Talent, continuous learning and working beyond the organisation

“The future - the story of tomorrow, is written today.” Bellemans begins his account on a somewhat philosophical note.” In this sense all sectors – education, the social economy as well as business – share one major concern: attracting talent. One often hears people talk about high potential individuals, but that’s a pretty empty term. What does high potential mean?”

Discovering talent

‘Everyone has various things at which he can excel, but you have to discover what your own strong point is.’ According to Bellemans at least. “Discovering that isn’t so easy in our society. After all, we are focused on emphasising the negative. In the past I was always told to leave everything alone. ‘Careful, Gerd, you’ll break it.’ And sure enough, because of that I ended up with two left hands. But I was also told that I was good at explaining things, so I decided to study in that direction. In other words, you are partly what others think you are. In that respect, therefore, education has a big challenge ahead. The point system in our education is a bad thing after all. It ought to be changed, especially in secondary education. At parents’ meetings the emphasis is so often on what the youngsters don’t do well instead of emphasising what they are good at, or stimulating them in their talents. You discover talent if you have a positive attitude.”

Empowering talent

“Once you’ve discovered and recruited that talent, you’ve got to get cracking with it” says Bellemans. ”Traditional organisations are too hierarchical. I see talent development in the context of innovation. You don’t know where the future of the company lies; it depends on the energy and the talent of the employees. To illustrate: THV’s core business is forklift trucks, but if we are too fixated on that we will only be able to innovate to a limited extent. The fact that our IT department can develop, renew, get the opportunity to reorganise, and that sales or HR can develop – that’s part of the general success of the organisation. By empowering your employees you can get superlative achievements. If you do this systematically it will go by itself.” Bellemans quickly refers to a quote from an interview which he recently read, “The holy grail everyone tries to find does not exist. You create it.”

New organisation

Education means training, and training costs money. “That’s right,” Bellemans confirms: “Training costs money, but it’s an investment in the future. If you can lift an employee to a higher level by means of such an investment, he also becomes more valuable. Your organisation becomes more valuable. It’s therefore very important to make it clear to employees that further training is essential. Not everybody likes that. Some experience it as a reproach. Others who are asked to share their knowledge are afraid that they’ll be sidelined once they have passed on their expertise. That isn’t true. We have actively encouraged our employees to study further. They were offered the opportunity to study anything at all. Some of them tried to make fun of our intention by asking for a course in wine appreciation or beer tasting. We gave them that. But the lessons were organised outside working hours. The fact that they learned something during these lessons, and became enriched, encouraged them later on to ask for training in another topic. Continuous learning isn’t sufficiently established yet, and yet it’s the only way of succeeding in the future.”

New bosses

Giving employees the necessary power and freedom weakens the hierarchy. THV no longer believes in a job description. They work with job projects. “Thinking thematically and making sure that you are able to tackle sub-projects fundamentally changes the organogram. The hierarchical ladder disappears. This new strategy, therefore, also has consequences for the manager. Yesterday’s boss, who knew and checked everything, is no more. Today it is impossible to know everything at the technical and IT as well as sales and HR levels. You need people with the right expertise. In other words, projects, which overlap and cooperate where they interface.”

If everyone has his own project and interacts with other projects to some extent, who’s in charge overall? Bellemans: “In this configuration you need people managers. They must ensure that the platform operates. They don’t need to be an expert in the field, on the contrary, they give experts the opportunity and space to do the work and guide them, just as they’d guide collaboration with other projects. The executives of tomorrow no longer map out how the organisation should function; rather, new management creates a framework within which talent can be deployed to the full.”

Continuous acknowledgement of talent

“Once your organisation is running, it really starts. You need to acknowledge talent continuously,” Bellemans says: “Every employee needs a personal development plan. The traditional assessment meetings are too much like school reports. Engage with your employees in an evolution meeting; open discussions about what they want to achieve and what they can manage, how they can strengthen and develop themselves. That’s much more valuable. Sometimes an employee is no longer comfortable in his position and has outgrown his job. A classic reaction of the line manager then is: ‘I really can’t do without this guy. Who else is going to do this job?’ Wrong! Someone who is in the wrong place, who is bored and would rather develop, gets demotivated if he doesn’t get the chance to move. The quality of the work declines and in the end he performs poorly, while to begin with you were dealing with a good employee.”

Job market as organisation

Advancing, further learning, developing: Bellemans takes an even broader view: ”In 2009 we promoted about a hundred people into new jobs. They were offered job projects with more opportunities. It demanded some flexibility from the employees, but at the same time it was a way of surviving the crisis. Sometimes you can’t grow within an organisation any longer or the organisation can no longer provide tailor-made opportunities, and then what?” ’It’s time to think beyond our own four walls. The labour market becomes the new employer’. This is the view of Fons Leroy, executive officer of the Flemish Employment Service and Vocational Training Agency (VDAB) which I fully agree with. How can I deploy the talent in my organisation towards other organisations? Thinking more broadly creates so many opportunities, for all parties concerned. The company where you place an employee benefits and is a potential party for starting a client-supplier relationship. Perhaps they also have employees who could well function better in your own organisation. The employee who gets a new opportunity becomes a valuable ambassador for your company and will certainly talk positively about this transfer. For each employee who leaves, you may get ten in return. The future lies in working beyond the organisation.”

Farmerology

Bellemans cannot help but conclude with his hobby-horse: ‘farmerology’: “People say that farmers always moan and groan, but that’s not true. Farmers evaluate and analyse and look at what can be done better. They also respond immediately. The farmers, in all their simplicity, are in one way ahead of the futuristic organisations. Learning and relearning, every day over and over again, evaluating and analysing afterwards in order to refocus, that is the future.”