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Over the years, I have written several posts and shared my tools on talent management for critical roles: roles that have a disproportionate impact on an organization’s strategy execution and competitive advantage. These tools range from frameworks for identifying which roles are truly critical, to assessing and managing risks in these roles, to ensuring that an organization’s top talent occupies these roles so the organization can create stakeholder value faster. With many organizations getting ready to conduct talent reviews, of which critical roles and succession planning are part, I want to highlight chapter 25, beginning on page 120, by Chief People Officer, Holly Tyson, in the excellent, open access eBook, The Age of HR. Holly reinforces how organizations should manage human capital like financial capital, with targeted development, deployment, and measurement of ROI. Her 5i Model maps Role Criticality (core, critical, and differentiating) against Talent Caliber (core, key, and top talent), prescribing one of five actions (invest, improve, inspect, increase impact, or inject), based on where a role and its incumbent land on this matrix. The framework helps force conversations and decisions that talent reviews can easily miss: which roles matter most, whether incumbents perform at the level required, and where differentiated talent investment should be made. For those in my private community for internal HR practitioners, Talent Edge Circle, I’m looking forward to our upcoming discussion on the strategic talent management of critical roles.
