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Smart companies hire experts who are extremely good at their job and teach them how to do that even better. Not-so-smart companies hire unqualified people and spend their resources on teaching them the basics. Where do you think you yield more?
The disconnect between organisational and individual strengths is crazy! Organisations cannot connect the dots leaving talent, skills, and knowledge on the table. Yesterday we talked about the damage it causes to companies and individuals.
So how can we align Szilvia's strengths with organisational strengths? Organisational strengths are what the company does well and is known for. The same applies to individual strengths, unfortunately, if you ask your manager, "What am I good at, and what am I known for?" you will get no answer, or you get something like ", You are good at organising events." SERIOUSLY!
I did a project for a company known for its innovative household items using cutting-edge technology that no others do. So the company is known for its innovation and quality. So, how do we do innovation and quality? In their case, it was educated engineers (scientific and practical). But education and being able to do engineering is one part. The second piece in the puzzle is how they do engineering.
Now these guys are strategic thinkers, which means they work in silos and are very busy in their heads. This strength runs a major risk of no communication because things make sense in their heads:-) I love strategic thinkers I am one of them.
Embedding strengths into their employee journey was tricky but necessary to overcome this major limitation and to differentiate themselves from other companies. Here is what we did in brief:
EVP & recruitment: campaigns changed to strengths-based ones attracting talent who are interested in themselves too. This is an easy win because no companies are interested in who their people are.
Hiring: We created talent-based hiring solutions that aligned individuals' innate tendencies with specific roles. While the CliftonStrengths assessment should not be used for hiring decisions, interview processes were changed to identify candidates with strengths that are missing from a particular team. We taught them how to build teams.
Onboarding: Individuals complete their CliftonStrengths assessment and are coached on their strengths and how they align with their roles. It tells them how they will do that job and what they should double down on to be successful. Managers are part of this process, so they know what each of their employees is good at and known for. Their talent, strengths, role and organisational strengths are aligned from day one and they learn how to work around their weaknesses so they won't cause problems. A preventative approach instead of a disciplinary one.
Engage: Employees who are empowered to utilise their strengths become more engaged, innovative, and productive. Apart from an organisational-wide skill inventory, we created a strengths inventory so they can be called up for projects based on their strengths. I loved this part so much! Cost nothing, and people feel paid attention to and appreciated for what they are good at.
Performance: This is the biggest part. Instead of training people on how to do their job, this company hires competent people and hone their strengths for higher performance. They don't waste time on training skills and knowledge they should already have. They get qualified people and give them fuel (strengths) that catapult them to high performance.
Development: is not about promotion but performance. They develop people to be even better engineers. They don't do basic training they do training that is aligned with the future. They hired five AI specialists to automate 60% of manual labour in their support function (HR, Finance etc.) so they can focus on what they are good at!
One takeaway from this project was that do not waste resources on unqualified incompetent people because all you do is fix their weaknesses, which they shouldn't have if you hired them well.
The philosophy of hiring for attitude, because you can teach skills, will keep you at the bottom of your competition, or at best, you will be mediocre. It will keep you afloat, and you will be constantly treading, keeping your head above water by basic training and ensuring the basics are in place. That is a place of stagnation and misery, not talent development.
If you are ready to stop treading water reach out to us, we can help.
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