A paper showing the development of Talent Management Maturity when implementing best-of-breed IT systems to support it.

1. Talent & Succession Management – Ensuring Success
As a consultant and technologist specialising in strategic HR
applications, Phil Isherwood draws on his experiences
implementing major global talent management projects to
provide a view on what it really takes for enterprise-wide talent
management projects to succeed in modern organizations.
I have a privileged position. I work with HR professionals from leading organizations
around the world to help make their strategic visions a reality – by solving HR business
problems using technology. I've had the opportunity to see at close hand the scope of
talent processes that companies embrace and, more significantly I think, the impact that systems have on talent
management maturity.
What is Talent Management Maturity?
Talent management maturity is an interesting concept and a useful yardstick to analyse companies using talent
management. The CIPD’s definition of talent management maturity is:
Source: Understanding the Dimensions, CIPD 2006
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2. Which I think can be simplified to:
Talent Management Maturity - The Reality
By plotting a representative sample of Cezanne’s current major talent management clients on a graph of talent
management maturity versus the number of years that they have worked with Cezanne, we see an interesting
result:
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3. You will notice:
I have not placed any clients in maturity level one. This is perhaps unsurprising – companies with a
talent management maturity level of one have no talent management process to speak of and so no
need of technology support!
I have not placed any clients in maturity level five. I’m not sure that there are many organizations that
can truly claim to manage talent at this level. Some of my clients may cross over the line from level 4 to
level 5 – but I’m not sure I would necessarily be aware of it. The feedback between corporate strategy
and talent would be encapsulated in individual talent discussions that a technology partner would not
necessarily be a party to.
There is a clear correlation from bottom left to top right – see next graph.
A smooth curve can be drawn through the dots from bottom left to top right. But what does this curve represent? I
think it shows the average talent maturity journey of organizations deploying a technology solution to underpin
talent management.
Mostly the points are very close to the curve, but there are some outliers:
Client A had a well established manual process (albeit for a small employee population) at the high end
of level three before implementing a software system. Using the system it was able to improve the
process to level four quickly and at the same time roll out to a larger segment of the organization.
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4. Client B has been slow to develop their process as they were unclear about their talent objectives at the
point they put in place the technology platform – but they now understand the direction they are going in
and are unlikely to remain in level two for much longer.
Why is the correlation between talent maturity and time a curve rather than a straight line? I believe the answer is
that the deployment of a technology platform to underpin talent management has acted as a catalyst for talent
management maturity, rapidly accelerating level two processes through level three to level four in the early years,
with a steadier maturity later on.
I would argue that without a technology platform it is unlikely that processes will develop much beyond level two,
and certainly not beyond level three. This is because in all but the simplest approaches to talent management
there is an enormous amount of information to accumulate, hold, analyse and act upon. And this is where the HR
element of the project can become frustrated. To be able to operate any effective talent management process, it
is necessary to understand in detail:
Key roles in the organization, including their scope and remit and their requirements in terms of
experience, skills, competencies and behaviours
Incumbents of the key roles, who will surely form the role models for upcoming talent
Key talent, including their performance, potential, experience, skills, competencies and behaviours; their
motivations, aspirations, lifestyle and location constraints, and much, much more.
Managing such a wealth of information across positions and people in the context of a continually evolving
organization with changing needs is a difficult task that should not be underestimated. It is a terrific data
challenge, something that manual paper-based systems struggle to deal with. It simply isn’t possible to manage a
talent management process for anything more than a very small number of positions and candidates or for
trivially small business processes without a proper technology system supporting it. And no, Microsoft Excel
doesn’t count!
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5. The Goldilocks Zone - Talent Management Stability
There is, in my view, an optimal talent management maturity range that I have termed the Goldilocks Zone – “not
too hot, not to cold, just right” – where talent processes become stable within organizations. Cezanne’s
experience of collaborating with scores of talent projects suggests that this is at maturity levels three and four
(and possibly five). Talent management programmes that do not develop beyond level two, and this includes the
vast majority of programmes not benefiting from a technology platform, find it difficult to deliver tangible business
benefits and, as a result, fail to embed talent management processes into the DNA of their organizations. These
projects are prone to cancellation or failure after one or two years
I think the conclusion is clear. To ensure success in a talent management programme you need to understand
what your organization needs and plan a step-by-step plan to deliver it. Focus on getting the early steps right, but
have an outline plan for delivering the remaining steps at the outset. Understanding the maturity level of your
talent model at each step of the plan is essential. And if you are serious about embedding succession and talent
management in your organization, or want to accelerate an existing process, specialist technology solutions
provide the key. Hours spent wrestling with Excel spreadsheets do not – cannot – give you the edge you need for
long term success.
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