Manage Your Talent Like A Restaurant

Yesterday I found myself talking about and writing on how a company should view talent management.
When speaking to Directors and managers I will often make the analogy to a
successful restaurant.

Any restaurant that fills all of its tables every
night and has a diary full of forward bookings will have a capable,
stable and motivated team of chefs in the kitchen. However having a team
of top talent creating the product, in this case food, is not enough.
To provide a great customer eating experience there must be a team
professional front of house and waiting staff to meet, greet and serve
the customers. Other aspects such as décor, entertainment value and ease
of access may play a part but the main success criteria are the people
and the product.

However if that top talent leaves the restaurant this is often
immediately noticeable by regular customers. Either the food or the
service will suffer and customers IMMEDIATELY stay away in droves.

Top Talent from top to bottom

Despite the analogy above too many companies try to attract top talent
to their most senior or important posts whilst “getting someone to fill
the post” for more junior staff.

This positions all the top talent in specific areas of the business
whilst creating a number of inbuilt and preventable weaknesses.
Weaknesses that reduce the potential for profits and future growth.
These weaknesses are most evident when the business wishes to introduce
changes to processes and systems.

With a weak talent pool any change programme tends to be slower to
implement, with the top talent urging the change whilst other groups are
unsure or opposed to the change.

In my experience the problems that poor talent management create are:
Increased costs,

Poor flexibility,

Poor management capability,

Inability to develop robust succession planning,

Difficulty in developing strategic capability

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