BUS603: Managing People

Markovits: If I was going to generalize about where to get started tactically, I would say it might be around creating really strong individual professional development plans. Great professional development plans depend on getting input from a good performance management process: people need to be getting honest feedback so that they know what their goals are each year, how they are doing in achieving those goals, and know what they need to get better at in order to perform better at their current jobs. Great professional development plans are also informed by some kind of succession planning exercise, where the organization thinks about what employees have the potential to do and what capabilities they would need to strengthen in order to take on a different or a bigger responsibility. They need to know what they need to learn and get exposed to in order to better position themselves to compete for future jobs. Many people today - and I think it's generational to some degree - are interested in how they can continue to learn and grow, and take on new challenges. Having thoughtful, robust individual professional development plans that have both of those components is the key.

Another answer is that all the tactical programs will not produce meaningful results if people in the organization are just going through the motions - just being compliant so that HR or their bosses will get off their backs. So a great place to start is by changing the culture so that each person in the organization believes that talent is the best way for the organization to achieve its strategic goals. Doing this can be hard but it produces incredibly transformative results.

Eddington: Nonprofits can get started by recruiting to their boards board members from the for-profit sector who have backgrounds in human capital management. Executive directors can also familiarize themselves with human capital management. Consider Jack Welch when he was running GE and all the work he did around creating the leadership development program and putting his emphasis and his time on talent management. It can seem impossible, but I know nonprofit executive leaders who similarly spend half of their time on human capital management and have experienced the enormous benefit. For executive directors, I would encourage them to take the first step of committing to really understanding what human capital management is and how profoundly it can affect their organizations.