Challenge  A digital transformation services firm recently acquired a boutique analytics firm. A plan of  three years in integration was met with unanticipated hurdles imposing  to cultural  differences in people processes who deal with processes .One major concern was with  respect to talent acquisition practices. While the holding firm adhered to a traditional  hierarchical structure, the set up they acquired was more flat and largely based on millennial  talent. Intermediate  managers formed the intrinsic key to make this integration successful,  however, they needed to align on new hiring practices to meet resource skill mix required for  new projects. The key decision makers included a mix of varying seniority levels and domain  expertise which led to varying degrees of participation in prior group discussions.    Selection    In order to create a comfortable environment for the discussion of conflicting ideas, we  leveraged the mind-mapping tool in a series of brainstorming sessions. The intention of  these sessions was to create a common area for talent acquisition needs and bubble up  values and skill sets that would match it. We chose a combination of brainstorming  techniques along with mind-mapping in order to eliminate biases arising from the  HIPPO effect.    Application    We started by narrowing down the group from 30 decision makers to 7 decision makers who  are representative of the larger group. Before the first brainstorming session, we shared an  agenda to the group with 3 questions that needed to be addressed in the brainstorming  session. Through the week leading up to the brainstorming session, we started informal  communication over e-mail on ideas that the group was thinking through about the end-state  vision of the new talent acquisition process, references on industry best practices, current  skill matrix and measures of evaluation of a candidate.    On the day of the brainstorming session, we used the nominal group technique to elicit ideas  from each person in the room to address this question - “What are the qualities you seek in  an ideal candidate at x level?” to start off. Instead of a traditional white-boarding session in  the boardroom, we shifted to a break-out area with glass walls. The moderator of the session  handed post-it notes, pen and paper to every person. Every quality was written on a post-it  note and pasted on the glass wall as it was submitted to the moderator. We continued this  exercise till the whole group was exhausted with inputs on that particular question.  Thereafter, the moderator grouped similar post-its together and the group took a  coffee-break.    The grouped themes were logged in an excel worksheet. The same process was repeated to  answer the other 2 questions i.e. “If you could, what would you change about the existing  talent acquisition process?” and “What are your non-negotiable values at the workplace?”.  The post-it notes were grouped, posted on the walls and exposed to the larger group for the  rest of the week for observation and inputs for the rest of the week. The moderator collected

feedback and shared a summary of the information elicited from this exercise in the form of a  mind-map (used xmind).    Insight & Approach  With this exercise, I have learnt that it’s easy to articulate difficult ideas if the problem is de- constructed in an approachable manner. Finding a common ground with a diverse set of  participants with varying technical and business expertise became easier once multitude of  perspectives were mapped into themed values/qualities/skill sets of a potential candidate.  Changing from a routine approach to brainstorming with a new format and different physical  environment stimulated the whole group to participate more openly that led to seamless  collaboration over a difficult problem.    There is also an alternative for it.We could have leveraged the visualization tool to  showcase existing talent acquisition processes and an ideal employee map to encourage a  directed conversation. If the focal point of the discussion was something visual, it would help  stakeholders to come to the root of an issue faster.

