Pivotal Talent
I got some inspiration out of an HR meeting I have been in last week. We had an interesting discussion based on a concept from Boudreau/Ramstad about an effective talent strategy for the business. The authors get to the point how talent resources connect to strategic success. In consequence they describe how to identify a companies' “Pivotal Talent”. In order to do this it is crucial to know what are the key critical business processes that mostly contribute to the defined strategic success and then get clear about the people who are influencing these processes.
That way Federal Express in Asia identified couriers and dispatchers as being the pivotal talent. They needed to be knowledgeable about the logistics behind the scenes to give the customer the right answer if asked to wait another 15min because there are 10 more packages to come. Either they could do it knowing that the timing window at the airport hub is wide open or they would need to tell the customer that someone else will be picking up these additional ones.
The Disney example is also about increasing the customer experience and satisfaction as the main strategic goal. They identified the sweepers as most critical to help make people feel cared about waiting in the queues. They could for example get a new icecream for a child who just had it's fallen on the ground.
The pivotal talent may not always be the most obvious talent that we naturally tend to value. This shows that the concept of “Pivotal Talent” is even more important to apply!
Posted at
06:47PM Mar 20, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Comments[3]
The company is actually called FedEx Express.
Federal Express Corporation became FDX Corporation in the late '90s and became FedEx Corporation in 2000.
FedEx Express is the subsidiary of FedEx Corporation that is the direct descendant of the defunct Federal Express.
Lots of planes and trucks are still painted with the old name, but it is FedEx Express.
Posted by Bruce D Ranger on March 20, 2008 at 10:27 PM CET #
Volker, I am impressed that our Pivotal Talent discussion made it to your blog posting! I caught it on my RSS feed :-)
Posted by Bonnie on March 21, 2008 at 11:56 PM CET #
Now that I have you on my iGoogle home page, I was keyed into this blog topic. Nicely done!
Posted by Liesa on March 27, 2008 at 05:34 AM CET #