1. A Clear Goal or Mission.
Have you defined clearly your organisation's goal?
Does your organisation have a clear objective in mind?
Is it clearly measurable?
As most things in life, we have to first define what we want to achieve before going down into defining the details.
During this phase, also do note down & identify what are some key obstacles that you foresee that your organisations might face in the process of achieving this goal.
2. Define the Talents needed (Core Team).
Before looking at what you currently have in your current talent pool, we need to identify what are the key talents we MUST have in order to:
overcome all possible identified obstacles
have the capability to deal with all unforeseen obstacles that might come about during implementation (which means an experience & critical solution mindset person that is able to creatively come up with a workable solution on the go with the amount of experience he/she has)
achieve the mission/goal no matter what outcome (this person must have a personal stake in the mission/goal, or at least highly motivated to do so - as if they are already doing this on a normal basis)
able to work professionally with whoever he/she is dealt with and doesn't let emotions get in the way of the outcome (you might need a mediator if you have someone who let emotions get in the way in the team)
3. Where are the Gaps?
Now we can do a team assessment and determine what is missing?
what talent is needed but not available to engage at the moment?
does the current people in the organisation have the necessary mindset & capability to solve the current obstacles identified?
are the talents fully engaged in the mission/goal at hand?
can the leader integrate and optimise the team's capabilities to its fullest capabilities?
does the team need a third party to integrate the different personalities in order to experience the synergy needed?
are there litmus tests in place in order to identify the talents needed?
4. Filling in the Gaps, Finding where the talents are.
The next question we then need to address is - how do we find the talent we need?
In order to question that, the ideal case would be to build a Psychological Profile (or Personas) on this person - a Candidate Persona Canvas as above.
By developing these personas, you are able to roughly narrow down where can you most likely locate these ideal talents - should you have sufficient resources & the urgency to (that also could be a telling how urgent your goal is)
If we are able to develop an accurate psychological representation of the person, we are able to accurately identify that person when we meet them - additionally, this helps to communicate effectively to other team members who might not be actively headhunting for the organisation as well.
If we take notice on the "motivation" section of the canvas, you are also able to create an enticing proposal for this talent to join your organisation & your mission.
5. Building talents for your next mission & for retention. (~ and return to step 1)
Imagine now that you have already build your necessary core team and have made significant progress towards your goals - your top talents would usually get bored as they are more stimulated by new challenges and new ways of doing things, top talents usually hate to feel like they are not growing / improving their craft.
So one effective way to keep engaging top talents would be to constantly upping the challenge, increase the size & stake of the goals, keeping them engaged by honing on their craft & expertise - at the same time, keeping the talents & learning within the organisation's ecosystem.
Some organisations also have talent building academies that leverage on the learnings & processes from these Top Talents so that you are able to scale these skills & capabilities to more people - these allows us to sustain the pool of necessary talents required for an organisation to reach it's goals too.
6. As the Cycle Continues, You Build Culture.
By step 5, the cycle continues back to step 1 where the organisation is still constantly reviewing its mission & the core talents needed in order to move forward.
As we continually work on this cycle for identifying talents, finding talents, & building them - we inherently create a culture for the organisation - identifying what we want to keep, and what we want to throw out, to build clarity on how we want the organisation to look like to achieve its overarching mission & goals.
You will then notice that as the organisation grows, new talents will be needed. Which means that as time goes by, the talent will continue to evolve and grow, and it could look very differently from when it first started - but still keeping to its core mission & direction.
"I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David." - Michelangelo
Building an organisation with its people in mind is like building a sculpture out of marble. It first starts of with a block of rough rock with a vision in mind.
As you continue to carve out your organisation and its people, you continue to chip away the pieces that don't look like how you want the organisation to be.
I end this post with a question for you to reflect on...
How would you want to carve out your ideal organisation?