The ACE Advantage. How Smart Companies Unleash Talent for Optimal Performance

216 Pages·2012·2.65 MB·English

by  William A. Schiemann

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Interior and Cover Design: Shirley E.M. Raybuck Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schiemann, William.
The ACE advantage : how smart companies unleash talent for optimal performance / William A.
Schiemann. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58644-270-5
1. Personnel management. 2. Ability. 3. Performance. I. Title.
HF5549.S2234 2012
658.3’14--dc23
2012001592
Contents
Foreword by Peter Cappelli
Preface
Acknowledgments
Section I: Introduction—The Business and Talent Imperative
Chapter 1. The New Talent Assumptions
Chapter 2. Why YOU Need to Change
Chapter 3. People Equity — the Driver of Talent Optimization
Section II: Leveraging Critical Stakeholders
Chapter 4. The Power of Understanding
Chapter 5. Getting the Top Team on Board
Chapter 6. Managing to High ACE
Section III: Quantifying Talent Optimization
Chapter 7. Measuring Talent Optimization
Chapter 8. The Talent Scorecard
Section IV: Using ACE to Optimize the Talent Processes
Chapter 9. Using the ACE Lens to Optimize the Talent Lifecycle
Chapter 10. Attracting and Acquiring Great Talent
Chapter 11. Getting to High Performance: Onboarding, Training, and
Performance Management
Chapter 12. Assuring the Future: Developing Leaders and Retaining and
Recovering Talent
Section V: Embedding and Acting
Chapter 13. Embedding ACE in Your Culture
Chapter 14. Building a High ACE Organization
Endnotes
Index
About the Author
Additional SHRM-Published Books
Foreword
In the broad sweep of business history, the topic of human resources has risen
and fallen in importance. Problems associated with employees rise up, more
attention is paid to solving those problems, and once we figure out how to
address them, they decline again in importance.
The period following the early 1980s saw a decline in concerns associated
with human resources. Especially in the U.S., unions lost power, relatively lean
economic times meant hiring was less of a concern, and downsizing created a
supply of talent on the outside market that made it easy to hire for whatever skill
needs employers had. The traditional model of internal development of talent,
picking candidates in advance and developing them for future jobs, seemed to
work fine for those employers whose needs were unique to them or who
otherwise were inclined to grow from within.
This relatively benign period has begun to recede, however. One reason is
that enough employers have backed away from developing their own talent so
that, particularly for management jobs, the pool of qualified candidates who can
step in from outside to fill vacancies elsewhere is now very limited. Another
factor is the rapid change in business strategies and associated restructuring that
has made it difficult to rely on established practices and procedures to run
operations. Instead, managers and executives must step in and create new ways
of getting work done more or less on the fly. Finally, employers are becoming
increasingly aware of the varying contributions that individuals make in these
new working arrangements: The very best of whom appear to be many times
more effective than the average. The one-time increases in performance that
came about from longer hours and more effort, especially for white-collar
workers, have hit their limits.
This is the context for The ACE Advantage: How Smart Companies Unleash
Talent for Optimal Performance. Bill Schiemann documents prominent cases
from around the globe where business plans fail because of shortfalls of skill or
abilities. The lost opportunities that come from having a workforce that is not
Aligned, Capable, and Engaged — the ACE model that Bill advances in the pages
that follow — become very costly, and the ability to tap this People Equity
becomes arguably the biggest source of long-term comparative advantage.
The case that Bill makes for avoiding those problems begins with the notion
that one-size-fits-all strategies don’t make sense. The historical paradigm on
which we managed employees and tried to meet talent needs no longer works
because of the challenges raised by this new context above and more
fundamentally because becoming effective at managing talent issues requires
making choices. The most important choice is to align approaches to people
management with the unique business needs and business strategies for
competing that every organization has. Into that framework, he mixes the
traditional concern about engaging the hearts and minds of employees and
developing the competencies the organizations need to meet those unique
business challenges.
Fundamental to the book’s approach is the notion at the heart of all good
management, and that is the need to make choices. There are quite often
tradeoffs between goals and priorities. Choosing those tradeoffs appropriately, in
the context of the specific needs of each organization, is what makes sense.
The idea that human resources is its own world of professional, best practices
is surely in decline, especially as we look around the world and see different
models succeeding in different ways. The path forward for businesses surely
begins by starting with the business imperative, and The ACE Advantage offers
the road map to do it.
— Peter Cappelli
Professor of Management
Director of Center for Human Resources
The Wharton School
Preface
The writing and research for my last book, Reinventing Talent Management,
began during an economic boom and was completed during what has now
become known as the Great Recession. We learned a lot about what
organizations hold near and dear when the times get tough — regarding
commitments to employee engagement and leader development, maintaining
their employer brands, staying focused on their business and talent strategies,
hiring for today versus tomorrow, and so forth.
In contrast, the writing and research for this book began during the Great
Recession and ended in the midst of a gyrating marketplace — periods of boom
and bust for firms in different industries and geographies, high unemployment
in a vast number of countries around the globe, a stock market roller coaster,
political upheavals in many countries, and increasing financial, environmental,
and social sustainability concerns. In short, a period of enormous turbulence!
Perhaps this is the “new normal.”
In many ways, it appears that we are at an inflection point — one that will
reshape the way organizations compete with each other and people compete for
opportunities to grow and prosper. If you are out front of the turbulence, taking
command rather than merely reacting, you are likely to be a game changer. If
you are behind the curve, then chances are you will be at the mercy of the
unrelenting crosscurrents that will determine the nature, direction, and success
of your organization. Given all these forces, the use of talent in all forms will play
a pivotal role. Because people are the asset most seriously affected by the
revolution around us, how well we manage the human side of our organizations
will be the competitive differentiator and key to survival and success. Optimize
talent and you will win!
Acknowledgments
While I take sole responsibility for the content of this book, it would not have
been possible without the support and insights of so many organizational and
human capital leaders. First, I must thank the great researchers at the Metrus
Institute — especially Brian Morgan, John Lingle, Jerry Seibert, and Cristina
Matos — for their research support that provided data from over 3,000
organizations over the past three years.
Added to this extensive quantitative data, I want to thank the more than 75
senior executives and researchers across the globe — from organizations such as
IBM, McDonalds, WD-40 Company, OBI Group Holding, W.W. Grainger,
Qualcomm, Petco, Novartis, ITW, Johnson & Johnson, Federal Reserve Bank,
and BNY Mellon — who shared innovative practices, insightful research studies,
and scores of action ideas. I am deeply indebted to them for giving me their
valuable time, insights, and ideas.
I also want to thank the many reviewers and “nudgers” who helped me back
on the path when I strayed and provided invaluable insights on the research,
structure of this project, and earlier versions of this manuscript. In particular I
want to acknowledge in alphabetical order: Thomas Belker of OBI Group
Holding; David Chan of IBM China/Hong Kong Limited; Steve Ginsburgh of
Universal Weather & Aviation; Marisa Harris, author, speaker, and former Vice
President of Human Resources at CIT Group, Inc.; Jeffrey Marcus of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Chicago; James Schultz of Chevron Corporation; Charles Tharp
of the Center on Executive Compensation and the HR Policy Association; Peter
Wilson of the Australian Human Resources Institute; and Howard Winkler of
Southern Company. In addition, much thanks goes to the following Metrus
Associates who not only provided great ideas during this project, but reviewed
earlier versions of the book, including Susan Bershad, Laura Mindek, Rita
Pettiford, Joe Angell, Dave Allen, and Maurice Rahimi.
A special note of thanks goes to Alex Garcia and Brendan Saller, my interns
for this project. They devoted many hours to uncovering valuable information
that enriched this work. Also, many thanks to our editor, Christopher Anzalone
of SHRM, for his support of both this project and my previous book, Reinventing
Talent Management.