As head of intellectual property (IP) and development at Korn/Ferry International, George Hallenbeck has a talent for tuning and fine-tuning talent. With expertise in developing IP and products around the human factor, the 40-year-old Minneapolis-based consultant often has a crack at his six-string and idolises The Edge of U2. If that’s what it takes for Hallenbeck to tune up, CD finds him in fine fettle in the innards of Korn/Ferry’s Gurgaon office—strumming out classics on talent management and the limitations of the 360-degree feedback.
Excerpts:
How can we upgrade our talent management infrastructure and capabilities to build a truly talent-centric organisation?
There’re potentially a lot of things to do. Typically, when organisations try to put a talent infrastructure in place, they just try to put in place the ‘Best Practices’ piece. At one level, they have to figure out the critical capabilities organisations focus on. Depending on that, they need to translate them into leadership skills. Many of the companies are not capable of doing that.
How do we take our executives through a learning journey to accelerate their entry into senior roles?
The individual must have a number of unique and diverse experiences. That’s where the learning agility piece comes in. It is all about getting the right experience at the right time.
How can we ensure the best fit in every role whenever we take an executive selection decision?
First, you have to start out by asking about the key things that determine success in a role. Get feedback from not only the hiring manager for that role but also from high-performers in that role. If you’re not hiring at the right capabilities, you may get a lot of talented people but they may not fit into their roles within the company. So the talent needs to be channelled well. Lastly, through assessment and interviewing, we can determine the best fit.
How can we assess, align, orient and engage our talent to navigate through organisational changes?
All of that comes down to dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty. Our research proves that it is not a skill people normally excel at. It takes time to become capable at that. And there are very few who can turn ambiguity to their advantage.
What are the limitations of 360-degree feedback?
One of the things that I feel for the 360-degree feedback is that it shouldn’t be a tool for all purposes. In our experience, we found that it specifically functions in the context of helping people to develop. Primarily, what 360 provides is better awareness of how you are perceived by others. And awareness is the fundamental step to growth. When we try to adopt 360 for other purposes, particularly, performance management, it breaks down. We applied 360 for studies we’ve done in development and then when we applied them to performance, we found all the ratings went up. So a 360 will tell you what, it doesn’t tell you why. It may tell you that you have to improve your ability to motivate people but it won’t tell you why. That’s where the self-exploration of the inside-out process coupled with a good coach help ask the right questions to create the story behind the results.
Don’t you think underperformance gets a leg up once talent is standardised in the corporate world?
There are several schools of thought on that, the Jack Welch philosophy and so on. You really have to look at every individual—because there may be some very high talent that underperforms. And it’s not a one-size-fits-all for underperformers either. Talent management is not about standardisation but it’s a combination of the right principles to operate by, but never forgetting that you’re dealing with the individual. It’s a balance between the two.
Give us a glimpse of the HR toolbox to execute talent strategies.
The toolbox really is an integrative blend of consulting and tools that we provide to our clients. It’s a series of tools that we build around different talent functions but what makes them unique is that they’re all integrated with each other. We align those with the strategy of the organisation. One of our processes is to then sit down with the senior management and understand their strategy and how that translates into specific leadership competencies. On the basis of that, we put other solutions around selection, development, employee engagement, succession planning, talent identification and deployment. We put all those integrated pieces around the core that’s aligned with strategy. That really takes you to the upper echelons of talent management. It’s relatively few companies that reach that pinnacle that have talent practices that are integrated, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.
There’s a history that goes back to about 25 years of research that are woven into our tools. The principles of research came from the Center for Creative Leadership, which is a worldwide research non-profit organisation. One of our co-founders was also a principal talent manager in Pepsi and some other prime organisations. So a lot of science goes into creating those tools, but we’ve also been able to manifest them in a way that both HR and line managers understand. So we’ve had some breakthroughs with these results in what we call the 70-20-10 development. It basically establishes that people learn through their experiences. We develop people and leaders by giving them on-the-job learning experiences, and that’s 70% of our investment. About 20% should go into coaching, and really 10% should be the traditional training piece related to skills training, education etc. Unfortunately, most companies have that flipped. The other piece is learning agility, and we’ve even developed sub-types of identifying learning agility.
In a process-driven environment, do internal successors steal a march over external candidates?
Companies that are very successful over the long term have ways of going about it. Look at the GEs and the companies that really represent the pinnacle of this. But at the same time, you can be completely insecure. You always need to bring in fresh perspective and talent to add. It also depends on who is coming in. They need to adapt to the new situation. If you are coming into an organisation, regardless of whether it’s a highly process-driven organisation, if you’re not adaptable, you don’t succeed.
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