FlashPoint recently hosted a Knowledge Forum with representatives from some of our clients. The theme of the forum was “Alignment, Integration, and Connection,” and the purpose was to encourage participants to discuss how they maximize human capability throughout their organizations, in an effort to learn from one another.

To help the forum participants visualize important connections, we used a graphic that we’ve developed over the past couple of years. The graphic—a flower—illustrates the growth of an organization. The key elements are:

• The organization’s mission, vision, and values. These are the roots that give the organization life and sustain it. They address the questions, “Who are we and what do we do?” (mission), “Where do we want to go?” (vision), and “How do we want to operate and behave with our customers and employees?” (values).
• The organization’s strategy. This is the plan of action the organization will take to achieve its goals. Strategy grows out of the organization’s mission, vision, and values.
• The organization’s core competencies. Competencies are the actions or behaviors that every employee must demonstrate if the company is going to be successful at its strategy and ultimately carry out its mission, vision, and values.
• The talent life cycle. This is represented by the petals of the flower. Each petal shows an important step that the organization takes to hire, retain, and grow employees—from sourcing of the job, onward through hiring, performance management, reward, and advancement. All these activities (the petals) are tied to the core competencies (the pistil), which connect to the strategy (the stem) and take life from the mission, vision, and values (the roots).

This metaphor of the flower demonstrates how all aspects of human resources are tied together and how fully integrating your people processes with your strategy and with mission, vision, and values can help your organization adapt to changing environments and flourish. The graphic helped our Knowledge Forum participants better visualize the relationships, connect their work to organizational objectives, and carry out a more meaningful conversation. We hope you and your HR colleagues will find it helpful in this regard too.

FlashPoint can help you connect the elements of your talent life cycle to your strategy and your mission, vision, and values. Contact us to learn more.