Talent Management is a very big topic in the procurement
world, and for good reason. The
skill sets needed for an effective procurement team are incredibly diverse. A good procurement professional is well
versed in strategic sourcing best practices, but also must be highly
analytical. They must have keen
negotiation skills to address suppliers, but also strong business acumen and
change management skills to address internal stakeholders. The best procurement professionals are
extremely well rounded, and many don’t come from procurement at all, but have evolved
into their positions after starting in finance, risk management or operations.
To make things more difficult, there is a training gap. Supply chain management and procurement isn’t
well covered in our colleges and universities.
Even today, very few business schools have curriculum or majors
specific to our industry, and the ones that do are relatively new and un-vetted
(with some very notable exceptions that have great programs).
While procurement has some unique challenges surrounding
talent management, the struggle to build high performing teams is not unique to
us. Whether you lead a consulting team,
an HR group or Sales – everyone wants high performance. But what does that really mean? How do you determine if your team is high
performing, and if it’s not, how do you get it there?
The first step is completing a gap assessment of your
current state – what do you have today and where do you want it to be
tomorrow? At Source One, I recently
created a relatively simple gap assessment in preparation for a 2017 planning
session. To do this, I pulled and
aggregated key content from the self-performance reviews everyone on our staff
takes at the end of the year. The
specific content I analyzed related to 2016 accomplishments and 2017
objectives. Using this aggregated
content, I created a word cloud to identify general themes.
I then compared and contrasted the themes from the word
cloud with the goals and objectives that I and the rest of the leadership team
at Source One have established for 2017, as well as our three year roadmap.
Performing this gap assessment helped me identify where the team was aligned
and where it wasn’t, which provided focus for the planning session. Of course, not everyone will have ready
access to this type of data, but generally speaking, if you want to have a high
performing team, you need to start with a gap assessment.
Survey your team, compare those results to the goals your
company, business unit or department have.
Then, tie those to the overarching goals and objectives of the
business. Take a look at your company mission
statement, quarterly and annual reports, and five year plan. What themes apply to the work that you do,
and how do you make sure those themes are built into the everyday work that
your team is performing? Once you’ve
established what your team’s role is in making the company high performing, you
can tie it to individual team member’s goals and objectives and well as the
over-arching organizational structure and roles/responsibilities of the team.
After establishing the expectation of what high performing
is to the group you lead, you need to keep two things in mind – continuous
improvement and continuous alignment.
Both are necessary to ensure teams continue to perform at high
standards. Make sure the team is
measured in a way that keeps them high performing and that progress is reviewed
on a regular basis. Motivation is
critical for a high performing team, and consistent evaluation and level
setting will motivate good people.
Further, stay in tune with your company’s mission – if it changes then
your team needs to know that.
Continually improving and aligning ensures the team has visibility into
ever changing market conditions and that their performance stays at high
standards. It also builds towards a
culture that expects high performance as standard operating procedure – which in
turn makes maintaining momentum much easier!
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