A five-point strategy
Here are five steps to lead your organization into the 21st century by connecting talent to the business strategy.
1. Leadership. Select a team to champion the integration. Harmonising talent management across multiple business units requires leaders with authority, diplomacy, and technical savviness.
The team should include someone from the C-suite, and will likely be driven by someone from HR.
At CDW Corporation, integration was led jointly by the company’s senior director of talent acquisition and its senior director of organizational capability.
At E.W. Scripps, it was led by the HR director and the vice president of talent management. A successful ITM team will be cross-functional, be composed of genuine change agents, and have full support from the top.
2. Diagnosis. There are many great reasons to integrate talent management, but it is essential to know the particular rationale why your company needs ITM and what it expects ITM to accomplish.
Meaningful conversations with key leaders across the organisation are a critical part of forming the diagnosis.
3. Technology. One reason diagnosis is important is because it guides your selection of ITM software. Will the solution you choose deliver in the areas your company especially needs it to?
CDW used a questionnaire to identify critical features of the desired ITM software; the responses became a list of criteria the company used in comparing products and suppliers.
Destination Hotels & Resorts identified three supplier “finalists,” and then asked to interview customers of each.
Many companies choose to develop their ITM technology in-house. Best Practice Institute surveyed eight large corporations that had attempted to achieve ITM. About one-third of those are using internally developed ITM systems.
4. Buy-in. The previous steps are all crucial to achieving buy-in. Training and communication also can help with the reception during rollout.
Destination Hotels pulled out all the stops to spread the word about its new ITM technology, including classroom sessions, webinars, memos, and internal web portals.
5. Implementation and evaluation. Integrating talent management does not happen overnight. It is a continuous process of keeping talent activities connected to corporate strategy and to each other.
Successful implementation includes systematic evaluation. Is your ITM system producing the desired results? Microsoft, CDW, and Amway all use employee surveys to evaluate their ITM success.
Don’t forget about results
In a survey conducted by Best Practice Institute, companies with successful ITM processes reported these benefits:
• Improved use of existing talent through such ITM-facilitated methods as talent referral programmes and cross-functional moves
• Improved employee engagement; Microsoft’s employee attitude surveys revealed a more positive outlook after implementing ITM
• Improved succession planning
• Better employee retention.

Integrating talent management does not happen overnight. It is a continuous process of keeping talent activities connected to corporate strategy and to each other.

Becton Dickinson-Japan, a medical equipment company that was an ITM pioneer in the mid-2000s, reported a 130% increase in revenue since integrating its talent functions.
It is no surprise that when a company’s corporate strategy is driving its talent decisions, and its various talent functions are supporting each other harmoniously, productivity can skyrocket.
How far along are you in integrating your business and talent strategy?
What does Integrated Talent Management look like for your company? Let us know so we can include you as a best practice! Did this article give some insight? If so, leave a quick comment or question for additional information. Or share your experiences and expertise!
 
Louis Carter is the CEO of Best Practice Institute, an association and solutions center for executives, consultants, and thought leaders at all levels of global organizations who pioneer and share best and innovative practices in leadership and management. He is the author of over 10 books on leadership development and organization change including Best Practices in Talent Management, Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organization Change, and the Change Champion's Fieldguide. He also leads the BPI team that enables employees from Global organizations to get consistent, quick positive feedback and tracks change over time, based on the messages in this article. See the video online for the SaaS product that provides consistent, quick positive feedback and tracks change over time at: http://www.skillrater.com. If you are interested in a demo contact us using this form or become a member of Best Practice Institute here.
He is also a headline speaker at Talent Management Asia 2015.
Here are some of Louis Carter's past blogs on linkedin:
The Cost of Lying and What to Do About It
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-candidates-lying-louis-carter?trk=prof-post
Is Your Brain or Game Theory Sabotoging Your Success?https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-game-brain-way-success-louis-carter?trk=prof-post
The Neuroscience of Conversation
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/neuroscience-conversation-louis-carter?trk=prof-post
Secrets to Integrating All Parts of Talent Management
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140818192713-123848-if-you-want-to-keep-your-sanity-align-your-talent-functions
Find Louis Carter's amazon profile at: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002IYU4HA

ITM means aligning your talent functions to the organization's greater goals. Modern corporations that are succeeding in integrating their talent management functions are beating the competition in recruiting the best talent, getting the most out of the talent they have, and preparing today's talent for tomorrow's challenges.
The talent management process at most companies includes workforce planning, talent acquisition, learning and development, performance management, succession planning, and compensation and benefits.
Each piece of this puzzle affects other functions. For example, workforce planning should be a major driver of talent acquisition, and learning and development should focus on needs identified in succession planning. Integrated talent management (ITM) seeks to connect these various talent activities into a seamless, synchronous whole.
What it is
ITM is achieved when some or all talent management functions of an organization support each other and share talent data, forming a holistic approach to talent management that is aligned to the organization's corporate strategy.
In some companies, recruitment amounts to little more than filling vacancies with warm bodies or, even worse, hiring the people the company needed 10 years ago to meet the needs the company will face 10 years from now. A much more productive approach is to make sure corporate strategy is driving every talent decision. Achieving this requires an integrated organization.
The ITM model developed by Best Practice Institute graphically represents these principles in the form of a wheel. Patrick Carmichael, VP of Development and Assessment at BPI and I validated this model with the BPI Senior Executive Board. The hub is business strategy. The spokes connect each talent management function to the strategy. And the rim is the HR/ITM technology linking the many talent functions and making shared data possible.

How it works
What does ITM look like at a corporation that has achieved it? Here are the two essential qualities.
All talent management functions are aligned with and driven by corporate strategy.Before integration, business unit leaders made talent decisions based on that unit's needs, with little consideration of the organization's greater strategy and goals. That remains the present reality at many organizations.
Meetings, memos, and walking around are insufficient ways for senior executives to promote strategy. What really makes the difference is driving strategy through talent decisions. Who are we hiring? Who are we promoting? How are people being assigned, assessed, and rewarded? The answers should all be tied directly to corporate strategy.
All talent management functions and data are linked through robust ITM technology.Many companies have a startling lack of knowledge of their own team members. Before a talent executive's company underwent sweeping changes in how it does talent, he confided that LinkedIn knew more about its employees than the company did.
Many other corporations collect a wealth of personnel data, but those data are held hostage by the incompatible technologies of various business units and departments.
Guidelines
Here are five steps to lead your organization into the 21st century through ITM.
Leadership. Select a team to champion the integration. Harmonizing talent management across multiple business units requires leaders with authority, diplomacy, and technical savviness. The team should include someone from the C-suite, and will likely be driven by someone from HR.
At CDW Corporation, integration was led jointly by the company's senior director of talent acquisition and its senior director of organizational capability. At E.W. Scripps, it was led by the HR director and the vice president of talent management. A successful ITM team will be cross-functional, be composed of genuine change agents, and have full support from the top.
Diagnosis. There are many great reasons to integrate talent management, but it is essential to know the particular rationale why your company needs ITM and what it expects ITM to accomplish. Meaningful conversations with key leaders across the organization are a critical part of forming the diagnosis.
Technology. One reason diagnosis is important is because it guides your selection of ITM software. Will the solution you choose deliver in the areas your company especially needs it to?
CDW used a questionnaire to identify critical features of the desired ITM software; the responses became a list of criteria the company used in comparing products and suppliers. Destination Hotels & Resorts identified three supplier "finalists," and then asked to interview customers of each.
Many companies choose to develop their ITM technology in-house. In 2012, Best Practice Institute surveyed eight large corporations that had attempted to achieve ITM. About one-third of those are using internally developed ITM systems.
Buy-in. The previous steps are all crucial to achieving buy-in. Training and communication also can help with the reception during rollout. Destination Hotels pulled out all the stops to spread the word about its new ITM technology, including classroom sessions, webinars, memos, and internal web portals.
Implementation and evaluation. Integrating talent management does not happen overnight. It is a continuous process of keeping talent activities connected to corporate strategy and to each other.
Successful implementation includes systematic evaluation. Is your ITM system producing the desired results? Microsoft, CDW, and Amway all use employee surveys to evaluate their ITM success.
Results
In a survey conducted by Best Practice Institute, companies with successful ITM processes reported these benefits:

improved use of existing talent through such ITM-facilitated methods as talent referral programs and cross-functional moves
improved employee engagement; Microsoft's employee attitude surveys revealed a more positive outlook after implementing ITM
improved succession planning
better employee retention.

Becton Dickinson-Japan, a medical equipment company that was an ITM pioneer in the mid-2000s, reports that it has experienced a 130 percent increase in revenue since integrating its talent functions.
It is no surprise that when a company's corporate strategy is driving its talent decisions, and its various talent functions are supporting each other harmoniously, productivity can skyrocket.

NEW YORK CITY -- BlackRock - June 9, 2014 -- Best Practice Institute will honor David Deacon, MasterCard’s chief talent officer, at a three-day meeting on Global Talent Transformation starting Tuesday in New York City.
BPI’s 2014 Best Organization Practitioner Award will be presented to Deacon by Louis Carter, founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute. BPI is a leadership development organization serving many of the world’s top corporations, including a majority of the Fortune 500. 
BPI’s Senior Executive Board is an ultra-exclusive network of talent executives of some of the world’s largest companies. The BPI SEB meets twice yearly for three-day summits on leadership and talent management issues. The upcoming meeting will be hosted at the headquarters of BlackRock, Inc.
 
“David’s work with ‘talent shepherding’ is extraordinary,” Carter said. “A huge transformation has been taking place at MasterCard ever since its IPO in 2006. David was exactly the change agent MasterCard needed to keep the transformation moving forward. He is a true thought leader in the field of talent management.”
 
The New MasterCard
 
MasterCard has more than 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Deacon joined MasterCard in March 2012. He said radical changes at the company are necessary to keep up with the digital and mobile revolutions: “a shift from plastic to digital, from fixed to mobile, and from actual to virtual.”
 
“Our goal is to be the leader in the brave new world of digital ubiquity, be the provider of electronic payments in all emerging markets and win the ‘war on cash,’” Deacon said.
 
The change effort at MasterCard is being accomplished by developing three groups of leaders: senior executives, high potentials and mid-level managers.
 
Executive Leadership Program
 
Chief Human Resources Officer Ronald Garrow created the Executive Leadership Program in 2010. It was a four-day event of assessment, coaching, teaching and dialogue. Deacon took over the ELP in 2012 and has developed a two-day version that 200 leaders are working through in 2014.
 
Jeff Wilson, group executive president of the company’s Geo Central Division, described the ELP as “nothing short of life-changing.” Wilson has been at MasterCard 19 years and had fallen into what he called “a corporate rut.” The ELP he attended in 2012 offered “everything I personally needed to take my career to the next level,” Wilson said.
 
Managing Region Counsel Malvina C. Longoria gave an enthusiastic report about her 2013 ELP experience. As a result of the training, “I’ve concluded that I am all in at MasterCard,” Longoria said. “And I am expecting everyone on my team to be all in, to bring their hearts and minds to work.”
 
Accelerated Development Program
 
In late 2013, Deacon launched the Accelerated Development Program for high-potential leaders. About 150 emerging leaders from around the world are working through the pilot program this year and next.
 
Deacon did not want MasterCard’s high-potential training to rely on classroom instruction and group exercises, which he refers to as the “sheep dip approach,” referring to the process ranchers use to immerse sheep in insecticides and fungicides by herding them through a narrow trough. Deacon wanted a custom-tailored approach to leadership development.
 
At the heart of the ADP are “talent shepherds,” senior- and mid-level talent executives who are assigned one-on-one to high-potential leaders.
 
SmartMoves and SmartSteps
 
Deacon realized that more than 1,000 mid-level managers with direct reports were not being reached by the ELP or ADP. However, Deacon wants to also leverage those “people managers.”
 
He has developed SmartMoves and SmartSteps, two programs designed to add to a manager’s “portfolio of experiences.” SmartMoves promotes lateral moves as a strategic way to advance one’s career. The soon-to-be-launched SmartSteps is an online marketplace for “one-day experiences,” which managers post and employees apply for.
 
The BPI Awards
 
BPI’s annual awards honor executives, practitioners and innovators who have made a significant contribution to leadership and management. Nominations are accepted from BPI’s 42,000 subscribers. Final nominees are selected by the Senior Executive Board and the winners chosen by Carter.
 
~   ~   ~   ~   ~
Louis Carter, founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute, has led BPI to become one of the world’s top associations for leadership and human resource development, with more than 42,000 subscribers. Carter is creator of Skillrater.com, the cloud-based anytime feedback tool on a social collaboration platform, and the BPI Online Learning Portal at www.bestpracticeinstitute.org. Carter has written eleven books on best practices and organizational leadership, including the Best Practice series and the Change Champion’s Field Guide.
 

Best Practice Institute is a leadership and management association focusing on best and innovative business practices. BPI has more than 42,000 subscribers, from managers to senior and C-level executives. It has corporate and individual members in about two dozen countries on five continents, including executives and employees of more than half of the Fortune 500.

A Review of Social Performance Management Tools
Some of the key players in this new, rapidly emerging field.
Integrating the power of social networking into the modern workplace is a process that has only just begun. The near-future result will be a complete makeover of the way modern corporations work. Traditional management styles and hierarchies will give way to a new way of doing business that is chaotic, collaborative, highly productive and very fast.
Social Performance Management is new enough that many executives are still unfamiliar with the term. That won't last much longer. The power of SPM will be impossible to ignore, resist or undo. SPM is the future of workplace productivity, and the future is arriving now.
The Very Short History of SPM
The first SPM providers began popping up five years ago. Yammer, now owned by Microsoft, and Rypple, acquired by Salesforce.com and re-launched as Work.com, both came on the market in 2008. NationalField was launched the same year by three leaders of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, which had been much heralded for its innovative use of social media.
Saba began merging its traditional HR software with social networking in 2009. In 2010, MangoSpring released Mango Apps, and 7Geese introduced the first social version of its performance management solution. That same year, Globoforce trademarked the term "Social Recognition" and WorkSimple began touting its trademarked "Social Goals." Our own organization, Best Practice Institute, launched Skillrater, a social rating and collaboration platform, in 2012.
What is Social Performance Management? It is the use of a social network platform, whether cloud-based or residing on an intranet, to optimize workplace performance and accomplish HR and talent management functions. Some of the most common applications of SPM are goal management, employee alignment and engagement, development and coaching, talent mapping and recognition.
Many companies forbid their workers from logging on to Facebook or Twitter while at work; celebrity tweets and Farmville addictions can be a drag on productivity. But imagine a workplace where a social network is a primary platform through which workers communicate and collaborate. A workplace where the weekly staff meeting and the annual performance review are replaced (or enhanced) by continuous online interactions. An organization where goal-setting and team-building and project management and performance reviews take place out in the open, on a social network, with all employees engaged and participating. That's Social Performance Management.
It is ironic that SPM, which is rapidly becoming the business world's most important use of social networking, is so late to the social business table. Most companies today believe they have embraced the power of social media because they have Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. However, many businesses have not yet begun to comprehend the real transformation that social networking will inevitably introduce to the workplace.
As one Harvard Business Review blogger said earlier this year: "Too many companies have kept social platforms separate from their essential businesses." Everyone acknowledges that social media are changing the world, from relationships to politics to entertainment, but businesses are only beginning to focus the power of social on revolutionizing the way we work.
 
How We Got Here
When the World Wide Web emerged at the start of the 1990s, businesses first saw the Internet as a marketing space. Company websites were essentially digital versions of the brochure and Yellow Page ad.
The term "Web 2.0" was coined in 1999 to herald the arrival of the interactive web. Through forums and blogs and wikis, the Internet became an ever-changing, ever-expanding world of user-generated content. Facebook, begun in 2004 to pick out the hottest girls on campus, spread social networking around the world and blazed the trail for other social networks.
As the "new web" created opportunities for new business uses, Web 2.0 led to Enterprise 2.0. Organizations began to ask: How can we use the new social technologies to advance business strategy?
Not surprisingly, the first place many businesses turned was marketing. Companies with a website added a Facebook page and launched a corporate blog. It has taken a long time for businesses to grasp that the explosive power of a digital platform, which enables the rapid exchange of information and ideas among multiple people, can be used for far more than merely hawking our wares.
One of the first non-marketing applications of social media was in talent recruitment. Today much of the heavy lifting in matching workers and jobs takes place online. But that's just the start. True social business and Management 2.0 are being born today as businesses are applying the power of social to performance management.
Making Performance Management Social
Most companies are dissatisfied with the results of their traditional performance management systems. The 2010 Study on The State of Performance Management asked 750 senior-level HR executives to give their company's performance management systems an A to F grade. More than half gave their own systems a C, D or F.
It is time to try something new. Social Performance Management is very new. Here are eight common functionalities of the first wave of SPM solutions, with one or two examples accompanying many of them.
1. Communication
 
Email revolutionized business. Almost half of office workers in a recent Ask.com survey said most of their office communications are by email, IM and the telephone, even when colleagues are nearby. Social solutions will introduce a similar but even more radical transformation in the way we communicate at work, replacing the one-to-one exchanges of private emails with one-to-many and many-to-many communications.
Consider the exponential improvement in quality and speed that will result. The person with the right answer or solution or idea will be able to chime in immediately; often it will be a person who would not have been consulted in a one-on-one exchange. The entire team will follow the discussion, sharing information and acquiring ownership in the outcome.
Such communication will be tantamount to self-management. Before SPM, a supervisor receiving an email might never have found time to send an answer. With SPM, day-to-day situations will often be addressed by the team before the supervisor ever gets involved.
One recent study estimated that if all of the knowledge hidden in private business emails was shared on a social platform, employee productivity would increase by 25%.
• Yammer began in 2008 by touting itself as "Facebook for business." People can log-in for free using their company email address and interact with everyone else with a similar email domain. The product took off like a rocket. Microsoft was certainly impressed, paying $1.2 billion to buy the company in 2012. Yammer boasts about 8 million users today.
• 7Geese chose its name in admiration of a group of geese flying in tight V-formation, a feat which requires continuous communication and collaboration. The company was founded in 2008 and introduced its first social performance management solution in 2010.  7Geese says that its product "gives everyone a voice regardless of their position in the organizational chart … [It] helps move from an Us vs. Them (management vs. employees) organization to a We organization where everyone feels valued and heard."
 
2. Collaboration
There is, of course, a big difference between social networks like Facebook and Twitter and the networks that are becoming platforms for corporate work. The former networks are mostly casual ways to occasionally stay in touch with friends. However, Social Performance Management platforms provide a way for team members to work together and achieve company goals. SPM is not just a digital water cooler; it is a powerful environment in which workers are helped to co-labor, i.e., collaborate.
• MangoSpring was founded in 2007 and introduced MangoApps in 2010. MangoApps' social network comes with a toolbox of features designed to deliver on the promise: "Everything you need to collaborate." The tools include MangoProjects for project management, MangoTasks for task and time management, MangoDocs for document sharing and MangoIdeas for ideation. Most SPM solutions offer similar tools.
3. Employee Engagement
One tenet of social business is that workers are not exclusively motivated by a paycheck at the end of the week. The enthusiastic worker is the one who has found intrinsic motivation.
Traditional management styles have failed miserably to appeal to workers' inner drive to excel. Executives and managers make decisions from on high, handing them down without explanation and with little regard for the workers whom they expect to carry out their instructions.
More thoughtful leaders may still make the grave error of believing that a PowerPoint revealing the company's business strategy and mission statement is going to generate genuine excitement from the rank and file. Most people are just not motivated that way.
What does motivate people? Human connections. People will do much and go far to satisfy their sense of belonging. They want to be a valued member, not of a strategy or corporation, but of a group of people.
Business social is one of the most powerful tools ever developed to cultivate that sense of belonging. Through social networks, employees can connect with each other and their overseers to share with and encourage each other. Through SPM solutions, employees are empowered to their value in the organization and draw meaning from the position they hold.
4. Training and Coaching
 
Business training and development have not changed much in recent years. Websites have replaced textbooks, and PowerPoints have replaced chalkboards, but training still largely revolves around classroom lectures and conference presentations. Social networking is changing all that.
Workers can access the information they need online. What they need beyond that are knowledgeable teachers and coaches to help them understand and apply what they are learning. Social networks are an ideal environment for real-time learning that is spontaneous and practical.
• Work.com is owned by Salesforce, which specializes in services for sales people, from account management to customer relations to lead management. One feature Work.com promises is real-time coaching for sales, service and marketing.
• Our Skillrater product works similarly to enable real-time continuous mentoring. Employees can request a rating on a skill or activity whenever they choose. Feedback accompanying the rating offers guidance on how to improve. After making improvements, an employee can request a new rating to document one's progress. The result is an ongoing training process that is employee-driven.
 
5. Goal-setting and Goal Management
 
A good company has well-defined goals, and those goals should be communicated clearly and repeatedly to team members. A business social network is an ideal tool with which to achieve that.
Productivity is optimized when each individual has personal goals that connect with the group goals. When individuals share their goals on a social network, they turn their personal goals into social goals, drawing the feedback and encouragement of co-workers. As we tell our Skillrater customers, participants "help each other get better over time."
• WorkSimple, launched in 2010, built its product around the idea of goal-setting and goal-sharing and even trademarked the term "social goals." On its website WorkSimple says: "We learned along the way that employees love social goals. They knew for the first time what was expected of them … They could see what others are working on, and how their job role and goals impacted the greater objectives…"
However, WorkSimple closed in February, citing undercapitalization, i.e., not enough paying customers.
6. Recognition
 
Recognition is the main thing in Globoforce's approach to workplace productivity. The company began in 1999 with the concept of "strategic recognition," tying recognition to company goals. In 2010, Globoforce introduced Social Recognition, a social network that enables "a continuous stream of recognition activity" in the workplace.
Almost all SPM solutions offer ways for co-workers to recognize each other, from a simple "Thanks!" or "Good job!" to various kinds of badges and rewards.
 
7. Feedback and Appraisal
Performance appraisal is a big reason why a lot of what we call "management" results in embittered, resentful workers. One thing almost everyone agrees on is that the annual performance review is a negative experience we would all love to do without. However, most companies continue to do periodic reviews, perhaps because they have not found a feasible alternative. Now Social Performance Management provides that alternative.
Traditional performance appraisals fail because they attempt to feed months of management oversight into a single meeting, diluting any praise with the inevitable criticisms, which come far too long after the fact. Employees leave hurt or angry. Statistics show that productivity often goes down after a performance review.
Social networking is a far better way to give feedback. It takes place in real-time. It focuses on one task at a time. Positive feedback is delivered when it is deserved and not watered down with negative comments. Negative feedback may sting a bit, but much less so when an employee knows one can earn positive remarks within days or weeks, rather than waiting another year for another review.
Some companies have even abandoned the review process in favor of the social platform. Most companies so far continue to conduct annual reviews, but now the reviews are informed by a continuous stream of feedback. All of an employee's positive moments throughout the year have been document, and the employee is less likely to be blind-sided by criticism.
• Saba's performance management tools lend themselves to companies that have not eliminated periodic review. For example, Saba Pulse tracks goals, achievements and missed deadlines, with the intent to "incorporate social feedback into formal performance reviews."
• Work.com includes the ability to give anonymous feedback. "The element of anonymity makes it easier to get honest, constructive and helpful feedback, and it can make feedback easier to give and take," the company says.
• In stark contrast, Skillrater does not permit anonymous feedback. We believe feedback is ineffective when employees do not know the source. To the contrary, anonymous feedback can create a toxic work environment. Similarly, we negative feedback is strongly discouraged. The best productivity improvements occur when feedback remains positive and future-focused.
8. Talent mapping
 
Qualified talent has been the holy grail of corporate business for two decades. Most companies are recruiting, training and stealing workers as fast as they can. However, many companies could do much better at taking advantage of the "hidden talent" they already have on the payroll.
An administrative assistant is also fluent in Spanish. Someone in accounting has years of public speaking experience. A warehouse worker is a natural-born salesperson. Another employee happens to be a talented artist and graphic designer. You get the idea of "hidden talent."
Talent mapping solutions to identify such "hidden gems" have been around for a while. However, combining talent mapping with social networking is transforming the search for hidden talent. Employees are empowered to speak up on their behalf when they possess a talent or insight that meets a specific need. Co-workers, who often know more about their peers than do managers and supervisors, also have a forum to speak up on someone's behalf.
• Saba's People Cloud and SilkRoad's Point are two examples of social solutions geared toward talent management.
• Our product, Skillrater, uses a social rating system that not only identifies but quantifies talent. Workers can request a 1 to 5 rating at any time on any skill or activity. The numeric ratings provide a way to measure one's progress over time. When the company requires a particular skill, it can turn to Skillrater's rating metrics to discover a hidden talent waiting to be put to new use.

A Roadmap to Best Practices in Global Talent Management
 The foundation of every corporate enterprise, large or small, is its people. A neighborhood pizza parlor may employ five people who are all members of the same family. A mid-sized manufacturer may have a central office in one city and two or three sales representatives in foreign trade centers. A vast global enterprise may have thousands of employees in every corner of the world.
            For all of these business enterprises, the central challenge of talent management is this: how do we ensure the continued growth and prosperity of the company? At the pizza parlor, how do we know that the family’s son or daughter is ready and willing to take over when Ma and Pa retire? At the midsized manufacturer, how do we know that our overseas sales reps are connecting with our foreign clients? At the global enterprise, how do we balance the preservation of our company’s native culture and heritage while at the same time facing the reality of reinvention and change and progress?  
 
Challenges Facing Global Enterprises
Every business that employs human beings¾from the pizza parlor to the global giant¾is shaped by the personality traits and capabilities of the individual employees and managers. Every person brings to the workplace varying degrees of creativity, skill level, ethics, family values, and even physical abilities and limitations. The employee may be ambitious or lackadaisical. The manager may embrace the corporate culture or be suspicious of everything the company promises.
            Because of their sheer size and scale, global enterprises face additional business conditions that present unique obstacles to leadership development. These include the physical distance between centers of activity, which may be thousands of miles; time zone differences between centers of activity; and language differences. National laws and policies that limit or control human activity can impact the behavior of executives, from choice of dress to whether or not an executive can get a driver’s license. Cultural differences can create misunderstanding. Religious practices and beliefs may impact an executive’s daily or weekly schedule. And ethnic or national pride may supersede loyalty to a foreign-based global corporation.
            These additional talent management challenges, which regional companies face to a lesser degree or not at all, impact every area of talent management of the global enterprise, including these scenarios:
            · Managing ex-pat talent. An in-house executive may possess skills and capabilities that make it possible to send him or her from their home environment to a distant or foreign location for an extended period of time. Time is needed for the executive to get to know the local culture, develop trust and relationships with local partners, make reliable reports, and apply a long-term perspective to the overseas project. But for many people it is difficult to remain away from home due to family responsibilities or simply because of personal preference. Not everyone is capable of being an ex-pat executive.  
            · Working with indigenous talent. The global enterprise presumably has a good reason for operating in a foreign country: there are profits to be made. And operating a profitable project often requires using local talent. At the lowest level, this may mean hiring local drivers, assembly-line workers, or maintenance staff. At higher levels there are engineers and marketing consultants and human resource experts. Every individual who is hired or contracted brings a host of personal qualities that may be positive (otherwise you wouldn’t hire them in the first place) or problematic, or (most likely) a blurry combination of both.
            · Creating long-term relationships. There are local politicians and tribal leaders and other powerful stakeholders who must be honored and convinced that the project is good for them and their constituents. There are local vendors and contract partners who must operate according to the organization’s expectations. Aligning these stakeholders requires a certain kind of executive who, with a sense of humility, enjoys connecting with people of different cultures and belief systems.
            · Recruiting and developing new talent, including talent from indigenous cultures. For a global enterprise, the simplest solution for talent acquisition would be to annually skim off the top graduates of one business school, train them, and set them on a corporate leadership development path. This is what the U.S. Army does at the West Point Military Academy: each year the Army receives one thousand freshly-trained second lieutenants, ready to get to work and move up the organizational ladder. But unlike the U.S. Army, global corporations tend to be less top-down in their management style (or should be, if they want to last very long). While some global companies, such as oil companies, aren’t necessarily engaged in retail sales in the areas in which they operate, most companies are doing business in a chosen region because they want to sell their product in that region. The organization itself must take on the character of the region, and the only way to do this is to recruit executive talent from that region.      
            · Mergers. Organizations grow in two ways: organically from within, or by the acquisition of, or merger with, other organizations. This means that almost overnight a company may have hundreds or even thousands of new employees who speak a different language and have different cultural practices and even different ethical standards. Sometimes a newly acquired local operation can continue its day-to-day activities without the average employee even knowing there has been a change of ownership, but inevitably at some point up the executive ladder there must be not only interaction but also close cooperation between executives of very different backgrounds. History has shown time and time again that from the standpoint of talent management, international mergers can extremely challenging.
 
The Value of Case Studies
We know that global corporations can do much better: a glance at the headlines on any given day proves this. The challenge of global executive management is real and very serious.
            The first step to solving the global talent management problem is to identify the scope of the problem and, if necessary, break it down into manageable chunks. Having done this, we can then begin to determine if any global organizations have avoided or solved the talent management problems that we have identified. Surely, in all of modern history, there must exist examples of successful and relevant global corporate behavior or practices. We can determine if these positive results were achieved by accident or happenstance or design. 
            If no positive examples exist, we can be confident that at the very least the history of global commerce is littered with examples of failure or poor results. We can determine the success rate of hiring executives from the indigenous culture. We can consult studies that suggest a high failure rate of emerging leaders within their home organizations. We can solicit testimony from engaged executives who can provide insight into the challenges of global talent management.
 
Defining the Traveling Global Executive
The next step in the process is to take everything we know about the success and failures that global companies have experienced, and create a set of ideal qualities that the traveling global executive must possess in order to both succeed in the short term and provide leadership for his or her organization in the long term. These qualities may or may not include:
1. A mental and emotional openness to the values of different cultures.
2. The ability and desire to acquire new skills (language, cultural) quickly.
3. The ability to bring together people of disparate backgrounds.
4. The physical ability to travel and to live in unfamiliar environments.
5. The emotional ability to remain away from home for extended periods.
6. The vision to create an organization that embraces creativity but develops unified action.
 
Toward Best Practices in Global Talent Management

Once we have established a set of goals, we can develop a set of best practices that global enterprises can use to meet these goals. This is where the rubber meets the road: global organizations are in critical need of workable, proven solutions. Using input from highly experienced and capable executive leaders, a roadmap can be created that will allow global businesses to turn talent management liabilities into assets, and pave the way for a brighter, more productive future.
 
Louis Carter is CEO and founder of Best Practice Institute