The Scary Truth About Your Organization’s Talent Development

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Talent Management  

We need a reality check: Organizations are lying to their employees. (That’s an obvious way to grab your attention, but probably also a statement you agree with.) This is a problem. Organizations aren’t always perceived by their employees as being honest, and the reason that perception exists is, well…quite often, it’s reality.

I try to be a “glass half full” kind of guy, so I don’t believe there are many organizations that are deliberately and repeatedly lying to their employees, but there are definitely scenarios where employees aren’t being given the complete picture—and where the employer is quite happy for an employee to misinterpret or misunderstand what is really going on.

That is especially problematic in the context of developing and growing people’s careers.

What can be achieved
In the first few years that I was a project manager, I had conversations with several line managers about how I could grow and advance my career. Those managers were always willing to share their thoughts and work with me on development plans. Later in my career, I became one of those managers, with PMs coming to me and looking for the same advice.

When I became one of those managers, I realized that none of those conversations were actionable. As a relatively low-level manager, I had no ability to do anything to help a …

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