Five myths about IT talent management CEB research finds that the best CIOs spend more time on talent management than any other activity. By 2015, almost every IT role will be impacted by major shifts in the way we work. Where CIOs focus their time and how they navigate these changes will be crucial to the success of the IT function. Here are five common myths about IT talent management.

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Myth 1

Technology, governance practices and vendor selection are the most important drivers of business value in IT.

$

Governance practices

Technology

vendor selection

The Reality: Actually, it’s talent. Whereas many CIOs are focused on waves of retirement in their workforces and the pipeline shortages, the most effective CIOs are focused on strategic activities such as building strategic workforce, succession and diversity plans.

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Myth 2

Selecting and grooming high performers for open leadership positions determines successful outcomes for those roles.

The Reality: Previous high performance alone won’t determine success for new-to-role leaders. Although leadership transitions occur regularly and have broad cost implications, they are frequently not managed as carefully as other recurring, high impact processes. Transitioning leaders often have an underprepared (or non-existent) support community – in fact, more than 70% of executives are not effective at supporting new-to-role peers and managers.

70% of executives are not effective at supporting new-to-role peers and managers.

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Myth 3

Talent assessment should be done with manager downward reviews and 360 degree reviews.

The Reality: Research shows that most of these methods of performance management misidentify high performers. In addition, more than 3/4 of business managers report relying on intuition, rather than data analytics, to make critical business decisions.

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2/3

3/4

of high performers are misclassified

of business managers rely on intuition to make decisions

Myth 4

Investment in teaching the technical skills of tomorrow is the right way to spend development dollars.

The Reality: IT organizations that fail to identify the right competencies —and understand where their teams stand against them— are unnecessarily sacrificing performance and limiting team potential.

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Myth 5

Employee engagement matters less when the economy is stable.

The Reality: One in four IT employees is looking to leave their current job, making them less likely to support changes the company makes, suggest opportunities for improvement, expand their skills and put forth any extra effort.

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What Does This Mean for IT? IT needs to develop a long-term and integrated solution to IT talent management. CEB’s Plan-Assess-Develop framework offers a pragmatic way to engineer a high performing team.

Plan

Assess

Develop

A long-term IT talent strategy

Staff on IT-specific competencies

A high-performing team

CEB Leadership Councils enable you

CEB’s IT Talent Assessment benchmarks

CEB’s IT Leadership Academy and

to create an effective workforce plan,

your team against 1200+ organizations and

Role-Based training will help you

forecast roles for the IT organization of

assesses your staff with a sophisticated

upskill current staff in the competencies

tomorrow, and define competencies

psychometric assessment.

proven to drive high performance.

to drive high performance.

*Please note: CEB IT Talent Assessment is currently only available in North America.

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Why CEB? Our integrated approach to talent management will help you build a more effective IT organization. We believe the difference between good companies and great companies is having the right people in the right roles, making talent the single largest driver of corporate performance. CEB has the most comprehensive view into the drivers of leadership success, employee performance, and employee engagement, with unrivaled datasets (over 35 million assessments delivered last year) and validation from hundreds of CIOs. Learn more at:

WWW.EXECUTIVEBOARD.COM/IT-TALENT

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