Ekalore writes about strategic staff planning for senior and mid-level management. The hunt for talent is our umbrella for posts related to managing talent.
There has been a parade of Tech company executives recently who ritually self-humiliate when they announce layoffs. Typically, over-staffing is blamed, and the justification for overstaffing translates to “because we could.” They imply that talent is nothing more than a special type of overbought inventory.
In many cultures, the military accumulates leadership (often as ‘non-commissioned’ or ‘staff officers’), where the over-manning seems preplanned. This is a culture’s reaction to going to war with a lack of leadership resources and no time to develop, train, or season new ones. This is sometimes framed as “professional” versus “conscripted” (whatever the language) talent. The implicit message is creating talent/experience/expertise to be allocated and supported as needed.
In the same manner, concerns about being caught short (e.g., salespeople, Data Scientists, engineers, etc.) This leads to staffing decisions to hire and retain more people than needed. Senior management sees rapid changes in cost profiles and wishes (for the horses…) and grinds the numbers to start with hiring and ‘stashing’ talent. In periods of solid growth and earnings delivery, senior management may perceive the cost as small enough to pay to increase the agility of operations by being awash in talent.
The reality of stashing talent is that executives have minimal luck predicting the surge of talent needed for the next crisis; like the aforementioned military executives, the agility and mobility of talent is an oft-expressed desire without effective answers. Perhaps the conceptual name “mothballs” might inform expectations of a more realistic level of results.
Specific properties apply to stashing talent:
Perishability (talent deteriorates and suffers if not protected right)
Maintenance (talent desires development) and staff only go so far
Scale (you may need ten to be impactful – only having six old ones may not be enough)
Large tech enterprises have pursued a strategy where reducing/reorganizing was an attempt to do more with less. (“I’ll have what they need.”)
Now enterprises of all sizes will learn again that talent isn’t inventory – it’s the business.
If you’d like to read more about the Hunt for Talent check our blog page – www.ekalore.com/hunt-for-talent
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