Talent Boards: Have We Mistaken Governance for Talent Management?

Talent Boards have become a familiar part of the HR and Talent landscape. But have we started mistaking governance for Talent Management itself?

In this episode of Edan Haddock – Total Talent, Edan challenges one of the profession's accepted norms. He explores whether Talent Boards are simply a modern governance mechanism built on long-established Talent Management practices such as succession planning, high potential identification and capability development, and argues that the real work happens between the meetings.

Drawing on his experience as a practitioner leading Talent and People Experience at Movember, Edan shares why Talent Management should be an always-on discipline rather than a quarterly event. From career conversations and workforce planning to leadership development, internal mobility and AI, this episode explores what great Talent teams do every day to build capability, not just review it.

No guests. No sponsors. Just practical insights, honest opinions and a challenge to rethink how we develop talent in modern organisations.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you're listening to from around the world. Welcome back to another episode of Eden Haddock Total Talent. As always, I'm your host, Eden Haddock, head of talent and people experience at Movember. A talent leader, a recruiter. Someone who spends a huge proportion of every week hiring, partnering with leaders, tackling workforce planning, and most importantly, still being on the tools. There's no guests, no sponsors, no sales pitches. Just one practitioner sharing thoughts, challenging ideas, and hopefully getting us all to think a little differently about where our profession is heading. If you're a regular listener, thank you. The podcast keeps growing every week, and that's entirely because people are sharing episodes, talking about and challenging me when they think I've got something wrong. And I genuinely love that. Because I'd much rather us have a profession that debates ideas than one that simply agrees with whatever the latest conference keynote tells us. Today's episode comes from exactly that: a conversation, actually, a few conversations. Over the last couple of months, I've heard more and more organizations talking about launching talent boards. You know, it's we've established our talent board, this will go through the talent board, our quarterly talent board is coming up, our executive talent board, et cetera, et cetera. And every time I hear it, I find myself asking exactly the same question. Have we mistaken governance for talent management? Now, before anyone panics, this isn't just going to be an episode of me telling you that talent boards are pointless, right? Because I truly don't believe that. I've sat on talent boards, I've facilitated them, I've helped build them, I've contributed to succession conversations, I've debated high potential employees, I've challenged calibration decisions. So I think they absolutely have a place. But I also think we've elevated them into something they were never designed to be. And that's where I want to spend today's episode. Because I think somewhere along the way, we've started believing talent boards are talent management. And I don't think they are. I think they're one small part of it. And if I'm right, then it changes the way we should think about our jobs as talent professionals. Let me ask you something. If I ask 10 HR leaders, what is talent management? How many different answers do you think I'll get? I'd say probably 10. Some people would immediately talk about succession planning. Others would talk about leadership development. Someone would mention nine box grids. Someone else would talk about performance. Somebody would mention learning. Another person would start talking about workforce planning, internal mobility, high potentials, career pathways, capability, engagement, retention. The interesting thing is none of these answers are wrong. They're all pieces of talent management. This is exactly why I struggle when people talk about talent boards as though they're a brand new capability. Because if you strip away the terminology, what actually happens inside a talent board? We discuss succession, we discuss performance, we discuss potential, we identify future leaders, we talk about retention, we review capability, we identify development opportunities. Hey, we've been doing this for decades. So have we really invented something new? Or have we simply created a new meaning, a new meeting around existing work? That's a very different question. One thing I've noticed throughout my career is that HR absolutely loves new language. I think if there were Olympic medals for renaming things, we'd dominate. I mean, recruitment became talent acquisition, HR became people and culture, training became learning experience, employee engagement became employee experience, performance reviews became growth conversations, exit interviews became stay interviews. I could keep going. Every few years, our profession develops a fresh vocabulary. Now, something that's useful. Language shapes behavior and words matter. Changing terminology can reflect a genuine shift in thinking. But sometimes, if we're honest, we've just put a different label on the same box. And I do wonder whether talent boards have fallen into that category. Not because they're bad, but because they aren't actually the capability. They're the governance. There's a huge difference. So I'll use another example. Imagine your organization has a risk committee. Does the risk committee manage risk? No. The organization manages risk every single day. The committee simply reviews it, challenges it, questions it, makes decisions. The work happens between meetings. Finance committees don't create financial discipline. Audit committees don't perform audits. Safety committees don't keep people safe. That capability exists every day. The committee simply provides governance. So why would talent boards be any different? Why have we started treating them as though talent management somehow begins when everyone sits around a boardroom table once a quarter? Because it doesn't. Well, at least it shouldn't. One of the biggest lessons I've learned from still being on the tools is this talent moves faster than process. Think about last month. Somebody in your organization has probably surprised you. Someone who stepped up. Someone who struggled. Someone who quietly became influential. Someone who started thinking about leaving. Someone who developed a completely new skill. Someone who suddenly looked ready for a bigger role. Now, did this happen because there was a talent board scheduled? Of course not. It happened because people evolve every single day. And sometimes without us even noticing. That's why I think talent management is one of the most dynamic disciplines in HR. It's not static. It's not annual. It's not quarterly. It's alive. It lives and breathes. Which means our approach has to be alive too. One of the things I love about recruitment is that it's incredibly immediate. You know when you're close to the market. You know when candidate sentiment changes. You know when salaries shift. You know when a competitor starts hiring aggressively. You know when people stop applying. You don't wait for the quarterly recruitment board to discover that. Because by then it's too late. So why would we wait to understand our people? Why would we only formally discuss capability every three months? Why wouldn't talent professionals spend every week building a picture of the organization? Talking to leaders, talking to employees, understanding aspirations, watching people grow, connecting opportunities, and helping managers think differently. That, to me, is talent management. The talent board then simply becomes the place where we compare notes. Not where we discover the story for the first time. I think this distinction matters because governance and capability are not the same thing. Governance gives us consistency. Capability creates outcomes. Governance gives us structure. Capability creates growth. Governance helps us reduce bias. Capability helps people become better. One supports the other. Neither replaces the other. And yet I wonder if our profession sometimes feels more comfortable building governance than building capability. Because governance is tangible. It's a framework, a process, a template, a meet a meeting. Capability is much messier. It requires coaching, conversations, trust, relationships, time, leadership. It's harder to measure. It's harder to package into a PowerPoint. But it's where the magic happens. So that's really the premise for today's episode. Not that talent boards are wrong and far from it. I actually think they're incredibly valuable. But I think we've given them too much responsibility. We've started expecting the meeting to do the work. And meetings don't build talent. People do, managers do, experiences do, opportunities do, talent professionals do, and of course, leaders do. The meeting simply helps us make better decisions about all of that. And I think if we shift our thinking just slightly, it changes everything. Because instead of asking when is our next talent board, we start asking, what are we doing between talent boards? And in my opinion, that's where the future of talent management really begins. So if talent boards aren't talent management, then what are they? I think there's something really important. They're a calibration point, they're governance. They're where leaders come together to compare perspectives, challenge assumptions, and make collective decisions. That's valuable, really valuable. But it's only valuable if the work has already happened. And I think that's where we've drifted as a profession. Because too often the talent board becomes the moment we finally stop and think about our people. I don't think that's healthy. And I'll explain why. Imagine you've walked into your, say, your sales director's office, right? And asked, So, how's the pipeline looking? And they replied, I'll let you know at the quarterly sales board. Like you'd you'd think they were joking. Or imagine your CFO, how's the cash flow? I haven't looked since last quarter. Impossible. No executive would accept that. Because those functions operate continuously. Sales is always selling. Finance is always forecasting. Technology is always monitoring systems. Marketing is always measuring campaigns. Risk is always assessing exposure. Yet in HR, we've we've somehow convinced ourselves that discussing talent every quarter is enough. And I don't think it is. Because talent doesn't move quarterly. Talent moves daily. Every single day, somebody gains confidence. Every single day somebody loses confidence. Someone delivers an incredible project. Someone has a difficult conversation they've never had before. Someone quietly decides this organization isn't for them anymore. Someone else suddenly discovers that they're capable of far more than anyone realized. People don't grow in quarterly increments. They grow through moments. And moments happen every day. Another reason I really still love working in talent acquisition, I truly do, is because recruitment keeps you honest. The market changes incredibly quickly. A candidate who is available last month has accepted another opportunity today. And, you know, salary expectations shift, new competitors emerge, entire skill sets become scarce almost overnight. You learn very quickly that waiting isn't a strategy. You have to stay close to what's happening. Now, compare that with internal talent. Why would we adopt a completely different mindset? If anything, we should be even closer. These are our people. We work with them every day. We see them in meetings. We hear feedback from leaders. We understand the projects that they're leading. We know who's stretching themselves, and we know who's becoming disengaged. Or at least we should. Because if we're only discovering these things inside a quarterly talent board, we've probably missed dozens of opportunities beforehand. This is really surprising that I was actually thinking about Formula One while preparing this episode. I promise there's a point to this, and that sounds really random and so not eaten. But, you know, people watch the Grand Prix on a Sunday and assume that's where success is determined, and we all know it's not, right? Race Day is simply where the preparation becomes visible. The real work happened weeks earlier. Thousands of hours of engineering, data analysis, driver feedback, simulation, testing, tiny improvements that nobody watching on television ever sees. The race is simply the moment where all that invisible work is revealed. Talent boards should work exactly the same way. They shouldn't be where we discover our future leaders. They should be where we validate what we've already observed. They shouldn't be where we first realize someone is disengaged. They should be where we decide what we're going to do about it. They shouldn't be where we identify succession risks for the first time. They should confirm the picture we've already built. The meeting isn't the work, it's the checkpoint. Sport offers another great lesson. Think about elite coaches. No coach develops an athlete during selection night. Selection night simply reflects everything that's happened on the training ground. The coaching, the feedback, the repetition, the recovery, the discipline, the difficult conversations, the moments where confidence was built. Selection is governance, but development is the capability. Again, the meeting isn't where the athlete improves. It's where the coach makes a decision based on months of observation. So why should talent management be any different? I've been reflecting recently, as you know I do. As HR professionals, I think we're naturally drawn to things that are visible. I really do. Frameworks, matrix, processes, templates, governance. We can point to them, we can explain them. We can put them in a board paper. But some of the most important work in talent is almost invisible. It's a coffee with an employee who isn't quite themselves. It's encouraging a leader to give someone a stretch assignment. It's connecting two people who could mentor one another. It's asking someone, what do you actually want your career to look like? It's noticing that someone who was once full of energy has become unusually quiet. None of those things appear on a nine-box grid. But every single one of them shapes talent. That's why I believe talent management is fundamentally relational before it's operational. Systems support it, governance strengthens it, data informs it. But really, relationships are what drives it. There's another misconception I'd love to challenge. I often hear people say we need to identify our high potentials. Don't get me wrong, I understand what they mean. But I wonder whether we're asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, who are our high potentials, maybe we should ask, how do we create more of them? Because great organizations don't rely on finding exceptional people. They build environments where ordinary people become exceptional. It's a very different philosophy. It's also far more sustainable. If all we're doing is identifying talent, we're playing a finite game. If we're building talent, the possibilities become almost endless. And that shift happens every single day, not every quarter. Now, this is where I feel that the phrase always on talent management starts to make sense. I'm not suggesting we need another dashboard or another meeting or another framework, right? I'm suggesting a different mindset. Talent should never be something we switch on because a quarterly review is approaching. It should be a part of how leaders lead. Managers shouldn't suddenly start thinking about careers because HR sent them a template. They should be having career conversations because that's what good leadership looks like. Talent teams shouldn't start discussing succession because a meeting is coming up. They should already know where the risks are because they're close to the business. That's the difference. One is event-driven, the other is continuous. And in my experience, continuous always wins. So perhaps the question is then should we have talent boards? Absolutely, we should. The better question is what are we doing in the other 89 days between them? Because that's where talent management lives, not in the boardroom, in the Conversations, in the coaching, in the opportunities, in the decisions leaders make every single day. The talent board simply gives us a moment to pause, calibrate, and ask one important question. Are we all seeing the same picture? If the answer is yes, that's a productive meeting. If the answer is no, that's an even more valuable meeting. But either way, it should never be the first time we've thought seriously about our people. Because by then, the most important work should already be well underway. So I've spent this episode arguing that talent boards aren't talent management. Then it's only fair that I answer the obvious question, Eden, what is talent management? For me, the answer is surprisingly simple. It's everything that happens between the meetings, and that's it. That's where talent management lives. Not inside a quarterly presentation, not inside a nine-box grid, not inside a succession spreadsheet. It lives inside the thousands of small decisions we make every single week. And that's why I think great talent teams look very different from average talent teams. Average talent teams are brilliant at running processes. Great talent teams, they build capability, and it's a huge difference. One of the phrases I use a lot is being on the tools. I genuinely believe it. I don't think talenters should become so removed from the work that they lose touch with reality. I'm still recruiting, I'm still interviewing, I'm still partnering with leaders, I'm still having career conversations, I'm still hearing candidate feedback, I'm still seeing the market move. And why? Because that's where the intelligence is. If all I did was sit in governance meetings and read dashboards, I'd miss the nuance. And talent is full of nuance. That's something that AI can't fully replace. A dashboard might tell me that turnover is increased. A conversation tells me why. A report might tell me engagement has dropped. A leader tells me what has changed. A succession plan tells me somebody is ready in one to two years. A real conversation tells me whether they actually want the role. That's the difference. I often think talent professionals underestimate how much information they gather simply by being curious. Every hiring conversation teaches us something. Every exit interview teaches us something. Every internal application teaches us something. Every declined offer teaches us something. Every career conversation teaches us something. Every workforce planning session teaches us something. I can go on. Individually, they're just conversations. Collectively, they're organizational intelligence. That's talent management. It's not waiting for information to arrive. It's constantly collecting it. Connecting it as well. Testing it. Sharing it. That's why I don't think talent management should ever be owned by a quarterly meeting. It's far too dynamic. Let's think about what an outstanding talent team actually spends its time doing. Not theoretically, but practically. On Monday, they're helping a leader think differently about a role that doesn't need replacing, it needs redesigning. On Tuesday, they're talking to someone who's ambitious but doesn't know what their next career move looks like. On Wednesday, they're working with finance on workforce planning. On Thursday, they're interviewing an external candidate who brings a capability the organization doesn't currently have. On Friday, they're discussing succession with an executive who's worried about a critical leadership gap. None of those activities exist in isolation. They're all connected. And that's where I think the term total talent really comes into its own. Because we're no longer looking at recruitment over here, learning over there, succession somewhere else, workforce planning in another meeting, internal mobility in another system, engagement sitting with another team. The best organizations connect those dots. They stop seeing talent as individual activities and start seeing it as one continuous ecosystem. I actually think we've spent too long organizing talent around functions instead of outcomes. This belongs to learning, that's talent acquisition, that's OD, that's HR business partners, this is workforce planning. Maybe. But the employee doesn't experience it that way. The employee simply experiences their career. They don't wake up one morning and think today I'm participating in an organizational development initiative, right? They think I've been given a fantastic opportunity, or my manager believes in me, or I'm ready for something bigger. That's talent management. The organizational chart shouldn't dictate the employee experience. One thing I've learned over the years is that careers are rarely linear. Nobody's journey looks exactly like the succession plan. People surprise us. Someone who was quiet becomes an incredible leader. Someone who looked like the obvious successor decides they want something completely different. Somebody joins from another industry and transforms the way the business thinks. That's why I get nervous when organizations become too reliant on static talent maps. Because people aren't static. Capability isn't static. Ambition certainly isn't static. Everything moves. Which means talent teams need to stay incredibly close to the business. Not because we want more meetings, but because context matters. So here's something I'd love every talent professional to think about. How many career conversations have you had this month? Not performance discussions, something different. Career conversations. They're very different. I'll explain. You know, performance asks, how are you doing? Career asks, where are you going? Right? It's that simple. Performance looks backwards, career conversations look forward. I honestly don't think we have enough of them. Imagine if every manager had one meaningful career conversation with each member of their team every quarter, not because HR mandated it, but because they genuinely cared. Then imagine how much richer our talent boards would become. Instead of guessing someone's aspirations, we would know. Instead of assuming someone wanted leadership, we'd have asked. Instead of debating whether someone was a retention risk, we'd understand what was driving them. The quality of governance improves dramatically when the quality of conversation improves first. Another thing I think talent teams should own is curiosity. Not administration, but curiosity. We should be constantly asking questions. What capability are we missing? What skills are emerging? Who's quietly becoming influential? Which teams are creating future leaders? Why? Who's struggling to retain people? Why? What experiences produce our best leaders? What are our highest performers doing differently? Those conversations don't belong in a quarterly agenda. They should become part of our weekly thinking. Because every answer helps us make better talent decisions. And again, this is where I think AI becomes genuinely exciting. Not because it replaces talent management, but because it enhances it. Imagine being able to identify emerging flight risks earlier, spot unusual career patterns, understand internal mobility trends, see capability gaps developing before they become business problems. That's powerful. But the important bit, AI provides information, humans provide judgment. The dashboard might tell me somebody hasn't applied for an internal role despite being ready. The conversation might tell me they're caring for an aging parent and don't want additional responsibility right now. The context changes everything, which is why talent will always remain deeply human. I think if I had one wish for our profession, it would be this. I'd love us to spend less time asking how do we run a better talent board? And more time asking, how do we create more opportunity? Because opportunities build careers, stretch assignments, cross-functional projects, secondments, mentoring, coaching, exposure to senior leaders, international experiences, those things change lives. Not matrix, not PowerPoint presentation, not governance frameworks, but simply opportunity. If talent teams become experts at creating opportunity, talent boards become incredibly easy. Because by the time everyone walks into the room, they're no longer debating potential, they're discussing evidence. Evidence created through real experiences. And I think that's where our profession should be heading. Less administration, more opportunity. Less process ownership, more capability building. Less preparing for meetings, more preparing people. Because at the end of the day, nobody builds a remarkable career because they appeared at the top right-hand corner of a nine-box grid. They build remarkable careers because somebody believed in them enough to give them an opportunity. And for me, that's where talent management has always been about. As we start wrapping up today's episode, I do want to leave you with one final thought. This episode was never really about talent boards. Talent boards just happen to be the example. What this episode has really been about is how we as a profession think about talent management. Because I honestly believe we're at a fascinating point in time. Talent has never been more strategic. Workforce planning has never been more important. Skills are changing faster than ever. Artificial intelligence is reshaping jobs. Demographics are changing. Employee expectations continue to evolve. And organizations are asking bigger questions than ever before. What capabilities do we need? What jobs won't exist in five years? What new skills will emerge? How do we build leaders? How do we retain critical capability? How do we prepare for something we can't even see yet? Those aren't quarterly discussions, they aren't quarterly questions, they're continuous discussions and continuous questions. And I think our operating model has to reflect that. If I was designing a talent function from scratch today, I don't think I'd start with talent boards. I'd start somewhere completely different. I'd ask one simple question. How do we create the clearest possible picture of organizational capability every single day? Not every quarter, every day. Who's growing? Who's plateauing? Who's learning? Who's teaching others? Who's ready to move? Who's asking for more? Who's quietly becoming influential? Who's carrying too much? Who's beginning to disengage? This that's the picture that I want. Because once you have that picture, everything else becomes easier. Hiring becomes easier. Succession becomes easier. Internal mobility becomes easier. Leadership development becomes easier. Talent boards become easier. Because the information already exists. The meeting simply helps us decide what to do with it. I also think AI is going to accelerate this shift dramatically. Now, before anyone assumes I'm going to tell you that AI will replace talent professionals, absolutely not. I say it every time, but I will want to drive that home. If anything, I think it makes our judgment even more valuable. Think about what AI can already do. It can analyze workforce data, identify patterns, highlight skill gaps, detect emerging trends, flag unusual turnover, recommend learning, predict workforce demand. It's incredible. But here's what it can't fully understand, as I said. Context. Someone had with their manager yesterday, right? It doesn't know that somebody has just become a parent. It doesn't know that someone has lost confidence after a project failed. It doesn't know that someone has finally found a leader who believes in them. That's why talent management remains fundamentally human. Technology gives us information. Leaders provide interpretation. Talent professionals provide judgment. The future isn't AI or humans. It's AI and humans. Exactly the same way I've spoken about recruitment. Exactly the same way I've spoken about augmented teams. The best talent functions won't replace relationships with technology. They'll use technology to have better relationships. I also think we need to challenge ourselves as talent professionals. Sometimes we're guilty of measuring what is easy rather than what matters. We count talent boards, we count succession plans, we count development plans, we count completed matrix, we we need to measure something different. How many internal promotions happened because somebody was deliberately developed? Not accidentally. How many careers changed because of a stretch assignment? How many people moved sideways and found renewed energy? How many future leaders did we actually create? How many managers became better coaches? How many opportunities did we create? Those feel like much better indicators of talent management than simply measuring whether the meeting happened because nobody ever says we've got fantastic talent management because we held four talent boards this year. They say this organization gave me opportunities. They invested in me. My leader believed in me. I've grown more here than anywhere else. That's the outcome. That's what we're actually trying to achieve. So perhaps the future isn't fewer talent boards. Perhaps it's better talent boards. Talent boards that spend less time gathering information and more time making decisions. Less time debating labels and more time creating opportunity. Less time asking who is high potential and more time asking what experience should we give them next. Because ultimately, talent isn't static, potential isn't static, careers aren't static, our governance shouldn't be static either. Before I finish, I want to leave you with one challenge. Next time you're preparing for a talent board, don't start by opening the succession plan. Start by asking yourself a different question. What have I learned about my people since the last talent board? Not from the dashboard, not from the matrix, not from PowerPoint, from conversations, from observations, from working alongside them. If that answer comes easily, you're practicing talent management. If you have to think really hard, maybe that's where the opportunity is. Thank you for joining me today. I hope this episode challenged your thinking. Maybe you agreed with me, maybe you completely disagreed, and both are perfectly okay. Because the best conversations in our profession, as I said, they don't happen when everybody agrees. They happen when good people challenge ideas respectfully and move the conversation forward. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd really appreciate if you followed the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, shared it with someone in talent, HRO leadership, or start a conversation on LinkedIn. As always, there are no guests, no sponsors, no hidden agenda. It's just me. One practitioner still on the tools, sharing what's on his mind, and hopefully encouraging our profession to keep evolving. Until next time, take care of yourselves, take care of your teams, and never stop building talent. See you in the next episode.