Economies crashing, bottom-lines dwindling, costs spinning out of control and employees being laid off…. Does it ring a bell?? I could very well be talking about your own company. And for the larger part of the corporate world this is not their worst nightmare, it is their darkest reality. The times are bad and they could get worse. Swine flu spreading over continents only symbolizes the grim scenario we are destined with. But don’t they say that you give your best when the worst arrives?? This is exactly what every organisation worth its salt needs to believe. If all get their acts together and drive at top speeds with conviction, we may very well get home safe before its complete dark!!

The best foot forward is to stop walking and look back on the path we’ve treaded and unlearn some things and adopt some others all the same. The moment beckons change… change in the way we approach managing talent in the organisation…change in the way we measure what we have and change in the way we go about accomplishing what we aspire to achieve. These times require us to improvise and develop our talents to outsmart our economy and our competitors alike. The word competitive advantage could not get more important now than ever. Every company needs to identify what it is best at and look at how it can strengthen the parts that need rework.

The key is to believe in the fundamentals and create value in every activity that is carried out in the battlefield. If its talent acquisition, the question companies need to ask is at what cost are we creating value through sourcing our talent from the market. Are we in dire need of external talent? Is the talent within not sufficient enough to achieve our targets? If it’s assessing quality of the existing talent, we need to ask ourselves if we have the right tools to measure and assess. Are we honest to ourselves and are we open to arrive at conclusions we may not be ready for? Are we willing to identify our best and put our support behind them to get us out of this rubble? Are we willing to take stock of the bloopers and recreate the sequences? If these questions are answered then the first step to a successful transformation is well underway.

The next phase of this transformation is to quantify the issues that plague us. We need to measure the extent of any activity in affecting the organisational success. There is no place to guesstimate and take actions based on unsure information. Organisational intelligence is of prime importance to make sure that the actions we take are based on quantifiable and credible information. Dashboards of senior managements need to be reworked to identify the right indicators and use the information in real-time to take bold decisions and pursue suggested changes with unflinching focus. Review mechanisms should be set up to take stock of situation on real-time basis and managements need to have the flexibility to rework their tactics without much delay. The old school of thought that believes that every step needs to be run and re-run before being deployed is about to undergo a change. The key is to have the right people have access to the right information to act fast and act incisively. There is no room for error and there is no room for delay. It is this living-on-the-edge situation that makes it even more important to have the right minds in the right places. We need to focus on our best minds to deliver the goods. First time Right (FTR) that worked wonders in manufacturing needs to be adopted as a practice in every activity pursued in the organisation.

Extensive and efficient use of technology is the key to enable the swift decision making and actions. Implementing technology solutions to take care of data capturing and collations leaves the interpretation and decision making to the talented minds. A robust technology framework ensures that the decisions are based on unmistakable data that is easily traceable. This allows the talent to create more value than grapple with reams of data and end a major part of their work-time in collating it. Benefits of technology are known to everyone. What’s important is to identify the right technology that suits the needs of the organisation and what you want the technology to achieve for you. For everything else, there’s talent and talent will lead to value that is sustainable and deliverable at the right moments.

Posted originally on www.talent2value.com