In business, I am often put in mind of that immortal scene in Yes Minister:
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, it takes time to do things 'now'.
James Hacker: The three articles of civil service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly; it's more expensive to do them cheaply; it's more democratic to do them in secret.
In last week's column, I wrote about it being a A Challenging Time for Talent Management. But what I didn't mention — always leave the audience something for a sequel — is that it isn't enough to get top performers in the right roles at the right time. Managers also need to address the elephant in the room — the capability gap.
This is because an organisation may employ excellent people, but if they engage technical elements in their strategy, and the organisation does not have access to the necessary capabilities, they are unlikely to achieve the objectives set. To create a competitive advantage, people, processes, and technical capabilities are all necessary as the symbiotic relationship between these elements is what enables an organisation to consistently outperform their competitors.
Therefore, success is as much about exploiting latent capability as it is about filling capability gaps. A process that is crucial in helping an organisation to move from being merely people focussed, to being a people and performance winner.
One final word before diving in, is to observe that by a capability gap, I am not talking about the gap for existing employees that should not exist. For example, if they were the one's specifically hired to do the technical work invoked by the strategic plan.
Determining Capabilities
Missing capabilities broadly fall into two categories. The first are the result of strategic choices, for example an organisation decides to move into a new market without the requisite knowledge of that market. The second are external pressures, for example the emergence of the internet or AI. This latter category is not initiated by an organisation, but the disruptive nature of the change necessitates an organisation keeping pace.
In either scenario, success will largely be determined by how effectively critical employees are deployed — see the strategies offered in A Challenging Time for Talent Management — and how much time is spent playing catch up.
