In today's business world, never has the Talent Architecture and its associated strategy & management processes been so important in large companies. Read what The Greenhouse Project has to say about it.

1. Thinking
Talent Architecture

2. The world
of work
has
changed
The world of work has altered radically in
the past decade thanks to the
globalisation of business, the advance of
technology and the change in attitudes of
the workforce.

3. People who joined the workforce in the last 10 years have a widely different
agenda.
They are less patient, less tolerant of bureaucracy, excited by working in
start ups and find it easier than ever to find another job if they want to
move.
Big corporates need to be careful to make sure they are still attractive for
the best talent to work at!
66%
66% will leave by
2020
63%
63% say their
leadership skills are
not being developed
54%
54% expect to have
up to five employers
in their lifetime
52%
52% say career
progression is top
priority
DELOITTE PWC

4. Many businesses still need to adapt to
these changes and operate talent
strategies which have relevance to today’s
workplace.

5. What is it?
• Kevin has a job for life
• He will work his way up from
post room to boardroom
• He puts the job first, even at
weekends
• He knows what is next job is
and is willing to wait
• No one at his firm is part time
• His wife does not work
• He works in manufacturing
• He manages people and
budgets from an early stage
• He certainly does not type
• You don’t have to worry about
Kevin
• Sam moves jobs every three
years
• He is willing to change career
• He sees work life balance as a
right not a luxury
• He expects to believe in the
vision and direction of the
business
• His girlfriend earns more than
he does
• He works in data
• He has specialist skills
• He types
• You have to worry about Sam
SAM KEVIN

6. What is it?
• Deidre has a job not a career
• She does not expect to be
promoted
• The job is chosen to fit around
the family
• She knows what the next job is,
it is the same one
• Earns less than her husband
• She works for a man in a
support role
• She has support skills
• You don’t have to worry about
Deidre
• Sam moves jobs every three
years
• She is willing to change career
• She is ambitious for
progressions
• She sees work life balance as a
right not a luxury
• She expects her career to go at
different speeds and to decide
this herself
• She earns more than her
boyfriend
• She works in data
• She has specialist skills
• You have to worry about Sam
SAMANTHA DEIDRE

7. Sam’s progress to the top is halted because they lack the senior
management and leadership skills required. Like dozens of others, they have
been trained for task excellence, not for organisational leadership.
They are stuck and the business does not have a leadership succession
pipeline.

8. The challenge is that the organisation has developed and paid Sam as a specialist
because their skills are in demand in the new workforce. Why get Sam to manage
people when they’re so valuable in what they do?
This becomes a problem for Sam and the organisation when it comes to filling
more senior manager roles. They simply do not have the breadth and track
record in leadership to get the job. It’s problem for the boss too because they
need a replacement to be able to move on. The classic succession gap

9. What has
happened?
THE BOWTIE BOMBSHELL
graduates
Middle management
Senior executives Most companies are struggling with the
bowtie model which demands, and funnels
its brightest people into, specialism at the
expense of future leadership skills.
In knowledge based businesses specialism
is what drives career and salary progression
for the first few years.
You don’t fix this by creating a new breed
of generalists at the bottom. You fix this by
working with the new talent dynamics up
and down the business.
Breadth
of skills

10. 10
Execs &
Top Teams
Specialists
Back office and support
Staff
Individual contributors in
front line roles
Contingent labour
Middle
Managers
First line
manager
Senior Commercial
Role
Execs &
Top Teams
Expert
Back office and support
Staff
Individual contributors in
front line roles
Contingent labour
Specialists
Senior
specialist
Senior Commercial
Role
Middle
Managers
First line
manager
Past Now
The new talent dynamics of specialism means where the value is generated in business has
shifted dramatically. This is driven by digital technologies and globalisation

11. This leaves us three major problems
Talented people like Sam have no where to go but to the exit door
There is a gap and leadership cannot be replaced from within
1
2
Organisations are growing fat middles as they add more specialists3

12. SENIOR
MIDDLE
JUNIOR
MIDDLE
JUNIOR
SENIOR
SENIOR
Sam will not wait around in middle
management for years. They will jump ship
to senior management elsewhere or run
their own show. They will not end up
running your company, but someone else’s.
For the first time there is a real alternative
for senior specialists rather than staying
inside a big corporate, waiting
YOUR CORP THEIR CORPHIS CORP
What
happens
to Sam?

13. 1 million senior managers will leave their
jobs to become independent consultants
by 2020
MBA&CO
FACT

14. CEO
MIDDLE
JUNIOR
YOUR CORP
Filled from outside with untried,
more expensive external hires
What
happens
to Sam’s
boss?
RETIREMENT
Sam’s career path as a specialist
means they have a leadership
breadth so are not considered
for promotion to the first rungs
of senior leadership.
There is a leadership succession
gap.

15. Nearly 9 out of 10 global HR and
business leaders (86 percent) cited
leadership as a top issue.
Yet only 6 percent of organizations
believe their leadership pipeline is
“very ready”—pointing to a
staggering capability gap.
DELOITTE
FACT

16. The result The Fat Middle
Organisations are getting blocked up
in the middle. People are not
progressing and are blocking the
progress for people below. It does
not matter how much you add below
they only rise so far then move out.
At the same time the blocked middle
does not have the new skills so more
and more senior specialists are
added. And the middle does not
have what the top needs in terms of
leadership depth, causing external
hires and further cementing the
middle in place as they have no
where to go

17. The internal talent response to date has had limited success
“Every year our talent review tells us that we have a massive succession problem, and it is as
though that is the end of the talent story. But it’s not, I want to know we are changing it!”
CMO FTSE 100 business
More activity and more talent initiatives than ever, often not integrated, supported by a
proliferation of new tools and new solutions often with a strong humanistic and L&D slant
1
2
3
A reliance on process to drive Talent outcomes. But exec teams and line managers are
questioning the value of the investment of time and energy as they are not seeing results
An increased ability to identify where the gaps are and why people are not
suitable. But less progress on showing how to fill the gap.

18. What you see and hear
when your talent system
is not aligned, integrated
and calibrated
HiPo programmes that increase peoples expectations
of progression when there are no jobs leading to your
best people who you have spent money on leaving
Grad schemes that create generalists when the
business is crying out for specialists
Leadership frameworks that do not predict leadership
success but fit the world view of the last HR director
All the money is spent on the development needs of
the top execs
Everyone says line management is not good enough,
but nothing is in place to tell line managers what they
should be doing or help them transition into the role
It is easier to find a job elsewhere than move internally
in the company
LinkedIn knows more about your people than you do
Expensive potential systems which don’t lead to action
Disproportionate investment in sophisticated recruitment
tools and processes when most jobs are internally filled
with a tap on the shoulder based on who you know
Career paths that can not deliver the experiences that
are needed for progression
Continuous urgent, expensive hiring in new skill areas
when demand is predictable and development is possible
Using out of date competency frameworks that everyone
knows is irrelevant
Performance management systems that everyone knows
neither help with performance or management

19. Too often when Talent is designed and implemented
badly it seriously damages the critical element of
Trust
Expectation mismanagement
Sense of fairness
The system is capricious
• HiPos with no where to go
• Graduates promised leadership
• Potential identification processes then nothing happens
Future prospects taken away
• Senior people and the “chosen ones” getting all the investment
• External hires when I think I could do the job
• People get jobs because of who they know
• My boss asks me to write my own performance goals and review
• There is a clear differencee between what we are taught and what is done
• Reliance on some psychometric tool no one can explain
• I can’t see how I am progressing or how I can progress
• I am not learning anything useful anymore
• Spending 10 years as a good citizen seems to count against me now

20. How can we help?
We help organisations to
see how their Talent and
their business strategy is
an inter-related system
and how the different
parts link to each other
directly and over time.
Only then can you make
the right choices that
really add value over time

21. Understand the flows and the shifts in talent demand in terms
of numbers and needs to identify the areas to focus on
Three stage approach to
get the system working
1
2 Design the talent strategy that identifies where and how
talent activities can add most value to the business strategy
3 Design the coherent talent system that deliver the value through
the integrated mix of routines, initiatives and processes

22. 22
Talent teams needs a dynamic
model that links
 the growth of the business
 the exit rates
 the external hiring rate
 the internal promotion
 the need for potential
by level, region and skill clusters
which can be used to forecast
demand
We start with a base case using
the “as is” numbers. This is useful
in its own right.
We have not found a business yet
that does not have the data to do
this
Promotion opportunities
Exits
Intra functional and
intra level moves
External hires
End # Roles Vacancies
to fill
Promotion opportunities
Promotion opportunities
Exits
Intra functional and
intra level moves
External hires
End # Roles Vacancies
to fill
Promotion in
Exits
Intra functional and
intra level moves
External hires
End # Roles Vacancies
to fill
“How many new
starters am I going
to need to recruit
and induct over the
next 3 years”
“What is my
demand for Level 4
leaders over the
next 3 years”
”How many high
potentials do I need at
each level to satisfy
my expected demand
for promotions”
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6
“What % of each
level can I expect to
be promoted each
year”

23. 23
This model has to be
driven by not just the
underlying numbers, but
by carefully interrogating
the business about how
they see the challenges of
delivering the business
strategy in terms of skills,
critical experiences and
critical roles
Level6Level4Level5Level2+3Exec
“We are expecting
attrition rates to
increase at level 4
as there are very
few progression
opportunities and
lots of that level
have been in role
for 3+ years”
“We expect our
delivery teams to
have fewer but
more senior
people”
“We need to bring
in new innovation
and service delivery
skills which we just
don’t have at the
junior level”
Level6Level4Level5Level2+3Exec
Scenario 1 - Steady state Scenario 2 – Changes in

24. Level 6 Level 4Level 5 Level 2 +3 Exec
Extrapolation of future business shape by end of 2018
The process of understanding business strategy and the
challenges of delivering the strategy is based on a set of
structured interviews we have developed over time which
use some clever short cuts to get to the heart of the talent
challenge.
The focus is very much on understanding the different
functional and team contexts and using this to build an
aggregate picture which recognises their differences.
This is supplemented by looking at any relevant external
supply factors.

25. 25
Level 6 Level 4Level 5 Level 2 +3 Exec
25%
50%
70% 70%
75% 50%
30%
30%
Internal
promotions
External
hires
17% 12% 10%Exit rate
The combination of this
work gets the client to
the point where they
clearly understand
 the magnitude of the
different challenges
 a view of dynamic
relationships between
choices
 where are the high
leverage points which
impact the whole
system

26. This insight on where you can have most impact on the system is
the foundation of designing a Talent Strategy that will deliver value
over time by linking the dynamics of the system together
Where to build and invest
Where to buy and rent
1
2
Where to cut
3

27. The insight on where you play and how you win then needs to be
designed into an aligned, integrated and calibrated Talent System
that defines how talent will deliver
Why aligned?
If it is not aligned to the
business strategy the
outcomes will not add up to
more than the sum of their
parts
Why integrated?
If the components of the
systems aren’t designed as an
integrated whole then, despite
good intentions, the parts
compete and either cancel
each other out or make things
worse
Why calibrated?
We need to know if our
investment is really adding
value. This is measurable as
both leading indicators and
value outcomes so you can see
if the design is delivering the
results

28. Extrapolation of future business shape by end of 2018
You know where to invest across the business to have the biggest
impact on getting the right people with the right skills in the right
roles
What happens when you get this right?
Your people understand the value of talent for the business and how
they fit into it, from the shop floor to the board
Trust increases, leading to higher engagement and higher productivity
Talent is no longer a process but the strategic tool it should be

29. Who we are
A niche consultancy based in London who help businesses to make sure they have the right early talent strategies and initiatives to deliver their
business strategy
Why do we think talent needs a new approach?
We believe talent is about more than senior leadership succession.
To be successful talent needs to be a conversation around how do we get the right talent at every level, how are we attracting and retaining the new
generation of specialists and how are we designing career paths that deliver what our people and the business need to succeed
Where do we come from?
We started at the graduate stage of the talent journey, helping companies of all sizes develop and deliver great graduate entry schemes. This also
gave us a strong insight into what needed to happen at the levels above, the expectations of people joining business’s today and what career paths
look like in the middle of the organisation
Over the last 5 years we have worked with a range of large international players to help them improve their end to end talent approach and to grow
more of the Talent that they need to succeed.
THE GREENHOUSE PROJECT

30. In the last 14 years we have helped over 25 leading companies develop
and deliver core components of the Early in Career Talent strategy and
their core Talent strategy
Here are some recent clients we have worked with
We led the design, development and
delivery of a new European Graduate
programme and new Digital programme
We analysed, developed and
rolled out a new vision & set of
workshops for their global
Graduate programme
We analysed and created a new
vision for their Supply Chain and
Commercial global Early in Career
talent segment
We analysed, developed and created
the group Talent vision and strategy
for both Boots UK and their Global
Brands business
We designed and delivered key
workshops and personal
learning interactions for the
Graduate programme
We analysed and created a new
Early in Career talent strategy
for their new Graduate
programme
We designed a new and
challenging approach to develop
Retail Graduate Talent and
supporting measurement
We led the design of the Global
Early in Career Talent strategy

31. William Jodrell ~ Partner
will@thegreenhouseproject.co.uk
+44 7968 439 701
Rupert Angel ~ Partner
Rupert@thegreenhouseproject.co.uk
+44 7710 344 493