wood

Talent management functions like the kidney that hires the good personnel and fires
the bad ones.

The two kidneys are the vital organs in the body amongst other functions cleanse the
blood of toxins and keep it chemically balanced. The kidneys are sophisticated
reprocessing machines and process the blood to filter out the wastes and extra water.
Similarly a good talent management system will hire the good personnel, retain them and
remove the bad ones.

Good management is not just about recruiting the right people to do the right jobs. This is
particularly important during challenging times when staff budgets are cut to the bone. A
strong management team must also have the discipline and insight to identify the dead
wood in the company, and to be able to take firm action to remove them. These
executives are those who have being entrenched in the system because of their job
security and seniority are just cruising along and marking time. They do not have active
and productive contributions as well as add value to the company. Most managers
acknowledge that the most difficult task is firing of employees, particularly somebody
that they have worked with closely for several years. Usually, the people that you did not
fire are the ones that make your life miserable.

In many organisations, the decision-making power resides at the top. Empire-building by
yes-men becomes the main preoccupation of the day. In the corporate intrigue of power
struggle for status and position, the good personnel who may have differing views are
stifled.

In talent management, the CEO has to look beyond himself and his abilities. He is smart
if he hires the right people who may be better than he in those competencies to execute
tasks that he himself is unable to do. He is then able to extend “his arms and legs” within
the organisation to get things done in more efficient manner.
This philosophy is shared by Jack Welch as he felt that smart people hire smart people.

He said: “Every time you hire someone that is not better than you, you have missed an
opportunity, because if you got all the answers, who the hell needs anybody else.” GE’s
core competence is the development of people and Welch’s greatest legacy was to
transform GE as the training ground of the world’s top business honchos. For example,
the other two candidates, namely Robert Nardelli and James McNerney who did not get
Welch’s job left GE to become CEO of The Home Depot and 3M respectively.
Hiring the right person takes good skill in recruitment. Sometimes, even with good
evaluation and hiring efforts, the employers do make the wrong hire. In such situation,
you need to try to redeem the situation or live with it or fire the employee and start the
recruitment process all over again.

However, in the situation of lean staff budget, you do not have the luxury of carrying
“dead wood”. It maybe necessary to fire the wrong recruit. Jack Welch saw nothing
wrong in delayering and downsizing incompetent people. To him, downsizing and
delayering were absolutely necessary, and not firing workers who were a part of a losing
business would have been more heartless than letting them go past the age of 50. Welch
the self-actualizer is also Welch the pragmatist and he sees these decisions as necessary
threads in the fabric of business. . “That is business,” added the GE Chairman. He also
explained it this way: “I think the cruelest thing you can do to somebody is give them the
head fake.nice appraisals.that’s called false kindness. A removal should never be a
surprise.”

On the other hand too, retaining the people that you want to keep has become a key issue
for organisations. When the key and talented people leave, there is a loss of experience
and knowledge as well as continuity. Yet, companies would rather spend the valuable
resources to recruit new talent from competitors than retaining the talent that they already
have.

http://www.corporateturnaroundexpert.com

Dr Mike Teng (DBA, MBA, BEng, FIMechE, FIEE, CEng, PEng, FCMI, FCIM, SMCS) is the author of the best-selling business book “Corporate Turnaround: Nursing a sick company back to health”, in 2002. In 2006, he authored another book entitled, “Corporate Wellness: 101 Principles in Turnaround and Transformation.” Dr Teng is widely recognized as a turnaround CEO in Asia by the news media. He has 27 years of experience in corporate responsibilities in the Asia Pacific region. Of these, he held Chief Executive Officer’s positions for 17 years in multi-national, local and publicly listed companies. He led in the successful turnaround of several troubled companies. He is currently the Managing Director of a business advisory firm, Corporate Turnaround Centre Pte Ltd, which assists companies on a fast track to financial performance. Dr Teng was the President of the Marketing Institute of Singapore (2000 - 2004), the national body representing some 5000 individual and corporate marketing professionals in Singapore

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