A talent plan answers the following questions for every team leader:
What are the strengths and weaknesses of my team?
- What skill set gaps do we have on our team to achieve the vision?
- How am I going to develop each team member to optimize their performance?
Who do I need to promote?
- Who do I need to hire?
- Who do I need to retain?
- What succession plans need to be put in place?
- What action plans do I need to execute the talent plan and build the team to achieve your dream?
Before you can develop your multi-year talent plan, you first need to know where the company is going through its strategic vision. So Talent Planning includes:
Why Talent Planning is Essential for SMBs
Small to medium sized businesses often struggle to connect talent, strategy, and execution in a cohesive way. What’s really needed is a system that brings all of this together and uses behavioral science to align people with roles based on their unique natural style and motivators.
Without a talent plan, you end up:
Making reactive hires during crunch time
Overloading your best people
Spending too much time solving people issues & getting stuck in day-to-day
Losing momentum due to unclear accountability
Low team productivity/stalled growth
Why is Talent Planning key to scaling an SMB?
- The job turnover rate among U.S. small businesses is three times higher than that of large firms, indicating a significant challenge in maintaining a stable workforce.
- 80% of Turnover is caused by a bad hire
- 70% of business failures result from poor strategic planning, lack of delegation, and working too much in the business rather than on it.
- MyTalentPlanner solves the TOP 3 growth issues for SMBs
a. Increases accountability & productivity
b. Creates the right balance of working “In” vs. “On” for each role
c. Helps win at Talent/excel at strategic HR - Defines the strategies/actions over 3-years to build the team to achieve your dream/vision.
- Creates honest, open and transparent (HOT) communication
- Ties your Talent Plan/Decisions to Your strategy
- Creates a people-first culture that attracts talent – Known as a great place to work
- Empowers leaders to do it themselves/Internally
How to Execute Your Talent Plan
Your meeting cadence creates a rhythm for your business that leads to enhanced communication, collaboration, accountability and productivity To ensure you make the right talent decision the first time, talent planning uses behavioral science in every talent process. Using science ensures we make the right hire the first time, retain our rockstars, build future leaders/succession, and develop the total person. Behavioral science enables you to have conversations with candidates and employees that you would never be able to have without it. It ensures job and cultural fit for every team member. Science enables you to have honest, open and transparent (HOT) conversations as you execute your talent plan.
As part of our Talent Planning Services, we train you on how to use behavioral science in every talent process so you can execute your talent plan moving forward.
ROI of Talent Planning
Talent planning represents an investment in your people that yields substantial return on investment, including retaining your rockstars, improving hiring and development practices, and further attracting new talent.
Talent planning resolves the top 3 issues limiting the growth of SMBs which leads to accelerated growth in your top and bottom line. Why? Because talent planning creates a great place to work which attracts and retains the talent needed to serve our customers and achieve our goals.
Actual Client Stories
Double in Sales in 5 Years
“Implementing talent planning has led to our company doubling in size in five years,
while ensuring our culture was never compromised. It has heightened our engagement,
increased our accountability, and strengthened our communication, leading us to be
the preferred solutions provider in our markets.Investing in our employees’ development remains paramount to our mission of employing
people in a compassionate, family first, organization.”
Chris Stiles – CEO, Morley-Murphy Company- Increase Productivity from 75% to 94%
Executing consistent 4 month sprints with goals and ActOn plans to achieve them leads to a significant increase in productivity. - Drop Turnover from 40% to 8%
A manufacturing company dropped turnover on their plant by training their leaders/supervisors on how to hold 1:1 meetings and individual talent plans for every team member - Productive businesses have about 48% higher operating margins than less productive ones.
Organizations that prioritize long-term planning over daily firefighting are 33% more likely to be high-performing.
Organizations with engaged employees experience a 19% increase in operating income over a 12-month period, while those with low engagement see a 32.7% decline.
Businesses where owners focus on long-term growth planning sell for 2-3x higher valuations than businesses run on reactive, daily operations.
The Talent Planning Guide: A Proven 7-Step Process
The following 7-step process is simple and proven approach to develop your strategy and talent plan and execute it with ease and precision. Each step builds upon the last to create clarity, alignment, ownership, and results. We have leaned out the process by completing it hundreds of times, but please adapt the process to meet your needs and make it your own.
Step 1: Process Prep
- Identify the key leaders who should participate in the planning process (Planning Team)
- A great process leads to a great process – Define the planning process upfront that will accomplish your objectives. Adapt the talent planning process to make it your own. Share the process so all team members have process clarity and alignment. Then trust the process.
Step 2: Team Development Session
Creating a brilliant strategy and talent plan requires a candid and transparent environment for discussion, enabling the team to have the difficult conversations that are necessary to solve the toughest issues with the right plan.
In this session, each team member shares their life story and presents their natural behavioral style and motivators. It is raw, vulnerable and moving team session that brings the team together like never before.
This step creates psychological safety and shared understanding—essential for HOT conversations (honest, open, transparent). When the leadership team is cohesive, the rest of the organization follows.
Step 3: Strategy Session
- Define “Why” a customer is going to choose you vs. a competitor to build a clear differentiation and Stop the Vanilla.
- A strong Talent Plan must be rooted in a clear business strategy. In this step, create/update your vision to create the bullseye for what we want the business to look like in 3 years
- This vision becomes the anchors for all talent decisions. When there’s clarity on where the business is going, it becomes easier to identify the team needed to get there.
Step 4: Talent Vision & Sprint Goals
- Now it’s time to look into the future. Define the ideal organizational structure that needs to be in place in 3 years to achieve our vision. What roles are critical to success? What skill sets are missing? Where are the biggest gaps today?
- Break this vision down into short-term actions by setting 3 or 4-month sprint goals and the ActOn plans to achieve them. Each sprint is another step towards achieving your vision.
Step 5: Leadership Team Talent Plan
- Define a 3 year talent plan for the leadership team. What are your strategies and action plans to take the team from where it is today, to where it needs to be in 3 years to achieve the vision.
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the team, what are the skill set gaps, how do we develop each team member, who do we need to retain, who are we going to hire and what succession plans need to be put in place?
Step 6: Department Plans
If your organization has departments, expand the plan to include each functional area—sales, marketing, finance, operations, customer service, and others.
- Each department plan includes their metrics, organizational structure, talent plan and the actOn plans with owners and due dates to achieve the spring goals.
Step 7: Execution Cadence
- Planning without follow-through leads nowhere. This step embeds accountability and productivity into your ongoing operating rhythm.
- Hold weekly, monthly or quarterly check-ins to revisit goals, measure progress, and adjust based on real-time business needs. Use dashboards or tracking too ls to monitor what’s working—and what needs support.
- Celebrate wins and refine your plans regularly. Execution is what turns strategy into results.
How MyTalentPlanner Growth Accelerator System (GAS) can help you?
Here is how MyTalentPlanner Growth Accelerator System helps SMBs turn your top pain points into strengths:
