The customer (in the case of the PDS, customers) will expect certain value from the system. We explored this in the previous post. The second lean principle provides critical visibility so that the stakeholders can identify gaps and opportunities for improvements. Creating a visual guide that shows how the system works helps stakeholders to address those often difficult-to-see opportunities. However, the map of the PDS is a little different.
Principle 2 – Map the Value Stream
The Talent Stream Map was inspired by the Value Stream Map used in traditional lean applications. Here’s the post describing the TSM.
The TSM provides a way to clearly understand how data (quantitative and qualitative), tools, and leadership all come together from across the system we use to find, train, and retain people. It also helps to clarify the connections between the five functional areas of the PDS.
The right map can make a journey more successful. The Talent Stream Map helps identify the “You are here” point in a journey toward improving your people development system. It serves as a great guide along the way, and it engages all the system stakeholders as they take this improvement journey together.
Here’s some feedback that will help explain the impact the TSM can have:
“The Talent Stream Mapping portion of the OPDS exercise was a key part of understanding the current state of our processes and it is imperative that you know and understand this so that you can reconstruct a system that will lead to improvement. We clearly were doing things differently in our various departments and we needed to standardize our practices. The mapping made this clear and we can now move forward with improving.” David Roos, Operations Manager, Mid South Wire.
“I had seen an OPDS overview before, and it is great information. However, the deeper dive into our own people development system using the Talent Stream Map was helpful because it allowed us to see how each of us worked within our own programs and also how we worked within the larger program context. This created more of a bond with other team members.” Tennessee Workforce Development Professional.
“I would like to recognize the fantastic insights gained from recently attending The Optimized People Development System workshop facilitated by Tim Waldo with the University of TN, Center for Industrial Services. I loved the simplified steps on how to incorporate each function and stakeholder in developing strategies (Talent Stream Map) and how all are connected and impact the People Development System. These strategies will transform our business into attracting and retaining top talent, which results in a more positive culture and helps in achieving our business goals. I left this workshop eager for more, excited to bring this back to my organization and using the tools to improve our systems. This is not just for HR – this is for any stakeholder that wants to understand and ensure strategies align with the most important asset of any business– our employees.” Alisha Garrison, HR Manager. Parker Hannifin
A people development system has some unique characteristics, so applying lean, continuous improvement requires some thoughtful use of the lean principles. The first principle requires the stakeholders to think about who the system serves and what those customers would find valuable.
Lean Principle 1 – Define valuefrom the customers’ point of view.
You may have noticed the plural possessive use in the subheading. That’s because there’s more than one customer to consider. In fact, there are four distinct customers that require something from the PDS:
Team members – current and future
Organization teams – the department that the applicant will join
The organization as a whole, and
The customers who buy your products and services.
Team members
The person thinking about joining the organization needs to see clearly the value in doing so. There’s value in understanding what the company stands for, what opportunities exist, and exactly what the organization is looking for. Several functions of the PDS are instrumental in creating and sustaining these values.
If they are offered and accept the job, there is value in connecting – feeling valued, knowing where to start, having someone to help get them on the path. There is value in growth opportunities – seeing the pathway for development, having a say in how the path is laid out.
After they’ve started, there’s value in having their view heard and appreciated, having good communication, meaningful work, and the ability to contribute. These are just some of the things that would be valued by this PDS customer.
There are many benefits of ensuring that this PDS customer can see the value the organization has to offer: clarity around expectations, opportunities, and potential; consistency in communication, planning, and development; and a system that will engage with them all the way through their development process.
The teams
The person you’ve hired is going to join a team. These organizational teams are important customers of the PDS and have certain expectations.
These customers value:
Qualified candidates.
People with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Getting talented people when needed.
When the team receives the new member, they want:
An onboarding experience that establishes foundational relationships with new team members.
A robust training program that matches the team’s needs and supports their mission.
Retention efforts that keep the team stable.
Performance management efforts that expand the capacity of each team member.
Reliable tools for PDS administration.
Reliable data to gage and improve the system.
Leadership development that also helps continuously improve the PDS.
The benefits of a well-run PDS for these departments and teams includes better matching of talent to their needs; broad, ongoing support as the whole team grows and becomes resilient; and leaders that can help ensure that the PDS is working for all stakeholders. Is your current PDS laser focused on this customer’s needs?
The Organization as a Whole
Defining value for this customer of the PDS requires a holistic, long-term viewpoint.
Collectively this customer values:
A stable, growing workforce that buys into the culture, vision, mission, and business objectives.
Data that informs decisions about people, in the near term and the future.
Tools across the PDS that make the process efficient, cost effective, and easy to manage.
Leadership development that continuously improves the PDS.
Help in becoming a premier employer.
An optimized PDS that offers this customer high levels of value in these areas affords the organization more precise control over this people focused system, improved ability to predict PDS performance, increased engagement, and greater capacity to make sound personnel decisions, among many other benefits. Are this customer’s value demands being met?
“The” Customer
The fourth customer of the PDS is directly impacted by all the values delivered to the first three customers. A PDS that develops and takes great care of their workers, ensures that teams are well supported, and provides the organization with better people-centered support, has greater focus and fewer distractions in pursuit of its business objectives. The external customers of the organization benefit greatly when this is the case.
Applying this first lean principle should start with all the PDS stakeholders learning more about the different customers that the PDS serves and what they value. Then closely evaluating the current system. Does our PDS provide these values to each specific customer? Are these values clearly defined and presented? Define the really important questions to consider and then find answers to them.
The second lean principle seeks to make the system visible so that gaps and opportunities are identified. That’s for next time.
Optimization is a really useful word. To optimize something is to make it the best it can be. When used in the Optimized People Development System, it is intended to convey the sense of working toward the best possible version of a system used to attract, train, and keep people. It means continuous improvement for the most important of organizational systems.
There are processes all around us that could benefit from continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. This is certainly true for an organization’s internal workforce development processes. And it’s great when you can use reliable improvement techniques on established systems.
Lean concepts emerged from manufacturing and over time have evolved into lean thinking and then further into a lean mindset with principles that can be applied to practically any process or system. Eliminate waste and make things better for people. Seems like a good idea in any industry.
However, this system, the people development system, has some unique characteristics, making the application of lean, continuous improvement a bit more challenging. Still, I believe that the principles of lean can and should be applied to the PDS.
The five principles of lean are:
Define value from the customer’s point of view
Map the value stream
Create flow
Establish pull, and
Strive for perfection.
Over the next few weeks, we will explore how each of these principles can be applied to the people developing processes outlined in previous blog posts.
Here’s a brief teaser for each. There are four customers who expect certain value from the PDS. Knowing what each one values will help stakeholders make important improvements to meet their needs.
Inspired by the Value Stream Map, the Talent Stream Map was developed to help make the PDS visible. It helps the team see gaps and opportunities as well as their individual roles within the system.
Flow in this sense is not just about people physically moving through the system, it is also about intellectual movement, emotional movement, cognitive movement. Flow implies progress and growth on several levels.
For the PDS, the pull concept is enhanced when the organization or the organizational systems within it has a need to help people advance due to three key factors – growth, expansion, and success.
Finally, pursuing perfection in the PDS is where the optimization theme comes in. Three levels of optimization can keep the emphasis on truly continuous improvement for this people centered system.
Next up, defining the customer of the people development system.
Maps have long captured the imagination of countless generations. Whether in search of some fantastic treasure, some lost or forgotten land, or something more practical like finding the way home, maps have played a key role in human civilization. There are many types of maps helping to answer questions like, where are we now, and where are we going? What type of journey will this be, and how should we prepare?
These useful charts are for more than just simply changing physical locations though. Some maps can provide perspective and illuminate potential. Business leaders often use maps to identify improvement opportunities for their systems and processes. There are a few tried and true mapping tools that leaders have relied on for years in these efforts. Choosing the right tool is an important first step.
Lean manufacturing aficionados understand that details are important in pursuit of continuous improvement. The Value Stream Map has been used for years to visually represent all the steps involved in a process. The beauty of the VSM is its ability to show clear connections between process steps, information flows, and material flows.
However, there is a system where the traditional VSM is not the best map to allow a team to see the inner workings of a particularly important system. A system that could certainly benefit from continuous improvement efforts.
Introducing the Talent Stream Map
An organization’s internal workforce development efforts form a system, known by my team as their People Development System. It is comprised by five functional areas – recruiting, onboarding, retention, performance management, and the heart of the system, the training process.
The PDS is a complex, non-linear system. Its functions and activities occur at various times, with multiple stakeholders, in many places across the organization. For example, retention efforts on second shift, multiple training activities on all shifts, and a conversation over lunch regarding performance improvement opportunities. And, of course, the PDS does not produce a “finished” product. People should always be receiving training and getting performance management support. Retention efforts are also never ending.
Recognizing the need to help provide visibility to the structure and functions of the PDS and inspired by the Value Stream Map, my team developed the Talent Stream Map, a visual guide of all the components necessary to find, train, and retain people to help an organization meet its strategic goals.
The structure of the TSM
Four drivers
The PDS is empowered and energized by the tools used, data collected, methods of delivery, and the people involved in the processes it houses. Once identified, these components are seen side by side and gaps and opportunities can be explored.
Mapping the tools used in all the processes of the PDS allows the exploration of several helpful questions that can guide the discovery of improvement ideas. For example,
Do we have all the tools needed?
When was the last time tools were updated?
Are we using tools like development pathways effectively across the PDS?
Are we leveraging the tools from one area to another across the whole PDS?
Data is generally collected to help manage the PDS, if only at the basic level, which is fairly easy to track down. Comparing data across the whole of the PDS isn’t as simple. Gathering better data can inform better decisions. When mapped, gaps and opportunities for data collection become more obvious.
What data are we getting and are we actually using it?
What data is missing?
What correlations can be made from data across the five functional areas?
Are we asking the right questions of the data?
Exploring the delivery of the process steps and services helps stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of the delivery and to identify potential improvements.
Are the methods of delivery up to date? (this relates to things like technology and to people’s expectations, etc.)
Is the timing of delivery right?
Where are we delivering these steps and services?
How can we improve the delivery?
The people component of the PDS is one of the most important, and one of the most challenging to see. Leaders at all levels contribute to the PDS’s success or failure. Undoubtedly, frontline managers & supervisors impact the process of finding, training, and retaining employees. They are the main avenue of communication within the PDS – their influence even reaches the community. These important stakeholders impact culture, either positively or negatively.
Are the people involved in the PDS aware of their roles?
Are they trained to do their part (in each of the five areas)?
Are they held accountable for the success of the PDS?
How can we help people improve in their PDS related roles?
Once the mapping effort has revealed who is involved with each area and how they are involved, those leaders and stakeholders can visually see how they fit into the system and understand how and why their contributions matter.
The purpose of the TSM
To begin to improve a system, you must first establish its condition. The TSM is intended to make a complex, people-centric system more visible to identify gaps and opportunities that might go unseen otherwise.
After the current state is established and understood, the next logical step is to begin to construct a future state map. This is where the strategy development starts. Stakeholders can make observations, express ideas and concerns, and begin the process of envisioning what the system could potentially look like.
The value of the TSM
Ideally, the TSM is built by all the stakeholders of the PDS. Those being all the individuals who supervise or manage others. As the process unfolds, stakeholders will see parts of the PDS that they may not have seen or fully understood before. There will be conversations that could reveal a misunderstanding of how certain functions are supposed to work versus how they actually work. Ideas, assumptions, and concerns can be voiced. Most importantly, mental models can be aligned, or the recognition of the various mental models can be dealt with.
Waste reduction is the defining hallmark of lean thinking. The TSM helps teams isolate and reduce waste in the people development system. Waste in this system differs from waste in the traditional lean definition. Time, effort, and money are the main types of waste in the PDS, but there are also intangible wastes such as wasted opportunities and wasted potential.
Using the TSM
Making the complexities of the internal workforce development efforts visible can help teams in a number of ways.
Awareness. All stakeholders get a wholistic view of the system and their role within it.
Discovery. Identify gaps and opportunities across one of the most important organizational systems.
Dialog. One of the most valuable aspects of using the TSM is the conversations that occur during the map’s construction.
Business leaders are weary of trying to solve the labor issues we are facing in our state and across the country. The Optimized People Development System and the Talent Stream Map were developed to help these leaders identify often unseen levers that they might manipulate to improve their methods to find, train, and retain the people they desperately need. They help leaders focus more on the things they can control and less on the things they cannot.
The right map can make a journey more successful. The Talent Stream Map helps identify the “You are here” point in a journey toward improving your people development system. It serves as a great guide along the way, and it engages all the system stakeholders as they can make this improvement journey together.
If you would like more information about either of these tools let us know. You can reach me through the comments here or at tim.waldo@tennessee.edu.
Do us a favor please. If you construct a Talent Stream Map with your fellow stakeholders, please send us pictures and share your story. We love to learn how teams use these tools to improve their people development efforts.
The heavy cloud of concern over the American labor force continues to weigh down employers. Frustrated and exasperated leaders at all levels are struggling daily with the difficulty of finding and keeping people. My team at the Tennessee Manufacturing Extension Partnership certainly hears the frustration from those we serve.
Driven by tenacity and a pressing sense of urgency, more business leaders are looking outwardly and investing in long-term solutions with multiple partners while ramping up efforts to attract people to work now. Investing some of that valuable time and effort inwardly could also help address the challenges of finding and keeping a stable workforce.
Look again.
Many manufacturers in Tennessee have already taken a close look at their people development efforts. Some have revisited their policies, some have expanded their benefits, and others have bolstered training and development. Still, there are probably other improvements to be made. In the spirit of continuous improvement, there’s always a chance to dig deeper and uncover new efficiencies and opportunities.
The Optimized People Development System suggests that a good starting place is to create a Talent Stream Map. Based on the value stream map used in lean thinking, the Talent Stream map makes the PDS visible with all its beauty and wonder right alongside all its warts and freckles. Once all the stakeholders have their say and the TS map is complete, it becomes easier to explore possibilities for improvement.
Look deeper.
Asking more questions at more levels of the PDS can reveal overlooked opportunities. How can we improve recruiting is a good question. Can we expand where we recruit is also a good question. How are we attracting potential team members and when does attracting turn into recruiting? Can we do that part better? Digging into why we are recruiting will almost certainly stimulate some interesting discussions that cause other parts of the PDS to be reexamined.
Another good question is, how are our retention efforts? What if we explore how we are personalizing retention? When do we begin our retention efforts in earnest? How can we do that part better? There are many questions that will come from looking more intently at all five areas of the PDS. Challenge the system stakeholders to stretch their question asking skills.
Applying continuous improvement means to constantly ask more questions and explore more possibilities to make things better. If the organization has a good or even a very good people development system, there are surely other improvements that can still be made. Better questions help us to find those hidden opportunities.
Hidden in plain sight.
As the team explores the PDS, they often find things that were obvious, but unnoticed. In one instance, as a group of stakeholders stood in front of their TS map and discussed the flow of communication, they discovered that one tool they were using was not working as designed. They saw this after several questions about how the tool was supposed to be used and when. It was being used, but not consistently and not in the same way by all departments. They suddenly had a meaningful way to improve one of their processes.
Stakeholders of another system unearthed persistent inconsistencies across departments regarding how training was being delivered and even what training was available. Eight supervisors described how they individually understood the company’s training approach, and ultimately discovered that they all had a different understanding of that extremely important aspect of people development.
It has never been tougher to find people to help an organization fulfill its goals and purposes. Looking at and engaging with outward workforce development efforts to ease the struggle is important. However, overlooked improvements in the organization’s internal processes could also help fill positions and keep them filled.
Discovery of these opportunities comes from thoughtful, purposeful exploration at all levels of the PDS and a willingness to dig deeper. Even though you’ve looked already, look again. Go another layer or two in. There just might be overlooked opportunities that could help reduce the amount of frustration and helplessness that your team is dealing with.
The optimization process for the people development system is no different than any other system improvement journey. Start by thoroughly understanding the current system. Mapping the current state of the PDS with all the stakeholders can help uncover the “why” and “how” parts and allow for more precise improvement efforts.
Here’s an article that I wrote about one company’s mapping efforts.
They are usually abandoned gradually, though unintentionally. They live on determination, but when discipline fades, these are among the first attributes to disappear. Ironically, growth and success often cause them to be compromised and quietly forgotten. They are the fundamentals, the essential, bedrock practices so vital for success.
It’s been said that fundamentals win championships. Look up almost any famous athlete and they often point to their mastery of the fundamentals as the main driver of their success. The concept applies to organizational habits as well; especially when it comes to developing and keeping a strong workforce.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a human being.”
Football is a complex game. When coach Vince Lombardi embarked on a journey to build a championship team, he went all the way back to the most basic concept. He reintroduced his 1961 team to the football, not to a strategy, to some new rules, or to new ways to play the game, but to the ball itself. He refocused their attention on the most basic of the basics. A detail easily taken for granted. This article from James Clear discusses the impact of Lombardi’s simple idea.
At its most basic level, an optimized people development system is about people. Its role is to serve people well, treat them well, and keep them well. To do this, the system must value relationships and foster effective communication. Appreciating the whole person and committing to their development and growth are basic principles for an effective PDS. But it’s easy to lose sight of the basics.
Fast-paced workplaces busy trying to remain competitive and satisfy customers, can let important practices drift, and begin to assume that the basics are somehow happening. Surely everyone knows that the organization values people, right? A detail easily obscured by daily pressures.
If your PDS seems to have lost something, has grown weak, or worse, has never been strong, perhaps there’s a need to revisit the fundamentals. Was there a time when the PDS was more focused on people? When the basics of valuing every individual were much more prevalent? Has the system crept away from this basic tenant?
Of Great Consequence.
Merriam Webster.com offers another nuanced meaning of fundamental, “It applies to something that is a foundation without which an entire system or complex whole would collapse.” The role of the PDS is fundamentally important.
This system supports all other organizational systems. Practically every organizational system requires people (sounds basic, doesn’t it?). If those people who operate all the organization’s systems are unhappy, underdeveloped, or undervalued, there can be serious consequences. However, when systems are difficult to see (as the PDS is), it is easy to forget how important they really are.
In practice, this means that leaders and stakeholders of the PDS must constantly assign high levels of importance to the PDS and be disciplined about maintaining this focus. Previous posts on this blog explore this idea in more detail.
Avoid a Slow Surrender.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.”
Abandoning the fundamentals that empower an organization’s people development system is a slow surrender. It starts when the stakeholders fail to value relationships. When they forget that treating people with dignity and respect is non-negotiable, when they fail to encourage their people to learn and grow, they give up future potential and miss the opportunity to deepen engagement. Communication weakens and powerful components of success slowly disappear.
When the perceived importance of the PDS diminishes, training gets pushed off and staff development sees little or no investment. When leaders take the PDS for granted, they can inadvertently compromise the organization’s vision.
Modern methods for finding, training, and retaining people are very complex. In the spirit of Vince Lombardi, leaders should ensure that the basic practices that support their people development system are not lost in the melee. In addition, they should strive to constantly highlight the importance of the system to the organization’s goals.
To keep the fundamentals at the forefront of the organization’s collective mindset takes discipline and determination. Champions pay attention to the fundamentals. They commit themselves to them and practice them consistently. Building a championship-caliber people development system requires the same level of commitment.
There’s fierce competition in all industries to find, train, and retain the talented people that thriving businesses need. In recent posts, we’ve been looking at four tips to help organizations win or improve their performance in this competition. The fourth tip is about staying power.
Becoming an employer of choice is about more than simply having people choose your organization over others from a list of prospects. A strategy for moving up the list of preferred employers should include a commitment to continuously improve your internal people development system.
Embarking on an effort to improve your ranking as EoC would be an exercise in futility if the system you use to find, train, and retain people is not functioning effectively. Some companies striving to become EoCs often take time-worn steps such as training leaders, working on retention plans, or maybe offering training to high-potential team members. These are all good steps, but many times they have less-than-desirable outcomes.
If you expose your leadership team to quality training then send them back into a PDS that is inefficient, disconnected, and practically invisible, how effective can they be with this new training?
If you add new benefits and retention bonuses and then subject the people for whom they are intended to a PDS that does not facilitate strong communication and provide opportunities for relationship building, what are the odds that your investment in retention will pay off? You get the picture.
The PDS must be strong enough to improve your position in the EoC race then help you hold that position and possibly climb higher. Here are some ways to strengthen this important system. To start, use systems thinking to help your team see the whole PDS – its connections and interactions and the opportunities for improvement; this is where lean concepts can be applied to make the system more efficient and effective. Then, strive to become a learning organization to drive engagement and create the stickiness that keeps people coming back.
See The System
The PDS is a non-linear system. It is complex and involves many people acting at various times and at various levels. Making it visible starts with a current state map. Get all the stakeholders to help build the map and identify gaps and opportunities. What data is being collected? What tools are being used? Who is involved at various places across the system? How is each area influencing what is happening in the other four areas?
Once the map is completed, a strategy can begin to take shape to improve the PDS and its effectiveness.
Lean The System
Like most other systems, there can be waste in the PDS. Some of that waste is tangible, like money and lost opportunities. Some are intangible, such as time, effort, and potential relationships. Once the system is more visible, efforts can be made to reduce or eliminate waste.
Waste can occur when a trainer is investing time training someone using poorly designed training programs. In the recruiting process, waste can come from job postings that are ineffective. If a company cannot launch new products or expand operations due to workforce issues, perhaps the fault lies with a weak PDS.
When a good recruit is mismatched in a job, the opportunity to maximize that person’s potential can be lost; often leading to their departure from the team. If the PDS does not support great retention and performance management activities, powerful, potential relationships might not develop. This is a type of waste with long-term ramifications. Lean thinking is about continuously improving a system. This particular people-centric system should not be overlooked when it comes to pursuing perfection.
Make the System Sticky
A learning organization attracts people and holds their attention. In such an environment, everyone understands the importance of learning, and everyone participates in learning. Development pathways and training matrices are prominent, learning is celebrated and rewarded, and engagement deepens.
Team learning, personal mastery, and knowledge sharing are just some of the key elements engrained in a learning organization. The best employers understand this and constantly work on creating a culture of learning. The journey to become a learning organization requires a shared mindset whereby a team works individually and collectively to increase knowledge, skills, and abilities. The PDS is the mechanism that allows this mindset to take root and thrive.
You’re Already in the Race
So, how do you position your firm in the minds of your employees and potential employees as a great place to work? It takes a well thought out strategy that includes:
Building a strong, continuously improving system to develop people.
Understanding the nature of the competition.
Helping stakeholders grasp the importance of their role in the organization’s success; and
Recognizing that there are important choices to be made, and not just by the talented people the PDS will bring in.
Decent wages and benefits that attract people are the table stakes in today’s labor market. However, in this instance, winning such a ubiquitous competition involves the idea that people will not only choose your company but will enthusiastically choose to stay and make meaningful contributions. And, leaning on a time-honored axiom, remember; that becoming an employer of choice is a marathon, not a sprint.
It just sounds wrong to ask such a question. It feels insensitive, almost Orwellian in a way. Should people be considered inventory? Applying lean thinking to a system requires that we look at all the components, and inventory can certainly be a major factor. But, in this case, we’re not talking about a store of things, a list of items on shelves or in boxes. We’re talking about people.
Inventory is one of the famous wastes in lean thinking. Usually, the goal is not to have too much or have it before it’s needed; this is because lean concepts originated from manufacturing. However, applying lean concepts to a people development system (PDS) can challenge the definition of inventory.
Exactly Where are the People?
I was talking to a colleague about helping organizations optimize their PDS by applying lean thinking. As we discussed how to analyze the traditional wastes of lean, my friend suggested that the stack of applications that an organization has for open job postings represents a type of inventory. That stack could be seen as an inventory of raw materials ready to be processed by the PDS. Potential, raw talent, waiting to be built up.
Extending the analogy, perhaps these are other types of human inventories:
Work in Progress – Those individuals involved in training and development.
Finished Goods – No one is ever fully finished learning, but these are reaching their peak in their role.
Reworks – those who recognize the need to change and are open to the idea of upskilling and retraining.
Obsolete Inventory – those people in the organization who refuse to change or whose roles are disappearing.
There is also just the overall headcount. Donella Meadows, a leading contributor to systems thinking, often referred to stocks as the foundation of any system. She bolsters this assertion saying, “Stocks are the elements of the system that you can see, feel, count, and measure at any given time.” In the people development system, headcount is the stock, making it a type of inventory; one that can fluctuate by being acted upon by a system’s feedback loops, either a balancing loop or a reinforcing loop, or a combination of both. The PDS is responsible for maintaining the stock of people in all the organizational systems.
Working Their Way Through the System
Looking at people as inventory in some instances can be helpful. For example, two key lean principles are establishing flow and creating a pull system.
Flow
In this instance, flow represents people successfully moving through the system. It happens when the recruiting process is continually finding and developing acceptable/trainable talent at all key positions. It is created by constantly looking for valuable attributes and talents, even if there is no signal from internal customers. Then, creating the opportunity for those attributes and talents to “flow” into other parts of the organization; for the good of the individual and the organization.
Flow is not just about people physically moving through the system though. It is also about intellectual movement, emotional movement, and cognitive movement. Flow implies progress and growth. The optimized PDS creates flow by ensuring that everyone is moving (upwardly, laterally) – progressing along their development path, career ladder, skill levels, etc.
Pull
Pull is demand. It is created in the organization when there’s a need for people to move up, take on new roles, or add their capabilities to another team. Pull is established when organizational systems have a need for people due to growth, expansion, and success. The Optimized PDS helps find the right types of human inventory, at the right place, in the right quantity.
Pull is driven by more than just promotions. There’s also skill level advancement and growth in leadership abilities, cognitive training, personal goal attainment, knowledge acquisition, coaching ability, cross-training in other areas, concept understanding (such as lean, kata, systems thinking, etc.), and strategic thinking.
Signals From the System
Together, the lean concepts of flow and pull help PDS stakeholders identify where needs are greatest and the pulling forces are strongest. These signals get transmitted back through the PDS so that the demand is met, people are added, they get training, are moved, etc. They will have names and faces, of course. They won’t be known as Works in Progress, or Reworks, or Obsolete. They will, however, be seen in the system.
There are places in the PDS where monitoring the levels of human inventory and their developmental progress can interject a sense of urgency to ensure that people are efficiently moving through the system and they are being served well along their journey. Just the idea of labeling people as inventory may be inflammatory or sound demeaning to some. If it is meant to value people only as so many interchangeable resources to be manipulated, then it would be offensive. However, observing the PDS through this lens can help us gain a more systems-oriented view and help us manage the organization’s most important inventory.
Reference – D. H. Meadows, (2008). Thinking in Systems, A Primer.
I believe we humans have gotten better at adapting to the pace of change. But the big, pressing changes often distract us from paying attention to other, less obvious adjustments that might make our systems work more effectively. In the last post, we looked at the internal people development systems of organizations and how they are all about change management. These systems manage change and can instigate change. They are also open to transformation to make them more effective.
Seeing the system might be the first change needed
The connections seem obvious; but it is easy for stakeholders to lose sight of them. The PDS is a complex, dynamic system operating at various times, in multiple places throughout the organization, and involving multiple people. The difficulty lies in seeing the whole system in operation.
Change ripples through the system. The training function expands abilities and capacities. Recruiting alters team structure and makeup, while onboarding aims to change perspectives and motivations. Retention seeks to strengthen relationships and boost trajectories while the performance management function improves capabilities and potential. Together, these all work to sustain or change the organizational culture. Inefficiency in one area flows through the system and impacts the other areas.
Weak, neglected connections still allow the system to operate, but with less effectiveness. On the other hand, enhanced connections share data, ensure consistent communication across the PDS, and use tools like training matrices and development pathways to engage teams.
Constant change, aka continuous improvement
It’s often easier to improve a visible, linear system like a production line that makes widgets than to improve a non-linear system that lives within larger systems. But lean thinking can be applied to the PDS.
Adopting a continuous improvement mindset within the team can help ensure that the processes that make up the PDS are focused on delivering value to all of its customers.
Lean thinking is about eliminating waste, which certainly exists within most PDSs. It might be the waste of time that occurs with outdated training methods or poor training tools. It might be wasted opportunities when performance management efforts are ignored. Wasted effort of underdeveloped trainers is another example.
Learning organizations are always changing
Grow the individuals within the system, and the system itself will change. The optimized PDS appreciates and cultivates the love of learning throughout the organization. The effects of this level of improvement within the PDS show up as improved engagement, more ideas generated, and deeper relationships formed. This improvement radiates outward to all other organizational systems.
Changes to chase
Other changes that can impact the PDS. One is a change in expectations. Expect the system to operate better, then put in the work to make it happen. Changes in perception. Help the team see the system, understand its power, and challenge the status quo. There are also changes in the level of dedication to constantly improve the PDS. It takes concerted effort and determination to improve this system. This level of improvement requires strong leadership and commitment from all stakeholders.
Some of the improvements we can make to our people development systems are subtle. But the system is open to continuous improvement. If it is restricted and ignored it will never be able to be the change maker it is intended to be.
The Optimized People Development System 