This article is the third in a series of documents addressing the challenge of sustained organizational growth. They focus on the perspective of people, always keeping in mind the other dimensions of the Harold Leavitt model: processes and technology (for more information, visit here). From the previous articles (Article 1 and Article 2), we have established that to grow your organization, you must be able to:
- Delegate to qualified individuals.
- Address the issue of talent attraction beyond traditional means of hiring employees and contractors. Currently, there are many flexible and effective models that facilitate your company’s capacity to increase. All these forms must be taken into account to create functional schemes for your organization.
Finally, we said that building teams with high levels of synergy and collaboration takes time. In this article, we will expand on this topic.
How to Attract Top Talent and Build a Strong Team
Paul Blase and Paul Leinwand, in their article “Create a System to Grow Consistently” (read the article here), establish five elements to achieve sustainable organizational success:
- Define a compelling customer outcome
- Architect the right capabilities
- Create the right operating model
- Renew insights continuously
- Measure return and relocate investment
When reviewing these five elements from the perspective of people, processes, and technology, we find that these elements intersect with the human component in some challenging ways. This, of course, goes beyond the implementation aspect, that is the people. Therefore, one must be careful in the implementation to achieve strong synergy. Let’s expand on this:
1- Define a compelling outcome for the customer.
This requires a deep understanding of your company. It enables you to identify opportunities to create sustainable value for your customers while differentiating. yourself from competitors. This understanding requires employees with a strategic mindset, deep company knowledge, and strong teamwork skills to achieve outstanding collective results.
Although the first aspect can be addressed through strategic hiring, understanding your company and fostering teamwork requires time. Sports teams allow us to see this time and time again; a team of stars does not guarantee that a team will be the best. The Netflix docuseries. The Netflix docuseries The Last Dance chronicles the journey of Michael Jordan and the legendary Chicago Bulls as they became one of the best basketball teams of their generation.
2- Designing the right capabilities.
The authors of the aforementioned article tell us the following:
“Growth champions create highly specific blueprints that detail how all the capabilities of their growth system work together to create products, solutions, and services that deliver the desired customer outcomes.”
In other words, before defining the capabilities, you must work on establishing the architecture of your business, which we will address later. Then, define the capabilities. Consider the added value to customers, differentiation from competition, process efficiency, and the technological support needed.
In this sense, human competencies are the raw material for the design and improvement of organizational capabilities. Ultimately human capabilities are often the bottleneck to maximizing synergy throughout your company. In other words, we can see this point as a virtuous circle in constant renewal: The initial human competencies of your company determine how far you can go with your organization. In turn, they allow for the definition of the new desired competencies to improve the sustainable performance of your company. Once these new capabilities are achieved, the cycle begins again.
Throughout this process, as discussed in the article “The A of Talent Attraction ABC” (linked earlier), some of these capabilities can come from external providers and partners. These resources are crucial not only internally but also during specific stages of your company’s lifecycle, where external support can be invaluable.
3- Creating the right operating model.
In his book 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy (check it out here), Hamilton Helmer presents seven strategic positions that your company can take to address the market effectively. Each position responds to a unique context and strategic approach, focusing on specific organizational capabilities. As a result, it allows you to define a specific business model. The architecture and model of your business are associated with specific competencies that you will need to develop. Put differently, designing the right capabilities for your business aligns with your organization’s operating model, emphasizing the human aspect once more.
Steve Jobs’ decision to create a unique business model for Apple with a different OS and distinctive hardware marked a pivotal strategy shift for his company. This decision highlighted the importance of recruiting individuals with the expertise to develop a proprietary operating system and design cutting-edge hardware. These skills were essential for Apple to establish itself as a leader in innovative, differentiated products within the competitive landscape. Similarly, when Elon Musk and Tesla removed intermediaries for sales, they created a new business structure requiring different competencies, in both their stores and online channels.
In summary, competencies breathe life into the model and architecture of your business.
4- Renew insights continuously.
Here, the authors speak to us about how “Growth champions anticipate how trends will affect customers and revenue generation, now and in the future. They realize that timing matters: Spotting the right trends early is necessary to make investment plans and shift product portfolios. But make no mistake: We’re not talking about generic trend analysis.”
Now, we are talking about a culture that constantly encourages questioning the status quo. It also promotes understanding culture in this case as the collective competencies that become ingrained habits in your organization. This is clearly a human issue and once again takes time to achieve. Habits are not formed overnight, especially those collectively ingrained. The second part deals with processes designed to facilitate this constant renewal. That is to say, the model and architecture of your business should facilitate the continuous renewal of knowledge.
5- Measure return and reallocate investment.
“Growth champions allocate resources to capabilities that help them achieve differentiated customer outcomes, and they reinvest the profits in those resources. They also carefully measure the relationships between inputs (investments) and outputs (performance),” as noted by Blase and Leinwand in the aforementioned article.
Measurement is fundamental, especially when it serves for correct decision-making. Creating a system that measures return demands great efforts at the level of processes and technology. It also requires a culture based on indicators and results, reallocating resources based on these measurements to areas with higher returns. Again, it is something that requires a lot of effort and takes time.
In a quick review of the 5 points mentioned in the article by Blase and Leinwand, we see that achieving sustained growth requires a lot of effort and takes time. Ultimately, it all begins with human competencies before enhancing the other dimensions: technology and processes.
So, hiring a person, or a team of people (in the various options available in today’s business world) is not just about “filling a gap.” That’s putting out fires and being completely short-sighted. We must look beyond that, we must understand the context of our organization and the strategy to follow. Similarly, it’s crucial to be considerate of the architecture and business model to implement, and the collective capabilities to develop.
Only then will we grasp how to proceed in talent acquisition, acknowledging that results won’t be immediate. Capitalizing on desired synergies will take time.
Beyond Talent Attraction
Attracting the right talent is critical. However, it is never enough if you are not able to retain it. Some organizations are fairly good at attracting top talent, but they excel at retaining it. Creating an ecosystem capable of retaining the best requires implementing various types of strategies. Below, we present some strategies that contribute to the development–and therefore the retention–of teams in remote environments.
Developing Soft Skills in the Era of Outsourced Work
In an increasingly globalized and digitalized world, organizations are adopting flexible work models that include outsourced and remote talent. This trend presents new challenges and opportunities for the development of soft skills. Here we present strategies adapted to this new paradigm:
Virtual Training Programs
Implement e-learning platforms and interactive webinars to develop skills such as effective communication in digital environments, time management, and remote collaboration. These tools provide continuous and accessible training for geographically distributed teams (McKinsey & Company, s.f.).
Virtual Mentorship
Establish online mentorship programs that connect experienced professionals with outsourced talent. This fosters knowledge sharing and the development of interpersonal skills in a remote context (Forbes Technology Council, 2021).
Virtual Collaborative Projects
Assign projects that require collaboration between internal and external teams, thus promoting problem-solving, cross-cultural communication, and adaptability in virtual environments (SHRM, s.f.).
Adapted 360º Performance Evaluations
Implement evaluation systems that include feedback from peers, clients, and supervisors, taking into account the specific characteristics of remote and outsourced work.
Virtual Reality Simulations
Use VR technologies to create immersive practice scenarios. This will allow outsourced professionals to develop skills such as negotiation or presentation in safe and controlled environments.
Promote Digital Learning Culture
Create online communities of practice and discussion forums that encourage knowledge sharing and continuous learning among internal and external teams (Arun et al,. 2022).
Remote Wellness Programs
Implement initiatives that address stress management, emotional intelligence, and work-life balance in remote work contexts. These are essential for maintaining the productivity and well-being of outsourced teams.
Gamification of Soft Skills
Use gamified learning platforms to make the development of skills such as leadership, decision-making, and conflict resolution more engaging and effective in virtual environments.
By implementing these strategies, organizations can create an inclusive learning ecosystem that develops the soft skills crucial for business success. It also effectively integrates outsourced talent into the company’s cultures and objectives. In the long run, this contributes to the retention and development of the talent that organizations work so hard to attract.
Sources
1. Arun, A., Coyle, D., & Hauenstein, N. (2022). 4 Ways to Create a Learning Culture on Your Team. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/03/4-ways-to-create-a-learning-culture-on-your-team
2. Blase, P., & Leinwand, P. (2024). Create a System to Grow Consistently. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/03/create-a-system-to-grow-consistently
3. Forbes Technology Council. (2021). 15 Ways To Effectively Leverage Technology For Mentoring Programs. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/06/11/15-ways-to-effectively-leverage-technology-for-mentoring-programs/
4. Forbes. (s.f.). Is The 60-Year-Old People-Process-Technology Framework Still Useful? https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/12/29/is-the-60-year-old-people-process-technology-framework-still-useful/
5. Helmer, H. (2016). 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy. Deep Strategy.
6. McKinsey & Company. (s.f.). Developing soft skills in a virtual world. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-organization-blog/developing-soft-skills-in-a-virtual-world
7. SHRM. (s.f.). How to Develop Soft Skills in Remote Workers. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/how-to-develop-soft-skills-in-remote-workers.aspx
