This series seems to get more relevant by the day. On Thursday, the European Leaders Network published “The War for Procurement Talent” where they noted that you need the right environment to attract and retain the highest calibre procurement talent. After all, talented people tend to make above average contributions to any organisation; every good business has talented and motivated people at its heart.

According to the article, the best way to attract talented individuals is to ensure that the purchasing challenge presented to the candidates is BIG and NEW. Great talent is drawn to the opportunity to work on big things and to apply new thinking. Furthermore, it states that the best way to keep them is to ensure your business has the capacity to change. Talented people need to be successful, and change creates the opportunities that talented people can exploit in pursuit of success.

However, as the article points out, not every category is big or wrought with the opportunity to change the business. So how do you attract talent to these categories? One possibility is to hire recent graduates. A recent article in Canadian Business (Sep 11 – 24, 2006 print edition) by the title of “Hire Education” offers some good advice in this area.

The article, which discussed the results of a survey of 30,000 students from 143 post-secondary institutions across Canada, jointly conducted by Toronto based Brainstorm and D-Code to guide recruiters on what the new crop of employees want found that the number one attribute young people value most when considering employment is opportunity for advancement. Since they will be starting at the bottom of the pyramid, if you have a decent size organization, you can offer them lots of opportunity for advancement – or at least change – by rotating them through different categories to broaden their skills and bring a fresh view. In addition, the number two and three attributes were good people to work with and good people to report to. So build a good team, and talent will be attracted to you.

As you have probably guessed from my recent posts, I more or less agree with these statements. Opportunity attracts, while the capacity for change and advancement retains, but, as I’m quick to point out, only if the compensation is fair and balanced. Otherwise, they’ll probably be attracted to the bigger carrot on the shinier stick held out by your competitor.

This week was another good week. To start off, Charles Dominick of the Purchasing Certification Blog (now the NLPA blog) started us off with a post on “Talent Management” that offered some suggestions for a mid-sized company to retain talent. In summary:

• hire the “right” person, not necessarily the “best” person,
• have a career development plan from junior buyer to VP of, Purchasing
• don’t change the plan “on a whim”, and
• reward employees for educational achievements.

Dave of Buyer Analytics chimed in with a great post on “Practical Talent Management for Procurement”. Dave shared with us five best practices for finding, retaining, and nurturing procurement talent. Briefly, these were:

• Take advantage of the “Feeder Pool” of College Graduates available to you,
• pair recent graduates with purchasing managers in direct materials,
• rotate new buyers to indirect materials,
• rotate the now more-experienced buyers back to direct materials, and
• at the right time, put them on the management track.

Dave of Procurement Central [WayBackMachine] followed up on his teaser “Thought of the Day” with an insightful post on “Performance Based Pay – Thoughts from a Silicon Valley guy”.

He really hit the nail on the head with the following:

Dave Stephens (annoying young engineer): “Doug, why isn’t going above and beyond rewarded more here?”

Doug White (CEO): “Dave, this is a company of engineers. Engineers value stability above all things. We don’t differentiate much on performance – that would make things unstable. We like it that way and we’re not changing things.” (but more polite and CEO-like)

I knew right then I was working for the wrong company.

Your best people work hard, perform well, and expect to be rewarded. The best answer we have right now is performance based compensation. Now, Dave is right in that measuring performance can be extremely tricky, but if you do it regularly, include objective and subjective ratings from an individual and corporate performance, do your best to approach fairness & correct mistakes as you make them over time, then not only will you get better, but your people will see the effort your making, realize you value their contribution, and, odds are, stick around for the long haul. I agree with Dave, “by being honest & upfront and not getting overly specific, management can ensure performance based pay, just like procurement, is good medicine for your business.

Finally, even though it is not part of the talent series, I’d like to mention a post on Joe’s Corner Blog. In “When Small is Big”, Joe gives us some great advice that can be applied to the talent gap. Think of the principle of small is big, or less is more, and success will follow. In other words, if you find the right people, you may not need as large a buying group as you think you do to succeed (especially if you empower them with the right tools and incentivize them to stick around!).

This week, a number of bloggers responded to my suggestion and offered up some great posts on closing the talent gap. Tim wrote a great post on “Attracting Great Talent the Jack Welch Way” on Supply Excellence [WayBackMachine] Doug of Vendor Management (renamed Contract Capital Management [WayBackMachine]) reminded us of “Five Leadership Behaviors Correlated to Performance”, Matthew of Purchase Realm responded to my post with his own on “Procurement Succession Planning” and then came up with an idea to take the cross-blog discussion to the next level by soliciting posts on “A Day in the Life of a Buyer”.

Tim summarized some great simple, straight-forward advice from Jack Welch. The best way to attract great talent is to be a preferred employer. He offered a simple summary of Welch’s tips for becoming a preferred employer, which are:

• demonstrate a real commitment to continuous learning
• establish a meritocracy
• allow, and encourage, people to take risks
• be societally cognizant
• focus on high standards
• be profitable and growing

Doug reminded us of a recent study at Harvard business School that identified five leadership behaviours that are correlated with increased motivation, creativity and performance of team members. After all, no point attracting the best talent if you are not going to foster it. Briefly, leaders support people, monitor work in a positive way, recognize people for good performance, and consult with the team. The fifth? Check out Doug’s post or the Harvard study.

Matthew offered his thoughts on why succession planning almost never happens. In addition to finding the topic unpleasant, most people in the corporate food chain assume that either the person is planning on leaving or using the discussion as a back-door to state that he or she feels it is past time for a promotion. However, as Matthew points out, without proper succession planning, there is a general sense of chaos when someone leaves a position unexpectedly.

A great first week. I know a couple of other bloggers have some great ideas that they should be posting this week, so keep your eyes on the blogs!