Michelle Scaglione
Talent Executive
N/A
Episode 394
Stop Managing Talent: Unleash Potential with HR Enablement
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleOctober 31, 2024 · 18:15
Thesis
“HR's fundamental purpose should shift from 'managing' talent, which is prescriptive and past-focused, to 'enabling' employees and leaders by providing tools, resources, and a clear feedback culture to drive future success and business results.”
Show notes
When Michelle Scaglione left Target and joined her first company without mature talent infrastructure, she realized something that most HR practitioners take years to articulate: the foundational talent practices she'd taken for granted weren't the bureaucracy. They were the enablement. Leaders were spending hours doing work that a well-designed talent function would have handled automatically. HR business partners were filling gaps instead of being strategic advisors. That observation crystallized her career focus: talent enablement.
Her terminology is deliberate. "Management" is past-focused—it looks in the rearview mirror. "Enablement" is future-focused—it asks what tools, resources, and clarity people need to succeed from here. The practical implications are significant: a talent team organized around enablement structures its work differently, evaluates success differently, and behaves differently in conversations with business leaders. Michelle's most challenging question in any talent process redesign: "Why do we do this?" She asked it about performance reviews and got looks like she had three heads. But the conversation that followed revealed that the primary purpose of the reviews (compensation distribution) could almost certainly be achieved through a less expensive, less time-intensive, less biased process.
Her framework for structuring talent teams is elegant in its simplicity: how do we enable the company? How do we enable managers? How do we enable employees? Three questions. If the work your team is doing doesn't map to one of those three, it's probably the wrong work. Her parting counsel for HR professionals in a moment of unprecedented organizational transformation: this is not a crisis. It's the best opportunity in a generation to make a real impact in non-traditional ways.
- Talent enablement vs. talent management: the reframe that changes how HR teams structure, measure, and talk about their work
- Start with the problem: the first-principles discipline that separates effective HR redesign from change for its own sake
- Questioning performance reviews: why asking "why do we do this?" is the most disruptive question in HR—and the most necessary one
- The three-question framework for talent team structure: enabling the company, enabling managers, enabling employees
- Autonomy as an enablement tool: how giving talent team members broader mandates produces better problem-solving and higher commitment
- HR's transformation moment: why the current period of disruption is an opportunity for impact, not a threat to the function
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What you'll take away
- 1Redefine talent functions from 'management' to 'enablement,' focusing on providing tools and autonomy for future-oriented success.
- 2Always clarify the specific problem an HR process is designed to solve before implementing or overhauling it to ensure alignment and effectiveness.
- 3Challenge traditional HR practices like annual performance reviews by questioning their core purpose and exploring more efficient, less biased alternatives.
- 4Structure talent teams to enable the company, managers, and employees, fostering proactive problem-solving and greater autonomy within the team.
- 5Embrace the current chaotic transformation in HR as an exciting opportunity to make significant impact by solving real problems in pragmatic, non-traditional ways.
What most organizations get wrong
- •The word 'manage' in performance management has negative connotations, is past-focused, and should be replaced by 'enable' to foster a more future-oriented and autonomous workforce.
- •Traditional annual performance reviews are often administratively heavy, deliver irrelevant feedback, and their primary purpose (e.g., compensation distribution) can likely be achieved through less expensive, time-intensive, and biased methods.
In Michelle's words
“I didn't have this idea of what talent enablement would be. It was more I wanted to learn, and I really loved delivering results and seeing the direct outcome of working hard and it making a difference.”
This quote highlights Michelle's foundational motivation that led her to the field of talent enablement organically, driven by impact and learning.
“I realize that the word manage really just brings to mind a lot of negative things, which is not, I think, the intent... And ultimately, it's not about managing.”
This illustrates Michelle's core contrarian take on traditional performance management, advocating for a rebrand and shift in philosophy.
“I want to be given autonomy. I want the tools and resources I need to succeed and then let me do my job. And so I, you know, just having a kind of like a brain trust with different people, I thought really the idea is to enable.”
This quote encapsulates the essence of talent enablement from the employee's perspective, emphasizing autonomy and necessary resources.
“I asked the question, why do we do performance reviews? And of course, I think I got some looks like I had 3 heads, but I said, you know, hold on, stick with me. Why do we act like— why do we do them?”
This highlights a critical tactical measure: challenging the fundamental assumptions behind common HR processes to ensure their true purpose is understood and aligned.
“How do we enable the company and the business? How do we enable managers? And then how do we enable employees?”
This question provides a clear framework for structuring talent teams, aligning their efforts around enabling key stakeholders for broader impact.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Business leaders and employees are wasting time creating or working around the absence of mature talent practices and resourcing, preventing them from focusing on their core jobs.
- •HR business partners are often relied upon to 'plug gaps' by creating basic enablement tools (e.g., competencies, values) instead of functioning as strategic advisors.
- •Traditional performance management processes are perceived as administratively heavy and lead to feedback that is often irrelevant or delivered too late, impacting engagement.
- •Lack of clear, agreed-upon purpose for standard HR processes (like performance reviews) among leaders leads to ineffective or misaligned overhaul efforts.
- •Talent team members can feel constrained by rigid job descriptions, limiting their ability to proactively identify new problems and innovative solutions as business needs evolve.
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
What motivated you to focus on talent enablement
Talent Enablement: The Road to Success
How did you get into talent management, talent enablement
In the Elevator: Talent Management and Talent Enablement
The transition from talent management to talent enablement has been significant
Talent Management: The Transition from Management to Talent Enablement
You discuss practical and tactical measures to drive successful outcomes in talent enablement
Six Rules for Talent Enablement
One time I was thinking about how to structure the talent team
The culture of talent enablement
Michelle, what parting advice would you share with your fellow HR executives
What parting advice would you have for HR executives?
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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