Improving Talent Density

What are you doing to increase the talent density of your organization?

What do I mean by talent density?

Talent density very simply, is about increasing your percent of A-players, those folks that are blowing away their goals every month, every quarter every year, those folks that are doing a great job of not only living but modeling your core values, so they're improving the culture, every single day. Proving talent density means increasing your percent of A-player's decreasing your percent of C players.

So I want to share with you 10 things that you need to be thinking about in order to increase your talent density.

The first one, obvious one, is hiring. What are you doing to make sure that you are hiring the greatest percentage of A-players? Do you have a process in place to source, assess, hire those folks that are most likely to be A-players within your organization? So number one is hiring.

Number two is coaching. What are you doing to coach your folks, so they can become the best versions of themselves within your organization? Are you assuming that you're just hiring the best and now they're gonna go reach their goals? Or do you have a coaching process, a coaching framework that you put in place to give your folks the best one on one coaching. So number one was hiring. Number two is coaching.

Number three is feedback. Feedback is different than coaching. Coaching means about asking questions to help folks become the best version of themselves. Feedback is giving people more directive feedback, more directive comments, more directive recommendations, based on some things they've done well, or things they haven't done well. What feedback process do you have in place? Do you give open honest feedback frequently? Or do you wait until a semi-annual or annual performance review?

Fourth, it's about cutting the cord. How slow or how quick, are you to make sure that C players, those folks that are holding your organization back because they're not productive enough or they're not living the core values? What process do you have in place to make sure you are cutting the cord on C players? That's number four.

Number five is retention. What are you doing to make sure that you are keeping your best folks. What are you doing to re recruit your best folks, so they never want to leave?

Number six, vulnerability. What are you doing to make sure that you have a culture in place where people feel like they could be open and honest about those things they're having a challenge with. About those things they want to apologize for, about those mistakes that they've made. What are you doing to build that vulnerability based trust within your organization. The more people are willing to talk about the difficult things, the higher your talent density will become.

Number seven, improved accountability. What are you doing to make sure you are holding people accountable in a disciplined way, for doing the things they committed to do. If people commit to do things, and you never hold them accountable, that's a sure way to get A-players to start acting as B players, or C players, the number seven is approved accountability.

Number eight, is a clear vision. The clearer you can be on the vision for your organization, the better your best folks are able to make decisions. Without you in the room. The better able you're going to be as a leader to delegate, knowing that if people understand your vision, based on that vision, they're gonna they're much more likely to make the right decisions. So that's number eight.

Number nine, is have a clear set of core values that drive your behavior, that that are non negotiable, it's what is best what's right, what's most noble about who you are. The same way that having a clear vision helps your folks make the right decisions, which is going to improve your talent density, a clear set of core values does the same thing. Because it's being clear on those behaviors that are most important within your organization. You will see your culture improve your talent density improve.

And lastly, but critical number 10 is talent assessments. How often are you assessing your talent and by that I don't mean an annual review process. I mean, sitting down with your team, looking one level down within the organization and saying who are our folks that are acting as A-players that are in the B category that are in the C categories? And what can we do to move people from C to B from B to A, those assessments are so critical in making sure that you know where to focus and you're holding your leaders accountable.

So those are 10 things to focus on to improve talent density.