I invite you to participate in what I hope will be an ongoing series of lively conversations about mangaging talent and investing in human capital. There are a myriad of topics related to all of the aspects of acquiring, developing, and retaining the talent your business needs now and in the future, and we would like to address them all as our thinking and your thinking evolves through dialogue, research, and experimentation. So, where to begin?

The bottom line is a good place to start. At the KnowledgeAdvisors’ 6th Annual Analytics Symposium early in March, I particularly enjoyed being exposed to the work of two organizations doing great work in this area. The first was McBassi & Company. Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer http://www.mcbassi.com/ have developed methods for measuring human capital capabilities and then connecting them to a company’s bottom line outcomes - see “Maximizing Your Return on People” (by Bassi and McMurrer) in the March 2007 Harvard Business Review. The second is the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research and its Director, Dr. Nick Bontis http://www.nickbontis.com/main.swf who has developed methods to causally connect human capital investments to specific financial outcomes. You can see his papers and books at http://www.nickbontis.com/Research.htm.

So, the challenge to business leaders is to be more transformational than transactional. That means recognizing that the overarching and constantly repeated question for HR has to be how to make human capital more productive. The place to start always has to be with the human capital performance the business needs today and in the future to execute on its strategy, run its operations, and achieve specific measures of success. The art and science of human capital management is then to work backwards to identify the leverage points that will produce the performance needed. I’m anxious to hear your thoughts and examples!

Read all about State Parkway Partners in the media and various industry publications.

KnowledgeAdvisor’s 2008 Analytics Symposium: Measuring Learning & Maximizing Human Capital –

Tom was invited to present a keynote presentation “Workforce Planning in the Real World”.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2007 –

Tom was asked to facilitate a session on “Dividing Your Learning Time: Implementation, Evaluation, Innovation or Benchmarking.” The discussion was about how successful learning leaders:

1. identify and invest in the know-how their companies need to succeed;
2. hire, develop, and retain the best talent;
3. manage their cost structure well;
4. validate that their L&D group is among the best at what they do; and
5. innovate to deliver improved business advantage.

The Best of OD 2007 Summit –

Tom presented “A Comprehensive Approach to Talent at CNA” in which he described the approach being taken at CNA to reviewing and planning to address talent needs in an integrated fashion across the HR silos of recruiting, workforce planning, performance management, leadership development, compensation, benefits, and learning.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2006 –

Tom was invited to co-facilitate the Financial Services & Learning Industry group discussion.

KnowledgeAdvisor’s 2006 Learning Analytics Symposium –

Tom was invited to give a presentation titled “Strategic Value Creation: Mapping Learning to Organizational Strategy”. Tom described the approach he developed and used at CNA, beginning in 2000, to manage learning expenses as a portfolio of investments that are directly mapped to strategic and operating objectives.

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2005 –

Tom was invited to participate on an industry panel discussing trends in learning and how companies were adopting new practices to meet the demands of improved business performance.

Bersin & Associates 2005 Research –

Bersin’s research report “High Impact Learning Organizations” named CNA as a “best practice” company for both the centralized/decentralized, insourced/outsourced balance in the governance structure Tom developed and for the method of aligning learning investments to business strategy.

CLO Magazine February 2005 –

CLO Magazine, in an article titled “CNA Insurance: Supporting an Effective Workforce”, highlighted the unique approach Tom and his colleagues took to training all of CNA’s management in all five aspects of performance management (performance planning, performance assessment, development planning, coaching and feedback, and rewards and recognition) in five 60 day increments over one year. This approach combined e-learning courses, synchronous webinars, an online collaboration platform where participants would post their assignments and receive feedback from peers and a coach, and in face-to-face classroom settings.

Click HERE to read the article.

Corporate Executive Board: Learning & Development Roundtable –

Research conducted and published by the L&D Roundtable for its members highlighted Tom’s work at CNA as a benchmark for aligning learning investments to business strategy.

Training Magazine January 2004 –

Training magazine, in an article called “Managing Projects”, noted the holistic approach to learning Tom instituted at CNA. It is an approach that leads people not only to learn technical knowledge but also to learn how to apply and make decisions with that knowledge in a team setting as they would have to on the job.

Click HERE to read the article.

Elliott Masie’s TechLearn 2003 –

Tom presented “Focusing on What Matters: A Novel Approach to Curriculum Design and Blended Learning” with Chip Cleary, VP Advisory Services, NIIT Cognitive Arts and Bill Bruck, Founder and General Manager, Q2 Learning. The presentation described how Tom implemented at CNA the use of NIIT Cognitive Arts critical mistake analysis process to develop content for e- learning programs and how those e-learning programs were integrated into Q2 Learning’s collaborative eCampus where participants not only completed the e-learning courses but then practiced application and received feedback and coaching via the eCampus.

State Parkway Partners recommends the following companies to enhance services and strategies:

Q2 Learning provides speed-to-proficiency solutions for high value learning initiatives to corporations using our collaborative learning platform, the xPERT eCampus.

KnowledgeAdvisors is the global leader in Human Capital Analytics. They help organizations measure, communicate and improve the impact of their learning and development investments.

LearnShare was founded in 1996 by Fortune 500 companies who were seeking to join together to transform the way their companies research, design, purchase, package and communicate career development and skill enhancement. This visionary group, the Owners, included General Motors, 3M, Motorola, Owens Corning, Deere & Co., O-I, Eaton, Northwest Airlines, Pfizer Inc, Pilkington, UnitedHealth Group, and Chevron. Since that time, the owners have been joined by more than 30 of the largest, most diverse corporations in the world representing more than 2.5 million employees around the globe.

Bersin & Associates is an organization of senior analysts and consultants with extensive experience in corporate learning, e-learning, performance management, leadership development, talent management, and enterprise systems.  Their WhatWorks® research methodology allows them to identify unique and powerful business solutions which enable learning and HR managers to drive dramatic improvements in their organizations.

Tom Hilgart

Partner, State Parkway Partners

Tom Hilgart offers 35 years of business leadership experience as a line manager delivering operational improvement in insurance operations, as an internal consultant in process innovation and quality management, and as a nationally recognized leader in corporate learning and development.

Over the past 8 years, Tom served as Vice President of the Knowledge & Learning Group at CNA.

CNA was recognized in 2004 by Corporate Executive Board research as a benchmark company for its approach to aligning learning investments to business strategy.

In 2005, CNA was acknowledged by Bersin & Associates research as a best practice company both for its alignment of learning investments to business strategy and for the effectiveness of its balanced centralized/decentralized governance structure.

Prior to that Tom was

• an internal consultant in quality management, benchmarking, and process redesign
• director of management development
• director of insurance operations

Tom earned a BA in philosophy from St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein IL and completed extensive graduate studies in philosophy, education, and social sciences at Loyola University and Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL.

Shirley Kitzmann

Partner, State Parkway Partners

Shirley Kitzmann offers a wealth of business acumen resulting from over 25 years of extensive consulting, human resources, communications, and operations management experience for entrepreneurial, professional services, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies.

In her work as a management consultant and Human Resources executive, Ms. Kitzmann has helped organizations achieve their strategic objectives by focusing on human resources processes, investments in support of organization development, and culture change. She is skilled in designing and implementing total rewards programs, organizational and job design, organizational effectiveness processes, performance management, learning and development strategies and programs, succession planning processes, and communication strategies.

Ms. Kitzmann has lectured for Loyola University’s (Chicago) Human Resources and Industrial Relations Institute’s graduate program, and has served as an Adjunct Professor for Washington University’s (St. Louis) Human Resources graduate program. She earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.

We are skilled at creating alignment, confidence, and accountability in three primary areas of human capital management:

• Managing Learning Strategically
• Managing Performance Strategically
• Managing Talent Strategically

Managing Learning Strategically

We will help you move L&D from a demand driven service function to a value driven strategic partner with your line of business leaders. We will help you build your:

• Annual Learning Plan and budget aligned to business strategies and managed as a portfolio of prioritized investments.
• Measurement Plan aligned to the human capital performance objectives of your business strategies and operating objectives.
• Assessment of and Roadmap for your organization: your organization structure and roles; decisions about selective insourcing and outsourcing of roles; learning technologies and vendor selection; learning design methods for different delivery media; and your use of performance support.

Managing Performance Strategically

The major emphasis in performance management has been on performance objectives and performance assessment. Important as these parts of the performance management process are, they become strategically important when they are integrated with a coaching culture, development opportunities, recognition, and rewards. In addition to achieving objectives, it is the combination of development opportunities, recognition, and rewards that increase workforce competencies, engagement, and retention. We will help you build your:

• Annual Talent Engagement and Retention Plan focused on developing a mindset of “talent as an asset” in your leaders at all levels and managing their adoption of practices that support that mindset.
• Measurement Plan based on increased competency in the workforce, selected measures of engagement, commitment, retention, and adoption of a “talent as an asset” mindset.
• Assessment of and Roadmap for your “people leadership” capabilities.

Managing Talent Strategically

Strategic talent management is about taking a more systemic view of your business strategies, identifying the key roles in those strategies, and ensuring that you will have enough of the right people with the right competencies to make the business successful year after year. We will help you build your:

• Annual Integrated Workforce Plan in which you take a holistic view of the entire talent management process for each line of business and identify near term and longer term initiatives. Within the context of business strategies, your planning process will address workforce planning, talent acquisition, on-boarding, learning and development, performance management, and rewards and recognition. The result will be a coordinated, comprehensive plan.
• Succession Planning Process to address leadership roles, pivotal positions, and key positions challenged by competitive and demographic forces.
• Assessment of and Roadmap for your talent management capabilities including core issues such as data integration, process coordination, and technology support.

Using our Strategic Investment Portfolio methodology, we help you create and manage your own portfolio of human capital investments balanced to meet your short and long-term, operational and strategic human competency needs.

Any investment in human capital needs to meet three tests: alignment, confidence, and accountability.

Alignment

• How precisely aligned is the investment to business strategy?
• How precisely aligned is the investment to operating performance?
• How important is the investment relative to others competing for resources?

Confidence

• How clear and direct is the link from the investment to the value it is expected to produce?
• How do we know that the investment is properly targeted and robust enough to meet the requirements for success?
• How solid is the proposed solution design?
• How reliable and efficient is the solution development plan?
• How realistic, effective, and efficient is the deployment plan?

Accountability

• How and when will we know that the initiative is or is not meeting its objectives?
• Has the solution been effectively deployed?
• Has competency increased?
• Has process performance risen to target?
• Are strategic objectives being met?

State Parkway Partners is skilled in partnering with you to develop alignment, confidence, and accountability in your management of human capital investments.

When deciding on investments in human capital, business leaders need a direct line of sight from: (a) the strategy or operation being impacted; to (b) the business process being improved; to the culture and/or competencies being strengthened; to the human capital solution being proposed. If the alignment is unclear or if you lhave doubts about the adequacy or execution of the solution or if no one is clearly accountable for achieving and reporting results - and not just for implementing the solution - then that is not yet a sound investment.

State Parkway Partners can help you implement systematic methods for creating alignment, confidence, and accountability in your management of human capital investments.

Note:

1. Investments include all aspects of the human capital value chain: recruiting, on-boarding, directing, learning, developing, coaching, assessing, retaining, promoting, etc.
2. Competencies include knowledge, skill, traits, attributes, and motivations.
3. Process performance includes all relevant process measures such as quality, productivity, time to competency, cycle time, customer satisfaction, revenue, expense, etc.

Our Mission

State Parkway Partners shows businesses how to manage their investments in human capital as rigorously as they manage other investments. We show you how to align your investments in people with your business strategies and operating objectives ensuring that you have the right people with the right competencies in the right roles to be successful now and in the future.

Our Capability

We employ a unique perspective and methodology for developing a prioritized portfolio of investments in human capital. We balance strategic and operational requirements as well as short and long term requirements. Our approach ensures that each investment is aligned with overall strategies, executed with confidence, and managed with accountability for results.

Our Offering

We show our clients how to manage their human capital investment portfolios in three areas:

Strategic Learning Management - Read more…

The Accenture January 2007 High Performance Workforce Study reported that of the 250 senior executives surveyed from the United States, Europe, and Australia only 14% saw their organizations’ workforce skills as industry leading, and only 20% said that most of their employees understood their companies’ strategy and what was needed to be successful.

Strategic Talent Management - Read more…

The Business Week European 50 Research Survey 2006 reported that executives surveyed identified human capital as the most important factor for maintaining high performance in the long term by a factor of nearly two to one. The combination of globalization and technology has increasingly fueled the war for talent.

Strategic Performance Management - Read more…

Bersin & Associates 2008 research report High Impact Talent Management reported that 32% of managers do not clearly understand the role between pay and performance in their organizations, 85% of organizations do not have clearly defined competencies which define success, only 21% of organizations have training tied to development goals, only 29% of organizations create goals which are aligned to the organization, and only 13% of organizations have coaching programs tied to thir performance management process.