The Shift from a “War for Talent” to a “War to Develop Talent”

6 Key Learning & Development Strategic Issues

This blog was co-authored by Joanne Flynn, Jim Bosserman and Debbie Gower.  This article brings together perspectives and research from three strategic performance and learning and development professionals.

Learning & Development is critical to an organization’s success. Although the “war for talent” focused attention and efforts on recruiting since the late 1990’s[1], the “war to develop talent”[2] recently emerged more prominently on CEO agendas. Why?  Concerns over talent shortages and skill gaps have created obvious obstacles to achieving business performance and transformation goals. This concern is not to be minimized or ignored since every organization is stressed by cycles of environmental (external) and/or internal changes. The impacts of these changes require reassessment of business strategies, operating models, organization structures and competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills and behaviors) to address the very nature of work being performed.  To work at an organization’s optimal potential will require:

1. Upskilling talent
2. Reskilling talent
3. Reprioritizing leadership and management development

As a result, the investment and ROI to elevate organizational learning functions to improve and retain your talent has become just as, if not more, important as “buying” talent through the recruiting function.

1. The L&D / Business Agility Connection

Strategically focused L&D targets and tracks an organization’s business agility (i.e., learning, adaptation, execution, foresight, and innovation). A high degree of business agility is critical for an organization to achieve business growth goals or deliver an anticipatory response to environmental and/or internally generated changes, whether “event based” or “continuous”.  Realistically, what organization is not going through some type of swift and constant change in business today?  This dynamic also requires workforce mindsets and competencies to be in a state of constant acceptance and adaptation to change.  L&D can and should play a role as a key business partner to ensure robust business agility. Today, L&D must now be seen as a business imperative, a strategic investment in vital business assets … its people!

As Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, noted in 2012:

“If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by talentism.”[3]

Simply stated, “How can an organization maintain its business agility without investing in targeted, focused and strategically-aligned L&D as a tool to ready and enable its workforce to meet expectations?”

2. L&D’s Potential for Organizational Impact

Admittedly, L&D does not singularly enable an organization’s success. It is, however, clearly and significantly one of the most valuable tools due to its impact on the “minds and hearts” of the workforce.  Effective L&D importantly touches both the “mind and heart” when it can answer two employee questions:

1. “What do I need to do my job?”
2.  “What’s in it for me personally?”

Organizational performance and productivity expectations demand answers to the first question. Company culture and employee engagement goals respond to the second.

Remember the saying:  “Knowledge is power?”  An organization will have a key competitive advantage when there is:

• Purposeful development of business-driven competencies
• An understanding of how the competencies apply to fulfill job responsibilities
• Development efforts that are widely distributed throughout the organization 

If you don’t invest in L&D for your workforce, “what is your alternative to maintain a relevant and robust workforce and sustain a competitively viable business?”

3. The L&D Proposition

When an organization is going through change (however initiated), its ability to strategically leverage L&D to accelerate the business though the cycle of change can be a critical differentiator.  When change occurs, there are five emotional stages:

1. An initial climb to uninformed optimism
2. A downward spiral of informed pessimism, or doubt
3. A turn at the bottom toward hopeful realism
4. The climb to informed optimism, or confidence
5. Rewarding completion, or satisfaction 

Employees who feel satisfied and successful are more engaged and perform at higher levels. Stage 5 is rarely achieved automatically (i.e., without deliberate planning, action and accountability through L&D), which is why so many change initiatives fail (70%[4]).

The cycle of change can take time resulting in:

• Lower productivity
• Depletion of both organizational and individual resilience
• Delivery of less than expected operating results

If you do not invest in a focused and deliberate L&D effort, “do you lose the opportunity to accelerate your workforce through the change?”

4. L&D Business Premises

1. Accelerating through the cycle of change can move an organization to peak performance faster.
2. Peak performance delivers desired and planned organizational strategic results.
3. L&D can prepare an organization to help balance overt optimism and lessen the depths of unfounded pessimism.
4. L&D plays the biggest role through building competencies at the individual and organizational levels, speeding both through the typical downward drop, and accelerating movement toward peak performance.

Viewed this way, L&D must be considered a strategic initiative integral to any change event.

Therefore, if you do not invest in L&D, “is the ROI to achieve peak performance of the change or strategic initiative at risk?”

5. L&D, “minds and hearts” and peak performance

L&D plays off both the “minds and hearts” of people. The “mind” can create capable and competent individuals while the “heart” can invoke a positive attitude and excitement, or conversely resistance or intolerance to change.  Because L&D can and should impact both the “mind and heart” when well structured and leveraged appropriately, L&D can help to evolve the desired behaviors to:

• Navigate the challenges of organizational change
• Accelerate through the emotional cycle of change
• Realize peak performance and desired outcomes

If you do not invest in L&D, “do you lose the opportunity to touch the power of the “heart” of your employees to tap the emotion required to perform beyond the expected limits and barriers?”

6. Are you truly a learning organization?

It’s ironic that companies often define themselves as learning organizations.  They rely on learning as a critical aspect of normal business operations – business as usual.  However, often these same companies do not use L&D strategically to help facilitate change. We have seen examples in industries such as professional services, financial services, academia, and healthcare.  Learning is typically embedded across the organization for regulatory and/or compliance-related changes.  Comprehensive, dynamic and focused L&D efforts, however, are typically not used as prevalently and strategically for event-based, new initiatives or continuous changes in order to build resilience and business agility focused on accelerating the organization to peak performance.

If you do not invest in enhancements to L&D in a learning organization, “do you run the risk of not meeting the expectations of your people who want to receive the highest level of learning as desired and come to expect in your organization?”

Our experience has been when organizations use L&D more strategically, where L&D is focused on both developing the competencies and the application of those competencies in the new strategy or environment, these organizations realize a significant lift in performance and truly become a learning organization.

This blog was co-authored by Joanne Flynn, Jim Bosserman and Debbie Gower.