Finally, to fill in the TSCP column, ask yourself: What talents, skills, capabilities, and passions will the team need to have to be able to accomplish these goals?

The resulting chart should look like Exhibit 13.2. One way to test the strength of the logic of your charts is to check for the linkage in the opposite direction. In building the chart, you began with company goals and worked your way to the right by asking questions designed to help you oper-ationalize your high-level strategy. Your questions were basically focused on, How am I going to do this, or what do I need to do to accomplish that? To test for solid linkage in the opposite direction, start from the TSCP column and ask yourself, Why do I need these talents, skills, capabilities, and passions in my team? If the responses logically flow well into a sentence that starts with, In order to be able to... followed by the list in the column to the immediate left, you have a strong linkage between your TCSP and Team Goals sections. Next, you can test the linkage between the Team goals section and the Company Objectives by similarly asking, Why must these team goals be accomplished? Make sure that there is a natural flow and connection in the response In order to be able to... followed by the list in the Company Objectives column. Columns to the right tell us how we will contribute to or support the success of an item to the left. Conversely, the answer to why we are doing something in any column should be to accomplish something listed in the column to the left of the column we are testing.

The two charts for our fictitious XYZ Company in Exhibits 13.2 and 13.3 show that the one thing the two charts share is the Company Objectives.

Exhibit 13.2 Alignment Chart for a Sales Professional

Exhibit 13.3 Alignment Chart for a Project Manager

How the two teams contribute to the attainment of these objectives is clearly different. As a result, the skills they need to succeed are also different. If we were to continue this process with other teams in XYZ Company, we would find that the marketing team would own, for example, the responsibility for establishing the niche branding value. On the other hand, the accounting teams contribution to the Company Objectives might be faster billing and timely management reports to sales and delivery. Other teams would provide other contributions that would require other talents, skills, capabilities, and passions.

In the end, by summing up all of the TSCP listings on each of the charts, you would have a general picture of the talents, skills, capabilities, and passions specifically needed for superstardom in your company.

Assess the Talents, Skills, Capabilities, and Passions in Your Resource Pool

If knowing what you require is the first step, knowing what you have is without a doubt the next immediate step. Many small, as well as large, companies, unfortunately, do not have a clear idea of the vital talents that exist within their own organizations. As many knowledge management experts will point out, the biggest challenge in knowledge management is knowing what you have and then using it. Jason Averbook, a director in Global Product Marketing for PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM), who is currently responsible for the delivery and development of PeopleSofts entire HCM division, states, Most organizations hire a bunch of people before looking for the needed talent in-house. They do this primarily because they dont really know what they have in-house nor do they possess the tools to effectively keep track. 4

Problems That Result from Not Knowing Your Talent Pool

I vividly recall an incident many years ago when my team and I had a great opportunity for landing a new piece of business with a financial service client. The only catch was that we had to come up with three people who could work at the code level with three major applications and prepare them for integration into a new trading environment recently launched by the client. For the next few weeks, we struggled to find the right candidates. By the third week, after much effort, we had only one candidate and the client was breathing down our necks. Two more weeks later, we had a candidate for the second slot. Within the next few days after securing the second candidate, we found the third, not a minute too soon, because the client was threatening to go to a competitor if we did not get the project started by the beginning of the following week.

A few days later, I attended a meeting in another part of the organization within reasonable traveling distance of my clients office. While I was sharing my harrowing experience with my colleagues, one of the people in the meeting said, Too bad I did not know about this assignment. Ive got one guy on the bench and another severely underutilized that meet all of your clients requirements. Sure enough, when I explored his claim a bit more, I found that the company indeed did have two qualified resources. Had I been aware of the talent pool we had, I could have filled my clients request in three weeks (the time it took me to find the first external candidate) and saved the time, trouble, expense, and potential business loss risk. (I still wonder whether there was a third qualified and underutilized resource in another part of the company that would have enabled me to respond to the clients need in less than a week.)

The bottom line is that not knowing the talents and skills you have in your company can, among other things:

Cost you business

Needlessly increase your cost of doing business (e.g., time and expense

of hiring for skills you already have) Demoralize your people who feel underutilized and valued Demoralize your people who feel overworked because they carry an uneven amount of the workload (since you recognize their talents, but fail to see those of others who could carry part of the workload)

In the final analysis, not knowing your talent pool is simply not a viable option for a professional services organization.