BizViews
It takes homework to find best company leaders
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-14 08:01
For example, when the shipping company Maersk was ramping up its business in China, a critical market, the company used four broad criteria to identify mission-critical roles: the position's financial impact, its degree of complexity, its influence on key customer relationships and its effect on the development of future talent.
The company also looked at where it planned to expand in detail and the skills that would be required to execute that strategy.
For example, several critical roles related to the emerging Chinese market in internal logistics -- transporting goods from growing economic centers in central and western China to seaports to the south and east. Some of these roles involved running river terminals. Others involved building partnerships with Chinese transport companies.
The second move is implementing a rigorous and realistic system for evaluating employees. Companies need to know who has what skills. The key to answering all these questions is an effective performance-management process with real consequences related to career opportunities, mentoring and compensation.
Right people, right jobs
The third move involves placing the right people in the right jobs. The thorniest issues include releasing people from their current roles to work at a desired location.
For this, one must consider who "owns" the talent supply and makes deployment decisions. Many companies say that their top talent must be a global resource, so the corporate center has the authority. This is not always so.
At SABMiller, which has a joint venture with China Resource Enterprise Ltd, it is the business units that control the company's talent.
These units are typically organized by country, and a country's managing director has the final say over whether an individual can be released to a new role.
As a counterbalance, the corporate center evaluates managing directors carefully to ensure that they are overseeing talent in ways that are consistent with the company's global business objectives.
Reorganization
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The two most effective methods of reducing demand are to strip out organizational complexity and to redesign jobs so that they use the skills of managers more effectively. Such measures also help increase productivity.
