisation announce transformation to employees, two extreme reactions are bound to happen. There will be employee totally gung-ho about the transformations and those who will be cynical. It is important to generate positive stimulation and help employees channelise their dynamism. Some companies reward 'ideas champions', while some appoint 'the master blaster'. Such steps energise the staff towards transformation.

"A smaller set of high-impact, briskly moving initiatives is more energising-and thus more sustainable- than a broader set of initiatives moving at a stately pace."

Seeing is believing

Any results of the transformation, however small, must be highlighted to ensure greater participation. Employees usually remain mute spectators to the brainstorming sessions and meetings that are part of the organisational change. The worth of such sessions is usually taken too lightly. However, even a small success during the transformation reaffirms employee faith in the process and the overall vision.

Learning curve

The transformational process is a learning process for leaders, management and employees. Open communication channels, suitable rewards and discipline are extremely important to understand the change. While the transformation aims at bringing about success in the organisation, individual growth and learning cannot be ignored. Experts rightly suggest that organisational transformations which focus on individual strengths create a more involved staff.
In today's highly dynamic market, being a flexible, employee centric and practical organisation is a plus. An organisational transformation is a dynamic process with multiple levels of planning and execution. However, the reengineering and rebuilding process can be an exhilarating expedition if the leadership has commitment and clarity.

Reference: TheManageMentor.

Managing Global Talent With Integrity

The enormous cultural diversity in today's global economy makes evaluating, assessing, recruiting and managing talent a challenge - perhaps the challenge - for transnational companies. There are several key steps companies and their talent leaders can take to meet that challenge and build a global workforce that delivers high performance with high integrity.

First, contemporary corporations must explicitly establish high performance with high integrity as the foundational goal of the enterprise, recognizing that it should indeed be the goal of global capitalism.

High performance means strong, sustained economic growth based on superior products and services that provides durable benefits to shareholders and other stakeholders.

High integrity means:

a) Tenaciously adhering to the spirit and the letter of formal rules, both financial and legal.

b) Adopting voluntary global standards that bind a company and its employees to act in its enlightened self-interest.

Living the core values of honesty, candor fairness, reliability and trustworthiness, which infuse the creation and delivery of products and services, and guide internal and external relationships.
Combining high performance with high integrity must counter strong pressures to cut corners to make the numbers. It isn't just about avoiding evils and the potentially catastrophic impact of an integrity miss. It is also about creating strong, affirmative benefits for the company, the marketplace and the broader society. Such trust is needed to sustain corporations' enormous power and freedom - even under current regulation - to allocate capital, to hire and fire people, to drive productivity, to invest in new geographies and communities, and to innovate with new products or services.

This is not a frill or a nice-to-have. It is not the initiative of the month. The fusion of high performance with high integrity should be the foundation of an organization. This is especially so for companies seeking beachheads in difficult markets.

During my time at General Electric, whenever I was asked what I lost sleep over, my answer was always the same: emerging mistakes. For understandable reasons, multinationals have embraced the potential of significant new growth in the developing world, touting it at analysts' meetings and in public speeches. At the same time, they are quietly aware of the significant integrity minefields that threaten to impair performance and destroy margins: limited rule of law, endemic corruption, rampant conflicts of interest, erratic enforcement, money laundering, unscrupulous local competitors and hard-to-assess economic and political risk. To meet their dramatic growth projections, transnational companies must navigate treacherous shoals.

Second, corporations must adopt a uniform, high performance with high integrity global culture. Culture is the shared principles and practices that influence how people think and behave. The right culture is not punitive but affirmative. Such a culture only can exist when it flows from top leadership - when aspirations are matched by actions. Integrity principles and practices should be driven deep into business operations, without compromises for tough markets.

An important dimension of such a culture is the adoption of global ethical standards. "Globalization through localization" is one of the mantras of transnational companies. Localization, of course, includes adherence to the financial or legal rules of the specific national jurisdiction. GE's code of conduct, for example, begins: "Obey the applicable laws and regulations governing our business conduct worldwide."

But that's not always enough. In some cases, the answer to questions such as, "Is it according to GAPP?" or "Is it legal?" may not be adequate because formal rules don't address the broad problems facing a company. A corporation may find the best answer is to go beyond required duties and voluntarily impose a higher global ethical standard on itself and its employees.
An organized, systematic process is needed to decide whether to adopt such global standards. Once adopted, these standards should have uniform application and implementation across business units, product markets and geographies as formal financial and legal rules. Examples include ethical sourcing and building Greenfield plants in emerging markets to world, not local, standards.

Another important dimension is hiring "A" players in key leadership positions throughout the company and recognizing that driving performance with integrity into business operations requires resources. In most corporations, there is a constant struggle to find the right people and allocate adequate resources. Unless both happen, the merger of integrity and business processes isn't possible.

Hiring experts inside the corporation is vital and cost-effective for risk assessment and abatement. Inside experts know the company far better than any outsider, and they can act quickly. For example, Jack Welch encouraged me to hire outstanding experts in taxes and environmental programs, who had developed world-class expertise both in government service and private practice. Beyond minimizing and mitigating integrity risks, they also proved extremely valuable to the CEO in transactions and financial planning and in offensive and defensive public policy.

Questions about paying for the integrity infrastructure need to be faced candidly and systematically. There's no way around it: Funds must be found and spent to establish the fundamentals. Unless the CEO makes this a clear performance metric for business leaders, these costs inevitably get shoved to the bottom of the list.

This is a forward commitment, as well: When the company engages in the next round of "10 percent across-the-board cost-cuts," the CEO and other business leaders must fight the temptation to wield the ax in this sensitive area, and instead scrutinize the actual impact of reductions.

Third, performance with integrity education and training must come alive. It must be given the same commitment as training in business skills such as finance, marketing, sales and IT, and employees must be given a voice to raise integrity concerns.

The largest challenge: finding the people, message, method and evaluations that collectively constitute a culturally sensitive, yet globally effective set of communications in each market. Face-to-face sessions with employees unschooled in the company's global culture are essential; Web or paper training are second-best.

For example, GE Healthcare developed a short training case about the now famous but fictitious Mr. Vu, who faced multiple tough scenarios, such as hiring third-party consultants, approving travel and living expenses, dealing with customers' demands for bribes and the use of the GE mark.

Such learning by example isn't easy. Talent leaders will need knowledgeable trainers to develop trust and get the most out of illuminating discussions. GE often found it hard, given the exponential growth in Asian employees, to deliver live, in-context training. Too often, we had to settle for an interactive Web-based approach. This challenge is mirrored in the difficulty of finding multilingual, multicultural leaders who can help the corporation act with local sensitivity and global discipline in emerging markets, while also anticipating contingencies, diversifying operations and finding top talent.

One of the most powerful principles in creating a high performance with high integrity culture, and for ensuring accountability up and down the corporation, is to give every employee a voice. This means encouraging, and indeed requiring, the reporting of concerns about possible violations of financial, legal and ethical standards.

One channel for such voice is a company "ombuds" system that encourages employees to express their concerns, addresses those concerns promptly with professionalism and respect, makes failure to report itself an integrity violation and, of course, sanctions those who engage in retaliation. A vibrant, fair, trusted ombuds system not only detects issues early, before they can metastasize into huge problems, it also deters improper acts inside the company right from the start.

Another channel for employee voice is through the finance, HR and legal functions. These key staff members must reconcile dual, conflicting roles. They must be partners to business leaders and help accomplish performance goals. But they also are corporation guardians and must report legal, financial, ethical and reputation concerns to corporate staff leaders if they have problems raising and addressing them in their business units.

Finally, corporations must develop compensation regimes that do not just pay for performance, but pay for performance with integrity. We can measure integrity by looking at whether leaders have adopted the core performance with integrity principles, are implementing the key practices to achieve them, have created the affirmative culture - through employee surveys and 360 degree assessments - compare favorably to peer companies and have achieved annual performance with integrity goals and objectives. Similarly, the management development process should be aimed, in part, at training future leaders in the principles and practices of high performance with high integrity, especially in international markets.

[About the Author: Ben W. Heineman Jr. is senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School and senior counsel to the law firm of WilmerHale. This article is adapted from his book, High Performance with High Integrity.]

The Three R's of Motivation

The greatest untapped resource to its full potential in any organisation is its work force. It has been estimated that an average employee at any given time works at less than 50% of his capacity. If this were true a good manager can increase productivity by:

• Helping the organisation make a profit.
• Motivating the sales team to achieve its full potential.

Conventional wisdom dictates that money and benefits are all that are necessary to attract and maintain a world-class sales organisation. The truth is that beyond a certain point, money and benefits are important only in keeping employees satisfied. Then what 's it that motivates people?

The Three R's

Recognition: Managers reinforce employees' desire to continue doing the right things by focusing on and rewarding positive behaviours, appreciating and being attentive to the good things employees do. This builds a positive self-image, leading to a positive attitude.

Unfortunately, most autocratic leaders tend to criticise, condemn and complain, never forgetting a negative performance ignoring good performances. Lee Iaccoca said many years ago, "When I reprimand, it is always orally and in private; when I praise someone, it is always in writing as well as in public."

Rewards: Napoleon observed, "Men will die for ribbons." Telling employees you appreciate them is a good beginning, but etching it in stone is even better. A personal thank-you card that recognises in detail a special accomplishment gives the recipient a form of praise that endures. It can be shown to colleagues, friends and family. A certificate or plaque is a permanent reminder!

Reinforcement: Singling out an associate every month for praise is probably the most popular form of individual recognition, as with a salesperson - or employee-of-the-month programmes.

Any form of reward can be effective - some for short periods, others for much longer. Regardless of how managers recognise achievement, they must consciously reinforce the behaviours associated with peak performance.

Best Motivator of All

Motivation is more than a well-thought-out reward programme. To really stimulate a team, a climate of self-motivation that promotes growth and personal development should be created.

The best way to motivate employees is to build their self-confidence. That's why provide employees the skills needed to excel in their profession.

Continuous training and education are necessary to keep a company thriving. The highest compliment an organisation can pay its employees and the greatest message it can send to the entire staff is, "We believe in your potential; our future and yours are long-term. Therefore, we are investing in your personal development, which ensures our company's growth and yours."

Ref: TheManageMentor

A Culture of Learning: Turning Values Into Actions

Creating a culture of learning begins with emphasizing the value of workforce development. Sustaining it entails collaboration among learners, as well as alignment of programs to key organizational goals.

Learning cultures thrive in organizations that consistently reinforce the value of learning. These organizations encourage information- seekers, facilitate educational experiences and consistently demonstrate a commitment to learning by defining the culture in actions, not words.

Learning is not a one-time event. Effective and meaningful corporate cultures understand learning is an essential part of the fabric of the company, woven into all roles, functions, divisions and regions of the organization. Placing value on learning and creating an open environment creates an enduring organization and provides the ultimate source of sustainability.

Too often, education on corporate values and principles is addressed in silos. Corporate attitudes and behaviors are heavily influenced by an organization's culture, and the culture is shaped by the organization mission, core values and traditions. In a healthy learning culture, education is visible in all aspects of the business - so learning penetrates the entire organization to foster a culture of interactivity and engagement. In the case of a company's ethics and compliance education, a company's values come to life in actions that provide competitive advantage to the organization.

This holistic approach to learning - including the company's values, ethical decision making and business risks - is necessary in creating a learning culture. Yet, too often, education is applied to meet compliance standards or the minimums of the law and not necessarily designed to foster a values-based culture.

Evolving Into a Values-Based Learning Culture

Global businesses are faced with a number of new and more complex challenges than ever before regarding how people connect, collaborate and work cohesively and productively. Trend data from LRN's "2008 Ethics and Compliance Risk Management Practices Report," which surveyed more than 420 global companies, shows that one-quarter of organizations have a desire to engage employees in learning, but are challenged to put their corporate values and integrity into action.

When an organization seeks to transform its corporate culture through values-based learning, it is best to initiate the tone from the top and ask executives to define the overall culture to determine whether they consider it to be a learning culture. This assessment should touch a representative sample of organizational stakeholders, in addition to the leadership team - which may include customers, shareholders, suppliers, as well as employees.

Next, a thorough assessment of current programs assists in evaluating the attitudes and perceptions of the organization's learning culture. This assessment should reach employees across roles, functions and geographies to gather a balanced perspective of their educational experiences. The results should be compared to highlight any key commonalities that are important to maintain. However, it also is important to identify any discrepancies in perceptions of the overall culture, as well as the educational programs, to create an action plan that moves the company toward a truly aligned learning culture.

Shifting attitudes and transforming behavior do not happen overnight, but leveraging multiple learning channels within an organization is an excellent avenue to engage the workforce through awareness building and activities that can slowly shift the tide. The focus of any initiative cannot begin and end with awareness, but should repeat consistent bits of information, facilitate forums for informal learning and create a sandbox for learners to test and socialize information, shift attitudes and, ultimately, increase knowledge retention. This type of collaborative learning takes education from the individual development approach and creates a connected environment that builds the foundation of a learning culture.

The work of Judith Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption, challenges the whole way we look at teaching. Her work showed that, historically, the perspective on teaching overestimates the influence of parents and teachers, and underestimates the role of peer pressure. There are some real and practical steps to enhance learning by working with peers in team environments.

As companies work to create a more engaging educational program, they should not lose sight of how best to educate their workforces on mission-critical information in meaningful and sustainable ways. Organizations need to avoid implementing learning initiatives as a one-way communication, risking information overload. Pushing out content onto a corporate intranet, in the hopes that learners read and absorb the information, satisfies a "check the box" approach to education but does not represent a culture of learning.

For example, if an organization is launching a new environmental, health and safety policy, posting a set of compliance rules communicates to the enterprise that leadership is taking a passive approach to education, whereas some organizations take an additional step, requiring their workforces to electronically certify that they have read, understand and agree to abide by the policy. This sends a message that leadership deems these policies critical to the business.

Yet, posting a policy and successfully obtaining certification is only the first step to raise awareness. Where most organizations assume their work is done, a true learning culture believes the education has just begun. The next step is to ensure the workforce understands how to apply the policy in real-life situations it faces in daily work life. We know that recall is enhanced by learning in the context in which one is expected to perform. Yet, most teaching is done in alien environments such as classrooms, training centers or in bland online formats. So create an ideal blended approach that incorporates awareness building, knowledge building and skill building through peer interactions.

Enabling the workforce to translate rules into actions empower the business, mitigates risk and builds a cohesive corporate culture that ideally becomes a self-governing one. Once the awareness around a topic is achieved, it is important to foster a rich learning culture in order to educate, not just inform. This can be achieved by designing a suite of learning experiences that trigger the learner's personal relevance in the equation of the compliance topic.

Learning experiences can take on many shapes and forms, such as interactive modules that enhance the learning experience - to help the learner connect the dots from policy awareness to application. As noted by the Peer Research Laboratory at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, adults retain 10 percent of what is read, 20 percent of what is heard and 80 percent of what is experienced, so it is important to consider experiential learning, which can be facilitated through a variety of learning tools such as live workshops, virtual worlds or interactive gaming. These are all extremely effective ways to turn awareness into knowledge. In a global environment, these learning experiences should be localized to align with regional guidelines.

After awareness building, a guided application of the policies can empower learners to see their ownership in the experience and facilitate greater understanding and relevance. This results in a more compelling and meaningful learning experience and sends a message about the value the organization places on knowledge building. From William James and John Dewey through to David Kolb and Roger Schank, there has been a torrent of theory showing that we learn more by doing; yet, much teaching and training is locked into theoretical knowledge and not a skills-based model. There is hardly a training subject that would not benefit from a boost in experiential learning.

Learner Expertise and Knowledge Sharing

Global audiences today thrive in forums of personalized learning and creative expression. They are self-authoring content and emerging as amateur filmmakers and photographers. Innovations to connect and build knowledge have arrived through collaborative tools such as blogs, wikis, photo streams and machinima clips (animated movies created with gaming technology).

High-impact learning cultures recognize the value in user-generated content and embrace this next generation of tools. Perhaps the easiest and simplest piece of learning theory to put into practice is chunking, which means being sensitive to the limitation of working memory.

Less is more in learning, and it is important to distill information for the adult learner, rather than enhancing, elaborating and creating distracting noise. Additionally, a lack of understanding about how memory works leads to a lack of preparation of material in terms of size of content, order and engagement, which leads to weak encoding, a lack of deep processing and, ultimately, poor retention and recall. In creating a learning culture, it is essential to engage and educate the workforce often with small interactions and incorporate peer and direct manager discussions into the program.

As the workforce continues to grow through globalization, we must remember the value of relationships and the connection between people as an essential element to consider throughout the enterprise. The fabric of any organization's culture is built upon relationships that evolve over time through communication and connections. In a global culture, the core is strengthened by fostering a learning environment that supports relationship building through activities, such as peer collaboration, or particular platforms that allow colleagues to have a dialogue around successes and failures.

Tomorrow's Leaders

Preserving a learning culture requires keeping the learner population at the forefront of the company's strategy. When there are marketplace changes or competitive challenges, it is critical that an organization's learning environment is flexible and prepared to augment its program to support the business.

Today, organizations are challenged to maximize operational performance while increasing retention and driving workforce productivity. Sustained learning cultures build strategies and processes that give them visibility into how talent allocation best aligns with organizational goals and needs. This includes alignment on the cultures, values and mission of organizations. Mature learning organizations recognize this and focus on talent-driven initiatives through performance management processes that integrate values into career development and succession planning.

Taking a strategic approach to succession planning is a powerful catalyst for organizational transformation, growth and development, and ultimately drives cultural sustainability. Developing the skills and talents of the next generation of leaders and transferring institutional knowledge into practical business applications will contribute to ongoing business success and a sustainable advantage.

Ref: Marsha Ershaghi