Talent and Culture

Talent and culture have not been given the deep attention that strategy and capital have historically had. The printing industry is no exception. However, competition grows stiffer with the passage of time. Rapidly changing technology has created a transparent world where any sort of advantage rapidly deteriorates.

Your competitors are smart. Most of them have access to the same technology, capital and strategic ideas you do. The question is: How do you create separation in the market so that you attract more of the available profit pool the industry offers? The answer has increasingly become people. As in, people who have a talent edge on their competitors and when effectively led, create a culture where growth, performance and innovation can be generated. It seems these are the companies that eventually emerge as the winners.

Your competition likely doesn’t know if their talent/culture provides an advantage in the market. This is where, if you’re smart and progressive, you can begin to separate your company from your competition.

In its simplest terms, people are considered talented if they do something well. For a business to have a lot of talent it is usually based on having a lot of people who do their jobs well. Typically, talented people are assumed to have some combination of factors that enable superior performance. These factors include knowledge, experience, job-specific skills and behavioral tendencies. These combined factors make it highly probable they will enjoy their jobs, consistently do the job well and be resilient and able to deal effectively with change.

Culture, simply put, is a predisposition for a team or an organization to behave in a certain way.

Every company has well-known common internal behaviors that are shaped by the leaders. In addition, there are underlying mindsets that govern what is acceptable or not. These mindsets are often called the "organization’s values." 

The alignment of company behavioral norms and values with individual employee values creates or destroys energy. A high level of alignment turns employee discretionary energy into engagement. A high level of engagement breeds positive and innovative cultures. Research indicates there is a strong correlation between high engagement and strong cultures. A useful proxy for culture is assessed by measuring the average level of energy and engagement your employees bring to their jobs every day.

How do you determine if your talent and culture provide a source of competitive advantage? It’s a process requiring a few steps. First, have everyone take an on-line survey to generate the data needed. Then do the following:

• Measure the behavioral suitability of your leaders (executives, managers and supervisors), key contributors and sales people. These are the jobs/roles where better talent can make truly outsized contributions to the organization’s performance.
• Run three reports for each one that shows the percent match of their behavioral factors to those of high-performers. The closer the match, the higher the level of talent they possess for their current jobs.
• For the majority of your employees, run one report that tells how well they are getting their expectations met for a number of higher level psychological needs. The better these needs are being met, the more engaged in their jobs they tend to be. The more engaged they are, the higher the level of energy they will invest in their jobs.

Good companies have at their core, leaders:

• Whose behavioral attributes match well with the attributes of successful leaders;
• Who work to engage and energize their employees in a way that meets their higher level needs and creates superior performance;
• Who develop the people who are not good behavioral fits for their jobs into better performers;
• Or who move those people into jobs where they are more suitable fits and replace them with better fitting people for the job in question.

Over time, the overall talent level and collective performance levels will improve significantly by working this process individual by individual.

The synergy of these factors creates dynamic, innovative and forward-looking organizations that stand apart in their markets and outperform their competition.