Over the last three decades, we’ve seen business lurch through major cycles of delayering, ‘right-sizing’, and outsourcing. Managers have become ‘working managers’ with a full plate of tasks and responsibilities of their own – they are most often doers of things rather than managers of people – with the result that they no longer have the time or the bandwidth to do the thing that managers were supposed to be doing in the first place: be stewards and developers of your human capital.
Sure, companies implore their managers to coach and mentor, to train and develop, to offer regular performance feedback… but who has time? More to the point, who’s there to act as a role model? These are all skills and competencies that were forgotten in the ‘80’s when we restructured managers out of the ability to make their most important contribution.
Is there an impending talent shortage? Yes. In fact, it’s upon us. But viewed on a macro basis it’s not quite the headcount crisis many are decrying. The real problem is that for the last 30 years we’ve been able to go to market and buy people off the shelf who have just the right mix of education, skills and experience to plug into our organizations. The day of the ‘plug and play’ employee is behind us. From now on, the spoils will go to those organizations willing to relearn and master the lost art of identifying, nurturing and developing talent internally.
It will require resources, long-term thinking… and a willingness to rethink the role of the manager.I was a kid I started out in the hotel industry. It was a great place to learn about business and about people, and to hone many of the skills that have served me well over the course of my career. But then as now, the industry had a reputation for burning people out with long hours and low wages. To cope with the resulting turnover, the leading companies in the industry had mastered the art of maintaining staffing levels by ensuring they had a steady flow of talent growing, developing and moving up through the ranks.
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