in the balance

Working within one energy major, I asked a senior executive, ‘How much time do you spend with your direct reports outside directly work-related conversations?’  The intent of my question wasn’t immediately obvious to the executive.  What other things were there to talk about?  Could I be clearer?  I explained that I was talking about coaching, development, performance feedback, of succession-planning across his (sizeable) team.  ‘Oh, none’, he said, ‘There isn’t time.’  Surprisingly, this is not an unusual answer: tangible activity pushes seemingly less tangible activity to one side.  Why?  Many reasons:

• Aren’t people what HR does?

• Enterprise leadership hasn’t made this a priority, so a focus on people is optional.

• It’s easy to measure the ‘job’, hard to measure people development.

• Many people leaders simply haven’t been given the training (or received coaching themselves!) in how to do this.

• The effects of not focusing on people in this way aren’t immediate and the consequent risks & costs (loss of competence & need to hire externally) may not accrue to the leader in question.

The solution is simple but hard to implement.  It focuses on a tipping point (thank you, Malcolm Gladwell).  That nominal, self-sustaining point at which leaders become valued not only for the application of their expertise & experience but for how that expertise & experience is passed on to the next generation.  In safety critical industries like the maritime sector, achieving this tipping point is essential.  Get the balance wrong (so a focus on immediate outputs with no time for people development) then organically grown competence gradually erodes.  Get it right and the pool of competence broadens and deepens.  

stonefort marine talent works across the maritime (and other) sectors to assess which side of the tipping point companies sit and help with strategies to shift the balance if needed.  If you would like to know more, please contact Mark Hanson on mark.hanson@stonefortmarine-talent.com.