Partner Article

Have we got the right skills?

It’s labour market focus week on Bdaily. Here, Malcolm Gallagher, CEO of The Executive Scorecard Company, talks about skills in the workplace.

As CEO your two-point focus is the profit and survival of your organisation. To achieve this are you keeping in sight the need for your business to have the right level of skilled people to manage your future?

In my work as a balanced scorecard mentor, I often see firm evidence of a lack of both succession planning and skills.

On a scorecard assessment many are either agreeing they are “in the red” on these two areas or trying to give score “a green” without giving consideration to their true situation. And it often comes from a belief that there are other more important things to consider.

This smacks of a focus on short-termism rather than a strong vision for the future.

But even that short-termism can rear up and bite your business if you do not have the people with the resilience and ability to
manage the twin challenges of aggressive competitors and demanding customers.

What should you be doing?

First of all you need to address what is called your “talent pipeline” and reach the right state of readiness for the future.

What is the readiness of that talent to step up into other’s shoes?

All too often they think they have the next job as a “right by rote” without taking the time to gain the right skills to do the job.

You know the expression “promoted beyond competence”!

But I argue that reaching the right state of readiness is not about ad hoc developing the skills of your people and filling your
talent pipeline. It is about matching the skills and ability of your people to the vision and strategy of the business which, in turn, should be driven by the focus on “creating and retaining a customer”.

What you can do about it?

A good way is to have a Readiness Away Day perhaps using the help of a skilled facilitator.

Look back over the last 5,10, 15 years. How have the needs of your customers changed? How have the types of customers you serve changed?

How have you responded to these changes? Where could you have responded better if you had the right skills and people?

Which of your competitors responded better and how did they do it?

Now look forward to how you anticipate your sector, the market, managing competitors and customer demands to change over the next 5 to 10 years.

For example will they want a different level of service from you? Will you have to change your way of working (e.g. many not-for-profits are finding it hard to commercialise because of their lack of skilled people).

Now where is the present and future skills gap?

A top tip. When I have facilitated such sessions, I’ve sometimes found a tendency to front onto to-day’s needs rather than tomorrow. Remember this is about “readiness” for the future.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Malcolm Gallagher .