By Joseph Asare Jnr
Lately I have developed a genuine love for farming and I can’t help but transplant the stark lessons on the farm to the marketplace. One of such valuable lesson for me is the similarities between the seedling in a nursery and the talent at the workplace.
There is no harvest without planting. And until the seedling is planted in the right place, at the right time and under the right care, it never becomes a plant that subsequently bear fruits for the farmer. The farmer makes every effort to ensure he will harvest the right yield. His biggest efforts are usually at the early stages of the plant and as the plant gains deeper roots, acclimatizes and grows, the efforts of the farmer naturally become less and less. As I got my first stint at farming, it was the intentional effort of the farmer at the planting stage that has caught my attention. I couldn’t help but think of the talent in the workplace. That, just as a seedling requires the right environment and intentional care to thrive and grow, so does a talent.
Many leaders identify talents and we expect them to necessarily grow wherever they have been nursed as talents. A talent is essentially nothing more than a seedling. Every seedling needs some specific soil and environmental conditions to thrive, grow, flower and then bear fruits. The conditions at the nursery is not usually conducive for it to grow beyond being a seedling. It is also true with talents. They need the right environment and support to reach their full potential. They may need different opportunities, situations and/or challenges from what has turned them into talents to make them develop further to reach their potential. The leader who nurses a talent doesn’t have to be the leader who nurtures the talent.
For a seedling to become a plant, it must necessarily change environment. A coffee seedling will never produce the coffee bean if it remains in the nursery. The farmer moves the seedling from the nursery and plants it in the right environment on the farm. This is exactly so with talents. There must be an intentional effort to evaluate the current situation and environment of the talent. You might well discover, based on the particular traits of the talent, that he is not necessarily where he ought to be, to thrive and grow into his full potential. The fact that he has been identified as a talent in a particular setting (his nursery) doesn’t necessarily mean he can grow, blossom and fruit in the same environment. He may require a different manager, role, task, training or even physical location to be stimulated to grow to his fullest potential. How often have we not seen talents become poor performers after a few couple of years because we left them in their nurseries or moved them into the wrong conditions – with/to the wrong leader, in the wrong role, in the same position etc?
Different seedlings require different environment – soil conditions, exposure to sunlight, planting distance, timing for planting, etc. The conditions for a coffee seedling are not the same for rice. If you plant rice under the same conditions as coffee, you will never get to harvest the rice. Likewise, there should be no one-size-fit-all approach to talent development. Many organizations have gotten this wrong. They have identified group of talents and given them similar opportunities and training and at about the same time and pace. This is why some succeed, and others don’t. Save the external unforeseen circumstances like diseases or pest attacks, it should be the case that every seedling that is deliberately moved from the nursery to the farm should grow into a plant and bear fruits. We must also be deliberate and tailored about planting talents. The organization need to figure out, per talent, what specific efforts is required of the organization and leaders to make each talent succeed and when. Yes, there is definitely a place for group development. After all, in farming, I also learnt every farm requires land preparation, pegging and lining. And indeed, depending on the particular crop, this activity is also done differently.
Having evaluated and set each talent in the right environment, then from a growth perspective, we must have different expectations of our talents as we have with different types of seedlings. A maize seedling should fruit and be ready for harvesting at 3 months, but a coffee seedling will only be ready for harvesting at 3 years. If you want coffee, you must be prepared to wait for 3years. Talents will mature or develop to their full potential differently depending on their type, makeup, depth of potential and worth. Don’t have the same expectations of every talent else you may write off some really valuable assets before their time. You might miss out on a coffee bean because you got corn in 3 months and thought the coffee talent had failed. Know each talent and have the right expectation of each of them.
Understandably, no farmer is happy with a poor yield or harvest. Every farmer looks forward to his crops bearing fruits and he does everything to ensure he gets the yield that he deserves. Accordingly, no organization or leader should be happy with a talent who never reaches his potential. After putting in your investment, it must pay off. If you have the right seedling and have provided the right environment, then you should purposely care and support the talent through the various stages to get your back. You should take nothing less from the talent than the maximum ROI that you deserve. Be a farmer and demand it.
Therefore, in choosing talents, be intentional, deliberate and spot on. Because a bad seed will surely give you a bad harvest – forget the conditions/environment you gave it. When you have gotten that right then you must be patient and supportive of the talents to reach their full potential as we do with seedlings to turn them into plants and wait on them to fruit. Do not put a bad seed in a good soil expecting a good harvest.
Lastly, don’t confuse seedlings with plants. Many organizations live in that confusion. They still call people who are fully developed, experienced and have found their place in the organization, talents. They are not. If you transplant them (full grown plants) or handle them the way you would handle talents (seedlings) you will lose them. They must be handled differently, with the maturity and respect they deserve.
