In our last two series we discussed Technology Advances and Process Transformation, which SI calls Transition, that collectively comprise two of the three T’s critical for organizational success. The third T, talent, that we are discussing in this series must not only be in abundance, but also be appropriate for the organizational needs. This means that you not only need talent with a good mix of IQ (intelligence and skills), EQ (emotional intelligence and wisdom), and TQ (technology and mathematics/logic), but that the mix must be suitable to cover the range of Supply Management tasks before your organization, and in sufficient quantity.

But, as we discussed, this is often easier said than done. In order to determine if you have the right mix of talent, you first need to understand the type of talent you have individually and as a team (through a multi-faceted collective assessment), define where you need the talent to be (which can be a complicated affair, and would take at least another series, if not a short book, to describe), do a gap analysis, and devise a plan to get the team, collectively and individually, from where they are to where they need to be. This plan will consist of a mix of training and education options, so that each individual is offered the methodology by which they (likely) learn best, but also related methodologies to broaden their horizons and increase their learning potential.

But this will not be enough, because, by the time they get to where the plan identified they should be, processes will have changed, technology will have changed, and the supply chain as a whole will have moved on rapidly. You can’t keep up … the best you can hope for is a team that will individually and collectively work together to keep up as best as they can and prioritize the needs as they arrive and change.

But sometimes, you’ll have a team where one or two members have no interest in going above and beyond and riding those supply chain rapids day in and day out. They’ll want to get off every day at 5 pm, and not get back on until the next workday at 9 am. The rest of the team won’t be able to survive unless everyone is willing to contribute as needed 24/7. In this case, and only this case, will you have to (immediately) replace your talent.

(Before we continue we should note that you don’t replace talent just because they don’t have the skills, because that’s often your fault, and not theirs, for not providing them proper training and mentoring — which we know you’re not doing given that training budgets were slashed heavily during the last recession and never restored, despite the constant lip service paid to the importance of talent and training. Not until you have provided them with ample training, mentoring, and time can you deduce whether their lack of performance is their fault or yours, and since they should never have been hired in the first place if they did not show aptitude, it’s only fair to assume it’s your fault that aptitude never blossomed into capability and performance. Of course, if they can’t pull their weight after given sufficient mentoring, training, and time, then you will have to reassign them [or let them go if there is no suitable job in the organization], but typically you will need to replace people because they don’t want to pull their weight, not because they can’t.)

So how do you go about finding and recruiting the right talent?

That’s a tough question. Fundamentally, you need to find a candidate that

• has the raw IQ, EQ, and TQ you need
• has a desire to learn …
• and the willingness to put in the hours on and off the job
• plays well with others
• doesn’t overvalue his worth …
• but respects it as well (as you need the candidate to also respect the worth of others)

and, preferably:

• has experience in the industry …
• and with the categories she will be dealing with …
• preferably through another role (engineering, marketing, etc.) as well as that will help her work with the other departments
• is familiar with the types of technology being used …
• has sufficiently strong math, logic, and reasoning skills
• and sufficiently strong people skills

even before you get to your customized wish list. This is a tough sell, and one you are not likely to do on your own.

You will need to rely on your team to help you — they will know who the best candidates are among their peers and who the organization should seek. And any of your colleagues who do not agree are the kin of Maury the Management Moron and, as indicated in this classic post on what to do if you really want a renaissance education, I can only hope that one day your boss will catch on to the fact and show them the door, Fresh Prince style!

In our last post we discussed that in our last two series we discussed Technology Advances and Process Transformation, which SI calls Transition, that collectively comprise two of the three T’s critical for organizational success. The third T is, of course, talent, which must not only be in abundance, but which must also be appropriate for the organizational needs. This means that you not only need talent with a good mix of IQ (intelligence and skills), EQ (emotional intelligence and wisdom), and TQ (technology and mathematics/logic), but that the mix must be suitable to cover the range of Supply Management tasks before your organization, and in sufficient quantity.

In order to temper your talent, you need to start with a page from the process transformation handbook that says before you can make any changes for the better, you first have to understand where you are, then where you want to be, and identify the gaps. And then, of course, make a plan to close the gaps. But how do you understand where you are?

As per our first post, you do a collective assessment, which is defined as the (weighted) average of a self assessment, a manager assessment, a team assessment, and a third-party assessment that provides a reasonably accurate view of each individual on the team and the overall team.

Then you temper the talent. You look at the gaps between where each individual is and where you want them to be and put together a plan to get them there. What will that plan consist of? Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing offers us some good advice here as well. Put together a plan that takes advantage of the multitude of offerings that are available to increase the skills of your team members (without sending them back to school) that include, but are not limited to:

• Internal Training
• On-Site Seminars
• Conferences
• Online Courses
• Certification Programs

Each of these has advantages and disadvantages, but they can collectively address your IQ, EQ, and TQ needs at the individual and group level in interesting and unique direct and indirect ways, allowing you to adapt a training program to the learning needs of the individuals and the team. If a team member learns best by doing, online training with detailed exercises might be the best training method. But if a team member learns best by being shown, on-site seminars might be best. And so on.

The best way to figure out the right training mix is to use a mixture of self-selection and third-party assessment. Ask your team members what they want, provide a reasonable cross-section of the collective requests to each team member, and have a third party help you measure the improvements. (This way if a team member asks for internal training, another for an online course, and a third for a conference, and you give these three employees all three options, and measure their capability against a skill before and after, you can see what works best and refine the training plan as time goes on.)

And now you have the basics of how to measure where your talent needs tempering and the methods to best achieve that tempering. But is it enough?

In our last two series we discussed Technology Advances and Process Transformation, which SI calls Transition, two of the three T’s critical for organizational success. The third T is talent — which must not only be in abundance, but which must also be appropriate for the organization. For example, hiring the most senior buyer from your competitor is not going to bring your organization the talent it needs if that senior buyer’s expertise is indirect spend (to your organization) — such as telecom, computing equipment, etc. — but you are a direct materials CPG company primarily producing electronics such as TVs, home gaming systems, and stereo systems.

Nor will that top talent be any good to you if their expertise is negotiation and relationship management and you have two people like that on your team but you are missing experience with modern analytics and optimization solutions — which your organization solely needs to acquire and adopt. In short, the talent has to be tempered to your needs — which means they collectively need the skills, wisdom, and technical knowledge your Supply Management department needs to excel.

In other words, it’s not just the IQ (skills), EQ (emotional intelligence and wisdom), and TQ (technical know-how) of the individual, but of the team as a whole. And this is something a lot of organizations miss. So how do you temper your talent?

Well, you start with a page from the process transformation handbook that says before you can make any changes for the better, you first have to understand where you are, then where you want to be, and identify the gaps. Then make a plan to complete them.

But how do you do this?

Last summer, Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing penned a post on Assessing a Procurement Team’s Skills where he noted that there are three major ways of assessing a Procurement’s team skills:

• Self Assessment
  where each team member assesses themselves
• Manager Assessment
  where a manager assesses each team member’s skills against a standardized assessment
• Third-Party Assessment
  where a third party comes in, creates what they feel is an appropriate assessment, and

These are all valid methods, and SI would also add:

• Team Assessment
  where team-mates assess each other

but each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. An individual will over-rate or under-rate her actual skill depending upon both her understanding of what that skill is and her personality (boisterous or timid). A manager will be slightly biased to favoured, hard-working, and/or high-performing employees (in her definition, whether she realizes it or not). Team members will have limited views of their team-mates skills based on typical day to day interactions since the organization does not have a modern tool, and since Jim (who is the only Engineer on the team) has been assigned to requirements definition and verification, might not know that Jim is an adept spend analyst, and not give Jim the nod here. And third parties will only be able to measure against their measurement paradigm — which will often be written tests or standardized exercises, that may not exercise a particular skill or fit in with the team member’s style. (For example, Bob, who has been in Procurement for 30 years and started out as a Sales Account Manager, is an adept negotiator and great at getting true value adds thrown in to a deal at no cost, but a poor-test taker, and can’t really articulate this valuable capability to the third party).

That’s why SI recommends that you start with a (weighted) collective assessment that performs all of these assessments (where each team member rates themselves and gets rated by 3-5 peers, their manager, and a third party) and integrates them into one single assessment. The weights will be based on confidences and allow an organization to compile a reasonable accurate view of each individual and the team with respect to the desired team capability.

Then the organization can truly begin to temper the talent in earnest, which is what will be discussed in Part II.