Driving Performance Through Talent Management

Today, more than ever, companies need the right people in every position. Yet, business leaders are often unsure how best to align the organization's talent with its strategic goals. In this comprehensive program, general managers and senior human resources (HR) executives learn how to close the talent gap and build a culture that continually nurtures talent and drives success in good times and bad.

What You Can Expect

Examining the human capital challenges facing companies around the globe, you and an exceptional group of peers will explore strategic approaches for managing and developing talent. In the process, you will discover how a talent-focused organization can achieve new levels of performance.

Your Course of Study

Drawing from real-world company insights, the program focuses on creating a better talent development system and fostering a talent-building culture across the organization. By exploring best practices and innovative approaches to talent development, you will gain the knowledge—and inspiration—to improve your company's ability to attract, develop, evaluate, and retain the right talent.

Who Is Right for the Program

This program is designed for general managers, HR executives, and other senior executives who are responsible for the firm's human capital and talent development strategies. When a company sends a team of one or more general managers and their counterparts in HR, executives return with shared insights and frameworks that enable them to begin working together immediately to better align the organization’s talent with its strategic needs.

What You Can Expect

Improving Your Company's Performance

Even the most creative and most insightful business strategy will not succeed without the right people in place. A company culture that attracts, develops, and rewards talent and strong performance can help prepare your business to surge ahead of the competition. Drawing on recent faculty research that identifies the human capital challenges facing companies worldwide, this Executive Education program helps general managers and senior HR executives strategically manage their company's most valuable asset—its workforce. Your company will improve its ability to:

Align incentives, rewards, and talent with its core business strategy
Recognize new talent and develop their leadership capacity over time
Create a positive work environment that maximizes the value of everyone’s contribution
Institute a robust hiring process that anticipates future leadership needs, identifies the competencies needed, and nurtures a sufficient candidate pool
Implement a well-articulated and widely accepted diversity strategy, including innovative approaches to recruiting and retaining minorities
Integrate newcomers into the organization in ways that maximize their ability to perform and succeed
Manage the complexities of reorganizations, mergers, and downsizing as part of the strategic hiring process

Taking Your Skills to the Next Level

This program gives you valuable time to step back, assess your organization's current approach to talent, and create a personalized action plan for improvement. You will learn how successful companies are nurturing talent by excelling at proven best practices, by inventing new strategic approaches, or by blending both. Exploring the latest thinking and research, you will develop a deeper understanding of the link between individual and corporate performance—and master the tools needed to take your company to a new level of success. Specifically, you will be better able to:

Assess the maturity and effectiveness of your organization's talent management system in comparison with other companies across all industries
Create a culture that recognizes the value of talented people and ensures that talent management practices are implemented in a consistent way across the organization
Attract and develop talent throughout a multinational company and ensure positive working relationships among members of global teams
Implement best practices to transform hiring into a continuous process that includes anticipating and analyzing future needs
Direct strategic and tactical talent realignments to ensure your talent aligns with your business strategy and your company can exploit emerging opportunities
Motivate employees to achieve their goals by implementing more effective performance evaluation and incentive strategies that consider the needs of a diverse workforce
Develop reward and motivation plans that are fully integrated with your talent management strategy, recognizing the many factors that influence employee performance

"This well-organized and thoughtful program presented talent management in a holistic manner that focused on the bottom line. It allowed me to better understand the link between managing key talent and the impact on the business culture, leadership, and, ultimately, sustainability in the market."
Stuart Martin [Eurasia Africa Director, Group HR Strategy and Transformation], The Coca-Cola Company, Turkey

Your Course of Study

The program's comprehensive curriculum has one goal in mind—to equip you with strategies for creating a talent development system that improves the performance of your organization. New HBS research on talent development, along with fresh insights into best practices and innovations, help you enhance every aspect of talent management—from assessing current and future needs to attracting talent and rewarding top performers.

The broad curriculum includes faculty presentations, case studies, and panel discussions designed to improve your "talent intelligence." Personal learning exercises enable you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your talent management system, measure your company's performance against the competition's, and create a focus for your acquisition of knowledge throughout the week. Key topics include:

Managing Global Teams

Creating a culture that builds talent throughout a global organization
Establishing talent development processes that align with company strategy and reflect best practices, while recognizing cultural and national differences
Formulating innovative communication strategies to ensure positive working relationships among members of a global team

Motivating and Rewarding Performance

Aligning incentives and rewards with your core business strategy
Recognizing new talent and developing leadership capacity
Retaining valuable team members through better incentive strategies
Leveraging new approaches to performance evaluation and, compensation, and non-compensation rewards

Embracing and Managing a Diverse Workforce

Creating a positive work environment that maximizes the value of everyone's contribution
Implementing a well-articulated and widely accepted diversity strategy, including innovative approaches to recruiting and retaining minorities
Aligning management practices to support and benefit from diversity in your workforce

Hiring in Good and Bad Times

Establishing hiring as an ongoing process that ensures you can recruit the talent needed to execute an evolving business strategy
Implementing a robust hiring process that helps your company anticipate future leadership needs, identify the competencies required, and nurture a sufficient candidate pool
Integrating newcomers into your organization in ways that maximize their ability to perform and succeed
Managing the complexities of reorganizations, mergers, and downsizing as part of your strategic hiring process

Additional Program Components

Personalized Learning Exercises — Before arriving on campus, you will complete organizational and personal effectiveness surveys related to your company's business and talent management strategies and to your individual management strategy. Gaining a holistic understanding of your talent management challenges will enable you to assess your company's strengths and weaknesses, identify issues that require attention, and develop a personalized action plan. You will return to your company ready to implement a plan that improves your organization's talent management approach and your effectiveness as a leader.

Who Is Right for the Program

Driving Performance Through Talent Management is appropriate for senior leaders who are responsible for managing and developing talent—primarily general managers and the HR executives who support their organizations, as well as others who contribute significantly to the organization's strategy for talent acquisition, management, and development. Individuals who are about to take on one of these roles also are welcome to attend. Typical titles include:

Chief executive officer or chief operating officer
General manager (deputy, assistant, or divisional)
Senior vice president or vice president (divisional, regional, or corporate)
Director (executive, managing, or divisional)
Head (business unit or division)
Chief human resources executive
Vice president, human resources
Talent and performance management executives

This program is well suited to individuals or teams. A team of executives might include one or more general managers and their counterparts in HR, or any other group of senior executives who work together to address talent development challenges. When a number of executives from one company attend, they return with shared insights and frameworks that enable them to begin working together immediately to better align the organization’s talent with its strategic needs.

Meet the Program Faculty

Like all Harvard Business School Executive Education programs, Driving Performance Through Talent Management is developed and taught by a core faculty of HBS professors. Our faculty members are widely recognized as skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, and award-winning authors.

Through publishing, consulting, and teaching, they leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. The result is a teaching team that exposes participants to multiple perspectives, challenging their thinking and encouraging new practices that result in superior business leadership. For more detailed biographies, click on each faculty name.

Roy Y.J. Chua, Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Senior Adviser of Egon Zehnder International and author of Great People Decisions: Why They Matter So Much, Why They Are So Hard, and How You Can Master Them.

Boris Groysberg, Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit; faculty chair of "Driving Performance Through Talent Management"; and faculty cochair of "Leadership in Financial Organizations."

Ranjay Gulati, Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration. Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit; and faculty cochair of "Leading Growth Through Customer Centricity—India."

Robert Steven Kaplan, Professor of Management Practice. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Joshua D. Margolis, James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Tsedal Neeley, Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, Associate Professor of Business Administration and Richard Hodgson Fellow. Member of the Strategy Unit.

Scott A. Snook, MBA Class of 1958 Senior Lecturer of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Michael L. Tushman, Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit; and faculty cochair of "Leading Change and Organizational Renewal."

Admissions

Because a diverse participant mix is an important part of every HBS Executive Education program, we look for candidates who reflect a broad range of industries, functions, countries, and backgrounds to enrich the learning experience.

Fees, Payments, and Cancellations

The program fee covers tuition, books, case materials, accommodations, and most meals.

No payment is necessary until you have been accepted into an HBS Executive Education program. After admission notification, we will send you an invoice via email; payment is due within 30 days of the invoice date. If admission is within 30 days prior to the start of the program, payment is due upon receipt of the invoice. Payment is required prior to the program start date. We accept payment by company check, bank wire transfer, or credit card (American Express, MasterCard, Visa). Details are included on the program invoice.

If you need to cancel or defer participation, you must submit your request in writing more than 30 days before the start of the program to receive a full refund. Due to program demand and the volume of preprogram preparation, cancellations or deferrals received 14 to 30 days prior to the start of the program are subject to a fee of one-half of the program fee. Requests received within 14 days are subject to full payment.

Requirements

Although there are no formal educational requirements, admission is a selective process based on professional achievement and organizational responsibility. We look for professionals who have demonstrated business talent and leadership potential.

HBS Executive Education programs enrich both participants and their sponsoring organizations, and require full commitment from each party. While participants devote time and intellect to the learning experience, sponsoring organizations agree to relieve individuals of their work responsibilities during the program.

Language Proficiency

We deliberately design our programs to encourage individual growth and to foster productive interaction among participants. For that reason, proficiency in written and spoken English is essential. If English is your second language, or if you have less than one year's experience working in an English-speaking environment, HBS requires a brief statement documenting proficiency in English-language skills, both conversational and written. This may include a list of the English-language certification programs that you have completed; the degrees you have earned at English-speaking colleges and universities; or the results of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam. The Admissions Committee also may request a telephone interview.

Team Attendance

This program is appropriate for individuals as well as teams of executives from the same organization. When colleagues attend a program together, the organization benefits from their shared knowledge and common vision. This, in turn, enables participants to enhance their ability to pursue business goals as a team, effect critical transformations, and transfer knowledge. HBS client service specialists are available to advise on optimal team composition. The application for each team member must be received before the team's materials are reviewed by the Admissions Committee.

Application Process

Program participants must be nominated and sponsored by their current employer. HBS must receive your application and all required documents in order to prepare the application for review by the Admissions Committee.

To apply, you may use our online form or download an application. You also may request a brochure by mail.

If you submit your application online, we will promptly acknowledge receipt of your submission via email. In the unlikely event that an email acknowledgment is not received, please contact the Admissions Committee by email: exed_admissions@hbs.edu, phone: +1-617-495-6226, or fax: +1-617-496-1731.

If you choose to submit a printed application, be sure to type or print legibly and sign your application. Send the application to the address or fax number listed on the form. Mailed or faxed applications are processed and acknowledged promptly upon receipt via email.

Complete Your Application

Please answer all questions thoroughly—the Admissions Committee will only consider completed applications. After reviewing your application and making the necessary edits or corrections, print or copy the application for your records.

The application for each team member must be received before the team's materials are reviewed by the Admissions Committee.

Meet the Deadlines

We request applications at least four weeks in advance of the program start date. Early application does not guarantee admission. Programs often fill to capacity, so early application is recommended.

Notification of Acceptance

We acknowledge receipt of all applications and maintain all application information in strict confidentiality.

To optimize the learning experience and maximize the exchange of ideas, the Admissions Committee selects a class that balances each participant's experience, the scope of his or her current responsibilities, and the type of organization.

The Admissions Committee begins reviewing applications four months before the start date, and qualified candidates are admitted on a rolling, space-available basis. Once the review process has begun, applicants are notified within three weeks via email regarding Admissions Committee decisions. If your application is received within three weeks of the program's start date, the Admissions Committee will notify you of their decision as soon as possible.

Need help?

For further assistance, contact our client service specialists at: 1-800-427-5577 (outside the U.S., dial +1-617-495-6555).