Vivo

Overview: Identity-Based Talent Lifecycle

Identity-Based Management changes everything an organization does — for the better. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be posting checklists for each stage of the talent cycle, from recruitment to succession. And we’re going to demonstrate how identity-based thinking will streamline and strengthen your organization every step of the way.

As Robert Reiss, CEO of The CEO Forum Group said recently, “Identity-based management has the potential to be a revolution in management thinking.”

Here’s what we plan to demonstrate over this series of articles:

With identity-based management of your talent lifecycle:

• You will get the talent best-suited for your organization. They will be attracted for all the right reasons.
• You will be able to compete for that talent and succeed.
• And then, with identity-based onboarding, you will know how to confirm to your precious new talent that they have made the right choice and get them off on a sure footing.
• Over the long haul, you will know how to nurture your talent so that their engagement always remains high.
• From that talent pool you will be able to identify and develop your future leaders.
• And ultimately, with their profound understanding of the identity of the organization, your Board will know how to identify new top leadership and make sure they lead within the organization’s identity, so that this virtuous, self-reinforcing, process never ends.

We’ll be offering checklists wherever appropriate, so you can begin to internalize identity-based thinking into your talent lifecycle.

I. Become Preferred

Where is your greatest talent going to come from? Here’s a little hint: ask where you’d be found if you weren’t already at your company. Maybe you’d still be in school, or volunteering, or teaching.

An identity-based company is one that has a highly engaged, highly aligned group of talented people who gathered together within a shared vision that not only means something for the company, it also means something for each individual.

This kind of high-level passion is generally easier to find in startups and early-stage organizations, where creativity and passion are the norm. We believe this kind of energy is sustainable over the long run. All it takes is a clear understanding of who we are as an organization, what we can do better than anyone else, and making that the clear reason why anyone would want to come work with us.

We promised you a checklist for each stage of your HR lifecycle, so here we go:

• Know thyself. Everyone in the organization understands its identity. And when we say identity, we’re talking about the absolute bedrock of who you are. It can’t be synthesized, or even changed. It needs to be discovered, and the language you use to describe for it must be clear and not describe anyone else. In other words, once you can articulate your identity, you have a powerful, built-in differentiator — no one can be better at being you than you.
• Speak that truth. Now that you have a grasp of your organization’s identity and how it is driven to create value, it will become vastly easier to present yourself to the world. That means every job posting, as well as every public-facing statement of the organization, is an expression of your authentic identity. If you’re SpaceX, no one’s going to confuse you with Lockheed-Martin.
• Cultivate your channels. Know where your talent is likely to be. Whether you’re a law firm, or a medical research organization, or in the newly resurgent manufacturing sector, don’t look for talent where everyone else is looking. Be intuitive. Find the channels where you talent is likely to come from, raise your profile there. Sponsor scholarships that reflect your values. Get your people involved in coaching and developing talent that isn’t even thinking of you yet. Create materials on your website that make it clear you’re always looking for the right people early on and are willing to support them in even their earliest stages of development.
• Understand preferences. For most individuals, as they begin to move along in their careers, they have in mind a hierarchy for where, ideally, they would want to pursue their career. If you were able to survey your prospects six months or a year before the time when they are going to make that choice, you would know where you stand in their ranking of prospective companies. If you become a prospect’s first choice, and you believe they’re right for you, then bringing them in becomes a no-brainer. To get your organization to be their first choice, takes some serious investment and planning on your end. And this is not about Best Companies to Work For, although ranking well is great. But it’s much more about, Best Companies Where I Want to Work. That’s the essence of identity-based fit.