In every organization and walk of life we find people whom we may call individual contributors. These are people who like to do things on their own. They want to create things by themselves. They want to crack problems by themselves. They may pick up a problem, think how to crack it, research related material, perform trials and errors and finally solve them.

The joy comes from being close to the problem and solutions. They need to feel and experience it. The electrician, the computer mechanic, the driver, the doctor, the painter are all individual contributors. In organizations too we find these individual contributors. However, in organizations because of its very structural nature, organizations grapple with problem of recognizing these individual contributors. At the workplace we find some of the good mechanics who come and say "I do not want to get promoted and become a manager, I prefer to work with the mechanical problems with my own hands". The joy and the challenge for them is to solve more complicated problems or create even more innovative models, designs, papers, layouts, ideas.

These people like to do more of these by themselves. We need the salesman who would want to sell by himself or herself. We need those surgeons who would do the surgeries by themselves. We need those musicians who create the music by themselves. We need those good programmers who like to write code. We need to identify these traits in people and give them the opportunity to excel by doing things on their own. I know a guy in my department - HR who is a very good recruiter. He is really good. He enjoys making those tough recruitment by himself. Sourcing people who will fit the profile, selling the jobs to them, understand and setting expectations, working with the candidate through the selection process and getting the person to join the company. I moved on. But I was told that he was made a recruitment manager with three other recruiters. He was miserable as a manager. He was not good at nor did he desire delegating to and controlling work of others. He was also not enjoying the job as he kept missing the hands on experience - making the end to end closures on recruitment.

We do find such people all around us. Some jobs warrant individual contributors. And such jobs are there in every function whether it is engineering or sales or HR or software development. Unfortunately in organizations difficulty has been in rewarding these people and their contribution. How do we reward a person without making him a manager. Actually the question we should be asking is how do we challenge the person in his job retaining the person as an individual contributor. To answer this question we need to ask what challenges the person. We go back to our simple theory of development of capabilities where we say that capabilities development is about adding new skills or improving proficiencies at existing level of complexity or moving to a higher order of complexity.

We need to assign them tasks or work or problems which may be of higher order of complexity. The flavour of complexity is different for different functions. Complexity in sales is different from that in programming. No matter which function we can identify the work related tasks or activities (short term and long term) which vary in complexity. We could challenge (and thus reward) these individual contributors by assigning them to higher orders of complexity. In the case of the person who was handling recruitment maybe we could move him to doing more complex recruitment and what could that be. Those that are difficult to fill, tough to head hunt or source or take long cycle for closure. To the salesman who likes to do selling by himself - maybe he could be moved to a territory where growth has been sluggish or a product which has not be moving. Or make him responsible for the niche, high value sales. Organizations will also benefit from their need to move to more complex problems. Not everyone needs to move the organization in the classical sense of "higher" level of responsibilities. We could think of "greater" level of responsibilities.

Yesterday I was chatting with CEO of mid size company in the IT industry. I was taking him through our product which we will be launching soon – Talent Development System. The important aspect of TDS is a powerful yet simple profiling of skills of employees in a company. Pre-loaded with skills in different functions across specializations within the functions we believe it is a cutting edge application which will enable companies to capture inventory of skills of their employees.

Suddenly he went silent during the discussion and after a while asked me – “Do you think organizations really care about skills and things like that?” I was little surprised with his question as I always felt that there was such a need for any organization. I asked why this question. He said “Ramu, you know every company fudges data on skills of their employees. When they present resumes to customers they fudge the resumes showing projects in the resumes which the employee has never done. I have seen and heard about these things even in large companies.” Thereafter we went to much deeper discussion of my own experiences.

But the fact that such a question came up makes one ask whether organizations care. I for one believe that yes they do care. Industries have changed in the last two decades. IT industry for one has matured significantly during this period. The HR practices in the leading organizations have evolved to create some of the best HR practices. These include inventorying and developing of skills. But having said that I believe that same level of maturity in the practices which one would find in the leading organizations may not be seen in the medium and small sized companies – which form the large portion of the industries. There are a number of reasons for this partly business driven, partly inadequacies of the HR function itself. But the question is whether organizations want to invest in the moving up the value chain. I firmly believe that organizations want to.

I for one believe that it is the not the headcount which matters but the inventory of skills these headcount possess that matters. Without having a proper scientific inventory of skills how can one manage a company when the fundamental driver of businesses is the talent of people.

I guess the problem is not whether organizations care for inventorying of skills but how do they do that. Well, our solution - TDS - should enable these organizations. Hang on, it is coming soon.

Training needs of individuals are closely tied to the career plan of individuals. One’s career plan may emerge from temperament or aptitude, aspirations and opportunities.

Opportunities can be viewed as those within the organisation and those outside the organisaiton. An organisation which is seeking to rotate its staff between different verticals or technologies or service lines gives opportunities to the staff therein to take responsibilities in new area. Or organisation planning to promote or give additional responsibilities (a larger team to handle, a bigger territory, a higher P & L) gives opportunities for one to develop or put to use ones higher levels of proficiency in those skills. Organisations which are having business plans to grow non linearly (through opening up business in different geography, starting new product or service line etc.) provide opportunities to individuals to get involved in different skills or further specialise or gainer richer experience in their capabilities.

Thus an understanding of the organisation plan does help in clarifying to one what the future opportunities for one could be and prepare oneself to capitalise on these roles. From a different angle the same becomes the responsibility of HR or managers/leaders in the organisation – providing visibility for the upcoming opportunities to their staff and helping them prepare to capitalise on the emerging opportunities.

The choice one would make with regard to the opportunities are closely related to the aspirations and aptitude/temperament of an individual. Career plan could be from different factors as has been described in the panch marg of career paths. The five themese therein include:

1.       Larger
2.       Deeper
3.       Wider
4.       Newer
5.       Different

1.       Improving proficiency levels in the current capabilities and/or
2.       Developing capabilities in new skills areas

Training needs emerge from all the above

In the 3D capabilities profile we have four areas of skills – functional/technical skills; behavioural or soft skills; business/managerial skills and avocational skills. One could explore various possibilities by drilling down each of these areas. One can see the wide range of skills in different functions and specialisations. These help in identifying areas one may want to get trained to further enhance ones proficiency in the said area and also identify the newer areas one may want to get trained in.

We go to a doctor when we are unwell. What does the doctor do? First, the doctor asks us several questions on the state of our health, how we are feeling, etc. If required the doctor then asks to get some tests done such as X Ray or blood diagnostics and so on.

The same is true for a financial counsellor. When one goes to a financial counsellor to take investment advice, the counsellor first analyses the “as is” position – current earnings and current savings and then analyses our temperament – our risk appetite, our lifestyle etc. He then uses his knowledge of the various financial instruments, their behaviour, pluses and minuses and makes us recommendations.

In short any consultant or a counsellor does two things – one diagnosis and then prescribe solutions.

The same should be or is true for HR specialist. We are expected to diagnose and prescribe solutions to individuals and organisations. When an individual approaches a HR specialist for advice on career development, the HR specialist should be diagnosing the “as is” state of the individual’s career and its related aspects. These would include the kind of progress the individual has made so far, the capabilities one has built, the aspirations of the individual and so on. Then the HR specialist is expected to prescribe solutions for the individual. The prescription comes from the HR specialist’s knowledge of the talent market, the pros and cons of various options, industry analysis and so on. The prescription has to be tailor made to the individual’s psyche or personality and specific to the individual. What works for one will not work for another. For instance, one who is looking for security and stability and is risk averse maybe advised to look for options within one’s industry or even company.

1. Good analysis of the individual’s as is state – hard (for example achievements, experiences) and soft (temperament, aspirations)
2. Good understanding of trends and behaviour related to the market dynamics and
3. Tailor making prescriptions for the individual or organisations

HR personnel need to be real custodians of latest trends and market behaviour. In my view there is little conscious investment by HR folks in this area because of which they are not able to assert themselves in the same manner that medical professionals are able to do in the field of medicine and financial counsellors do in the field of finance. Talent should be nurtured as the core domain of HR folks and if they need to establish themselves as such then their richness, comprehensiveness and awareness of latest trends should be as it is for specialists in other fields.

Development is an improvement in our capabilities relative to our current capabilities. It is not relative to the capabilities of others. Thus our objective has to be to better ourselves.

In today’s era of talent I find it important for people to gain mastery not just in one skill but in more than one, at least in two. Well, this may even be a necessity.

During the course of creating our website/portal ready I was looking for people who could create our website. Our technology partner are adept at creating the applications but creation of the front end / UI / design is not there forte. I went about looking for people who could create the UI or do the designing for us. I faced many challenges in the process. There were people who were adept at the tools and technology – html, photoshop, coreldraw, CSS and so on. But the problem with almost all these people were that their aesthetic senses were very poor. The designs they created were very poor in quality, they were not appealing, the human element in the designs were missing. So here was a set of people who were technically good but poor in creativity. Then I found the other set of people who could do the creative part very well. They were able to absorb the concept create visuals, the colours, contrasts and layouts were very appealing but they would not know how to turn them into web pages.

The ideal person would have been those who had the aesthetic or creative abilities with the technical skills.  This is what I call by being skilled in multiple faculties. Is it about yin and yang in skills? Is it about the well developed right and left brain? Maybe.

We can find parallels of this case of combination of creative plus technical talent for web in other areas too. A functional specialist in a software industry has to be able to appreciate the software engineering to contribute to creation of appropriate solutions. A civil architect like our web creatives, need a combination of capabilities in civil engineering plus the aesthetics involved in architecture. A surgeon needs to be adept at the surgical practices and also the technicalities of the medical equipments. A combination of functional expertise and business skills in required for successfully running an enterprise or business unit. A good music composer also is one who is adept at sound technology.

Such combinations are rare to find. I realised this in my search for web creative person. I also believe that the same situation prevails in organizations where such combinations are required. There is a premium one would place for such multiple skills. HR, managers and leaders in companies could look for people within the organization who have the aptitude for such dual specialization and nurture them. But such spotting of talent would require out of the box thinking, a classical performance appraisal system may not be able to bring out such talent. Lets say we want to nurture the creative talent in engineers and that we would like to sport such talent. Maybe the organization could organise a competition which involves modeling, drawing, sketching, painting, etc. for engineers. On the part of the individuals when they believe that their field may require dual talent, maybe such talent can be nurture if the basics (aptitude and inclination) are there in the individual.

Realising the importance and the value of the duality of skills is the first step.

New ebook on career planning for the Era of Talent

Reflections on Career Planning, written by G Ramu, is an insightful exploration of various dynamics on career planning to help the individual make the right choices in this era of talent – era of immense opportunities. A free download of the abridged version of the ebook is available in Training Orbit website.

Chennai, India – Feb 15, 2010 – Where am I? Where do I go from here? How do I prioritise? How do I develop? How do I decide? All these questions and more are explored in this book – Reflections on Career Planning written by G Ramu. The beauty of the book is its simplicity in presentation and yet powerful and insightful in thoughts. Meant for any adult at any age in any geography the book will engage the reader in a dialogue in a structured manner on his or her career.

The author has carefully analysed the key aspects which trouble individuals with regard to their careers and how people make decisions. From another perspective, it connects these internal dynamics within the individual to the dynamics of the world today. He likes to call today’s era an era of talent, which with the power of the Internet has opened up immense opportunities like never before, the magnitude of which is only beginning to unfold. With opportunities and choices, also come confusion and the book helps the individual overcome and leverage the opportunities with clarity. The author has created models and themes which clearly articulate the choices for the individuals, yet presented them with real life examples and in a manner anyone anywhere can appreciate.

Please visit http://trainingorbit.com/Books/Register to download free abridged version of the ebook.

About Author

G Ramu, is a management graduate with specialization in HR from XLRI, India’s premiere B School. He has had rich corporate experience in diverse industries including Heavy Engineering, FMCG, and Software. In 2005 he turned into an entrepreneur heading a placement services company – Yoganishta. He has founded 3D talent Services to create online HR services which has launched Training Orbit, a global portal exclusively on training for trainers, training companies and training seekers.