Step 2 of S.H.A.P.E. ensures that leaders enact a detailed strategy to take their teams to the next level

So far in the S.H.A.P.E. journey, we’ve explored the importance of properly assessing your team, understanding their strengths and limitations, and identifying ways those team members can best serve the organization.  But once you’ve taken stock of your talent, it’s critical that you take action to prepare them for what’s next, whether that’s ascending the ranks to leadership or transitioning to a new department.  Overall, S.H.A.P.E. is a talent management tool designed to help you navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic, and one of the most important parts of the process is cultivating your bench.  To do this, it’s imperative that you HAVE a plan.

Step 2 of S.H.A.P.E. is all about establishing a culture of performance.  This means defining objectives and dependencies, setting milestones, measuring progress, and ultimately achieving organizational goals.  There are three key components to creating a great talent management plan – assessing capacity, scenario planning, and taking action.

 

Assessing capacity

In short, capacity is defined as your organization’s ability to run the everyday business – can your existing talent deliver what’s necessary to help the company succeed?  Of course, this starts at the top with leadership.  The executive team must be a well-oiled machine that makes quick, prudent decisions with ease.  These leaders must also have a deep understanding not only of the personnel, but also of the company’s staffing deficits and the best ways to shift team members to fill gaps.

Then, there’s adaptive capacity.  In creating your plan, you must consider the organization’s immediate future as well as what could happen 6-12 months out.  Are you, your leadership team, and your staff ready for change today and tomorrow?  As conditions continue to shift, can you iterate and prototype quickly to respond to the moment?  An important part of this is collaborative capacity.  What partnerships will be required to achieve your goals?  You may need to combine teams, work with other organizations, or bring in an external recruiting firm.

Lastly, you need technological capacity.  Do you have the programs, hardware (e.g., laptops, docking stations, dual monitors, external storage, etc.), and training (e.g., soft skills development, technical skills development, new product and service launches, etc.) in place to ensure no one is left behind as the organizations transforms?

Scenario planning

With a full understanding of your organizational capacity, you can start building your plan.  This should happen via a process known as scenario planning, in which you weigh multiple options and choose solutions that can prepare you for several different outcomes.  Scenario planning involves four steps:

1. Define driving forces: Why do you have your current skills gap?  What decisions or changes have driven the organization to this point?  Also, what external factors could affect your ability to fill these gaps in the future (e.g. smaller budgets, virtual recruiting, etc.)?  Capture all these ideas in a single list.
2. Recognize critical uncertainties: Assess the list you’ve made and pick the two most urgent issues.  These are the ones you’ll build your plan around.
3. Brainstorm realistic scenarios: Create at least four possible business scenarios (two for each critical uncertainty).  For example, if one of your critical uncertainties is budget cuts, your two scenarios could be reduced headcount and consolidated teams.
4. Discuss the impacts: For each of the scenarios you’ve brainstormed, how will the organization be affected?  What steps will you take to ensure success?  Be specific here because this is the actual plan.  These are the steps and milestones that you’ll abide by and that you’ll need to communicate to the team.

Below, you’ll find a sample scenario planning worksheet that can guide you through the process

Also during this process, you should factor in succession planning.  This moment requires timely responses, which means personnel moves will happen quickly.  Thus, not every person will succeed in their new roles or stay onboard.  You can overcome this by choosing at least two backup employees to fill each critical role.  You may also need to consider changing the scope of certain roles as the organization’s needs evolve.  Below, as a guide, you’ll find one succession planning example with both the blank template and completed plan.

urthermore, the executive team will need to employ change leadership principles to protect the plan.  This means communicating the “why” behind these personnel changes, encouraging collaboration to avoid silos, and personally modeling adaptive behaviors to help everyone accept the new environment.  Change leadership will likely trigger a review of the organization’s change management process.  Among the factors that ensure successful change management, organizations must ensure the right leaders are spearheading the change, that everyone on staff understands the rewards of supporting the change (and the consequences of being unsupportive), and that the process is formalized.

Taking Action

Now, it’s time to put your plan in action.  Let’s say you’ve identified Susan, a dedicated mid-level manager you’d like to prep to fill a critical senior role.  You know Susan is great, but she needs to work on her people development skills before you can trust her with a bigger team.  To get her ready, you follow a clear set of steps:

• You communicate the timeline – she needs to be ready in 6 months.
• You establish how you’ll measure her progress – via weekly check-ins or monthly performance reviews.
• You account for setbacks – you’ve laid out how to handle the vacant role for up to 12 months if needed, and you’ve identified two other promising managers that you’d like to develop simultaneously.
• You invest in Susan’s reskilling or upskilling, via virtual learning courses, short-term assignments in other departments, and by partnering her with a mentor at a more senior level.

This example is simplistic, but it offers an idea of what you’ll need to do for top talent to prepare them for the future.  Do you have the bandwidth to take this kind of personalized approach with everyone you’ve identified as high potential?

Conclusion

There’s more to building your team and managing your talent than simply recognizing opportunities.  Once you SEE your team, you must HAVE a strategic plan with clear goals, roadmaps, and contingencies to ensure the business – and the staff – is successful.