Talent and Culture Are Integral to Corporate Strategy

It's a new day for progressive companies that purposefully and thoughtfully incorporate talent and culture as key elements of overall corporate strategy.  For these companies, they understand that having talented employees that are engaged and committed (beyond just hitting a bonus payout) will create differentiation in the marketplace and superior business results.  

While many organizations spend time and resources on Talent and Culture, for too many organizations it's only addressed when a crisis arises or simply as a rote annual exercise whose outputs are filed away and rarely acted upon. Having worked for and with many Fortune 500 companies over the past 30 years, the sad fact is that few truly incorporate Talent and Culture as part of their strategic planning exercises. The implications are wide spread and most often manifest themselves in inconsistent revenue growth & operational execution, the lack of market leadership or being a fast follower or higher employee turnover.

The integral nature of Talent and Culture in corporate strategy raises several key questions - and should also raise many others - during corporate strategy exercises:

  • What type of talent do we need to successfully hit our corporate objectives? 
  • How does our current talent compare to those skillsets needed to hit/exceed our corporate objectives and to the talent trajectory of our competitors?
  • Is our culture and employment brand differentiated in the marketplace and will it enable us to attract and retain the right talent?
  • Is that culture and employment brand pervasive and consistent globally (or are do we have problem areas in certain countries or business units)?
  • How are we going to evolve talent and culture in our organization to best enable success of our corporate strategies?

On the surface, the answers to these and related key Talent and Culture questions are achievable but like many organizational challenges, it takes commitment from the top executives and leadership persistence over time to reap the rewards. For many organizations that narrowly focus only on quarter by quarter results, incorporating Talent and Culture in corporate strategy will be difficult but therein lies the opportunity for progressive organizations.