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Strategic Talent Development

An excerpt from the forthcoming book “Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products” by David Fradin with RN Prasad.


Strategic Talent Development Chart

In this section, I will discuss the impact of the Perfect Storm on the tremendous need for strategic talent development, how university alliances can help in that development, the importance of succession planning and mentoring.

The Perfect Storm

The disruption caused by the Perfect Storm has significant consequences for jobs and skills.  IBM forecasts that as many as 375 million people worldwide will have their roles disrupted by 2030. 

IBM says, “We used to talk about word processing and spreadsheet skills, now it’s cybersecurity, big data analytics, and coding. Tomorrow’s workforce needs to be equipped to navigate technologies like AI, blockchain, automation, and innovations on the horizon.”

The same is true of tomorrow’s product managers.  They will need to understand how these new technologies will affect their products and their customers before they do.

First, you need to understand what skills your organization currently possess and what skills or competencies will be required in the future.  Second, HR and senior management must build a culture of mobility.  For example, when I was at Hewlett-Packard, I launched and rolled out word processing for the public relations department.  I knew that the transition from an electric typewriter to word processing would work because the PR department was the only group in the company that knew how to type.  That enabled me, and HP encouraged it, to do a lateral transfer into product management in the office systems group of the networking division. 

RELATED:  Getting a Job as a Product Manager

Third, you will need to empower your employees to take action and ownership of their careers. 

You can start for your product success managers and product marketing success managers with the competency framework discussed in this book. Then assess what you have.  Spice Catalyst has an assessment tool under development so, check our web site for status and availability.   Then identify the skills you will need in the future and lay out a plan to get them. 

The plan should go down to each individual in the organization and be updated should there be anyone that leaves or joins.  The plan should say who needs to get what training by when and obtain what level of competency. The talent management plan should align closely with the company’s strategic plan. 

Artificial Intelligence could help define the competencies your organization needs and for the delivery of the right training to the right people at the right time.

The goal of talent development is to create a high-performance, sustainable organization that meets its strategic and operational goals and objectives.  Doing this well and having the capability to develop talent before it is needed will rapidly become a significant competitive advantage for the organization.

The talent development plan consists of plans for talent acquisition and retention, performance management, learning and motivating, compensation, career development, and succession planning.

RELATED:  Agile Product Market Strategy Boot Camp

The plan should also include the need for specialists to be trained.  For example, not everybody can do market research or pricing, so plan to develop specialists in these areas to be accessed by multiple product teams.

Amazon, Starbucks, and McDonald’s are all spending millions to take the Perfect Storm into consideration. You should too.

University Alliances

You could also forge university alliances for training on some of the key competencies. 

However, few universities worldwide offer product management coursework.  But keep your eye out for them.  There will be more, a lot more.

My new nearly 800 page Wiley book “Successful Product Design and Management Toolkit: Foundations in the Successful Management of Products”: http://tinyurl.com/yyuotf42,  has been designed for Universities to deliver as part of their executive education programs. Look or ask for it at your university of choice.

Succession Planning

Succession planning means successors are identified and developed to fill key roles should that person leave.  In addition to training, those people slated to fill an empty slot should be given experiences that can help develop them.  Part of this may improve employee commitment and retention plus the support of the employee’s aspirations and it is less expensive and time-consuming than recruiting externally.

Mentoring

As part of the talent development plan, mentoring can be included.  Based on each person’s development plan, a mentor can be assigned to them to assist in their development.

Summary

The Perfect Storm will have a significant impact on talent development. University alliances can help. Don’t forget to do succession planning or you may find the organization lacking the competencies in the future to remain successful.  Mentoring is a good way to develop talent.

David Fradin


David Fradin has trained thousands of managers throughout the world in the successful management of products. With over 47 years of experience across major companies, 75+ products and services and 11 startups, he infuses his workshops with insights gained as an expert product leader, product manager and product marketing manager at companies like Apple and HP. He was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a PC to market. As a result of his leadership and management skills, Apple promoted him first to Apple /// Group Product Manager and later Business Unit Manager at the same organizational level at that time as Steve Jobs. He recently authored “Building Insanely Great Products: Some Products Fail, Many Succeed…This is their Story” Lessons from 47 years of experience including Hewlett-Packard, Apple, 75 products, and 11 startups later. Go to: Amazon Store Coming soon will be "Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products" and "Marketing Insanely Great Products." His workshops cover the founding values, vision, product lifecycle and management employed by Apple at its start and which it subscribes to today. You can learn more about his workshops at Spice Catalyst Workshops Soon to be released by Wiley and Sons, in the Early of 2017, is a seven-volume set of university-level textbooks entitled: "Foundations in the Management of Successful Products" covering keys to product success, product market strategy, marketing, soft skills, user experience, user interface, product engineering, and product support. What students will learn in the workshops, online courses and books are cover what has made Apple the most valuable company in the world today. Go to David Fradin @ Youcanbook to schedule a time to talk.

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