Talent Liberation. Deborah Hartung

      Prologue

      I’ve been working in HR for close on 20 years now and, just like all my peers, I used to train line managers on various concepts relating to managing work performance. As HR, although we could make recommendations and influence policies and procedures, for the most part, our hands were tied and we complied with the global status quo - the annual or bi-annual performance appraisal with the balanced scorecard or the subjective 5 point rating scale. By the early 2010’s, I was really excited to learn more about the progress that companies like Adobe and Deloitte were making and how they were reinventing performance management for a more modern workplace. As with everything else in life though, my thinking was influenced by my environment and my personal experiences. I liked what I was seeing coming out of these early performance management trailblazers, but I still wasn’t convinced that they had done enough to reform ‘ye olde performance management system’. My work in leadership development and organizational change management gives me a different lens. My early career experience in employee relations and Labour litigation has an impact on how I approach the entire talent management ecosystem because I have seen what happens when companies and managers get things wrong.

      When I originally started out on this journey in 2014/2015, I didn’t know how this was going to turn out or what the final product would look like. All I really knew, was that I needed to find a way to help my clients - and the world - create a methodology that unleashes human potential and improves workplace culture and engagement. I was acutely aware of the fact that we were limiting our people and telling them what they could or could not achieve in their careers and their lives and we were focused only on short-term performance and profit gains for our employers.

      The tide was changing. Whispers were emerging from all corners of the world: “maybe we’ve been doing this HR thing all wrong.” Not just certain portions of HR, either - all of it!

      The more I immersed myself in Talent Management and the more I understood about workplace culture and organizational transformation, the more I started seeing a very clear link between institutional norms and workplace culture and performance management, succession planning and general attrition. I spent hours poring over competency dictionaries and trying to connect the dots in the complex maze that was emerging in my mind.