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Does Talent Management Create Culture?

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Ron Lawrence writes in CLOmedia.com that HR shape a company’s culture by finding and developing talent.  I’m having a hard time buying into that.  My answer to the question “does talent management create culture?” is simply: “no.”

In reality, creating a high-performing company depends on finding and hiring the right people, then nurturing, developing and rewarding those people to deliver “great things.”

This is the role of human resources departments: managing human capital in such a way as to create a healthy company culture that delivers high performance.

Every company has a culture, whether it is positive, negative or somewhere in between. Within this environment, there is a cultural steward: the company’s HR department.

The role of stewardship is a complex one. A steward can serve as an advocate and an assistant, as a guide and mentor — someone who often has to deliver the truth, even when it’s difficult to hear.

Within this context, the best HR professionals are people who shape a company’s culture by balancing creativity, especially in finding and developing talent and discipline.   ((Lawrence, Ron, July 2007.  “Human Resources: Culture Stewards in High-Performing Companies.”  CLO Media.com.))

As “culture stewards”, Lawrences 5 key tasks for HR professionals are:

1.    Attract and identify talent.
2.    Assimilate talent into the workforce.
3.    Develop and assess talent.
4.    Develop rewards and incentives to increase retention.
5.    Implement an effective exit strategy.  ((Ibid))

While I won’t deny a link between great people and innovative, exciting places to be, I have a very hard time making the jump to company culture.  Certainly great people will help with employee engagement and perhaps an improvement on the employment brand, but these are very indirect effects of the talent management process.  Making the next leap from engagement, brand and culture is another long one – yes they are related, but the former do not necessarily create the latter.

Let’s say we want to create a culture of teamwork.  It would seem to me that creating effective teams does not happen by recruiting and developing talent.  Having the right talent is an essential ingredient, but you’d really want to start with line managers and project managers with a great deal of communications and change management activities.  Having a framework and governance structures around how teams work together in your organization that is both unique to your organization as well as allows talent to easily participate are the true ingredients.

I could probably go on and on about the real strategies to create specific types of cultures, but I think you get the idea.  Talent is always an ingredient.  No positive cultural changes ever happen without the right mix of people, and certainly talent is a feeder of any culture strategy.  But let’s face the facts.  Culture is not created by talent management processes, and we should not go around thinking that broad HR strategy is solved by talent management.  Talent management is simply a single distinct strategy within HR’s broader role in which engagement, service delivery, and culture are all additional distinct components.

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3 responses to “Does Talent Management Create Culture?”

  1. Rob Robson Avatar

    Culture is a function of many things. Talent management is just a cog in the wheel. Indeed, the coporate “obsession” with talent management may indeed be harmful to the culture, as it tends to focus on the development and reward of individuals. Here’s an interesting blog on the subject:
    http://www.apterinternational.com/newsandviews/81

  2. luis Avatar

    I do agree with you. Talent management is a key process, but it does not produce culture. It is a tool by which an executive team manages the growth and the skills of its management population.

    First point, Talent Management will have an influence in the management culture of the company, but that is only a fraction of the corporate culture. What can happen (and has happened at some groups) is that management culture influences overall corporate culture

    Second point, talent management still does not impact experts (communities of practice for instance) nor front-line workers. and those sometimes represent a lot in the corporate culture

    In the end, Talent Management is key, but it is still a process. A culture is a living, complex collective intelligence. Let’s keep things clear

  3. Joanne Bintliff-Ritchie Avatar

    In my experience with very culture driven organizations talent management practices can support, strengthen or weaken, but not create culture. The same can be said for customer relationship, investor relationship, social responsibility and financial practices.