It’s not about resolutions it’s about revolution

Isn’t it interesting that the first thing that many of us do in the New Year is set ourselves up for failure? Just saying…..

A study in 2007 by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol showed that 78% of those who set New Year resolutions fail. In theory you can see how making our resolutions at the start of the year is a great idea. It’s about brushing my teeth after each meal, or using conditioner or walking the dog twice a day or reading more and watching less television.  At work you can be committed to finishing projects on time or spending more time talking with people about their challenges or not sending emails at midnight. According to the research, those who succeeded in their resolutions engaged in more detailed goal setting. By having goals that were Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely they achieved their goal 22% more often. Good to know, however not my natural instinct being a 3 Follow Thru in my Kolbe Assessment. What about being sucessful by setting small, quickly achievable goals which will build confidence and momentum? Start with goals you feel passionate about, ones you want to achieve not ones you think you should achieve. For instance dental health is a good thing but can I really get excited about brushing after every meal … back to my 3 Follow Thru. Setting goals and being successful is about understanding who you are and how you take action in the world.

What about our work New Years resolutions? Have fewer meetings, have shorter meetings, have meetings that matter…Pay more attention to the needs of people in the organization; it can be a long list. So our suggestion is have a revolution. A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a profound change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. It’s about making the big change because you don’t have time for the incremental or the tinkering that goes on.

Revolutions seem to be most effective when they focus on one big hairy audacious goal (BHAG). They also need a charismatic change champion (Che Guevara anyone) so that the revolution takes on a life of its own. Revolutions usually tackle one thing at a time so don’t set out to have a “top five”.

In Bill Conaty’s new book, The Talent Masters, Mr. Conaty is taking the lead as the Che Guevara of talent after retiring from his former role as Executive VP for HR at GE in the Jack Welch days. Conaty is calling for a revolution in how organizations manage, promote, hire, train and groom TALENT. For our loyal readers we have talked about talent a lot over the years. To paraphrase, it’s in short supply and it’s getting scarcer. The recession maybe slowed the process down but watch for the action to heat-up in 2011 and 2012. Some of the GE strategies are truly amazing including an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the top 600 executives by the top 25 executives at GE including Jack Welch. There is also example after example of the effort put into retaining high talent executives even if they fail at an assignment. It is the fundamental belief that people are more important than numbers. Spoiler warning: Jack Welch plays the role of reformed ‘slasher.’

However the bigger question is; what is talent?

From our persepctive talent is who you are and what you do in the world to live a fulfilling and meaningful life of contribution. Talent is all of who you are and hope to be.

How do you start the talent Revolution in organizations?

It always starts at the top. If the leaders don’t believe in the mission, the mission will not succeed. Leaders create an environment where talented people will want to come and work for you and not work for the competition. People ultimately work for and have relationships with other people not companies.

Talented people are hard to find and hard to keep, however talented people stay in environments that are enriching, fulfilling and focused on what is important, in what their company is achieving and their people feeling a part of something bigger than themselves.

Create a culture where focused, specific and strategic discussions about talent take place regularly and openly. Not talking about talent management creates a vacuum that will quickly be filled with rumour and miss-information and distraction from focused contribution and engagement in fulfilling the company’s mission.

Rigorous assessment of talent is necessary to provide the measurements on which decisions can be based. If you don’t measure it nobody is going to pay attention to it.

Continuous learning and development is not only how you improve the skills of highly talented people, it is also one way of telling them that they are important to the organization. There is nothing like the promise of a $50,000 EMBA to get future employees to the company. However that doesn’t work for everyone. People want to feel that they are being listened to and that they are an individual within a broader matrix, not a cog in the machine.

The point of a revolution is to change a situation forever. It is about changing the world. Now is the time for us to change our world by first lookiing within to align ourselves with what is important in our lives and then move to right our actions in our world to be in-sync with what is meaningful and fulfilling to us.

 – or at least your world in a profound and meaningful way and you are prepared to take a stand and fight for your beliefs.

“We could never have guessed, We are already blessed where we are” James Taylor