The question most businesses haven’t asked yet

AI is doing what it promised.

Faster research. Cleaner analysis. First-draft everything. The tools work, and the productivity data is starting to confirm what early adopters already knew: this isn’t incremental improvement. McKinsey’s 2024 research found that businesses using AI effectively are seeing productivity gains of 20–40% in knowledge work. Not efficiency gains. Productivity gains. Same people, significantly more output.

But here’s the question most businesses are skipping straight past: what are your people actually doing with the capacity that’s being released?

Because if you haven’t thought about that deliberately, the answer is probably: more of the same.

The transactional layer isn’t where your value is created

Most knowledge roles carry a significant load of work that is, if we’re honest, transactional and repeatable. Coordinating. Summarising. Formatting. Chasing. Preparing. Updating.

This isn’t wasted effort, it keeps things moving. But it’s not where the value is created. Value is created in the thinking, the relationships, the judgment calls, the creative problem-solving, the decisions that require context and experience and genuine understanding of the business.

The uncomfortable truth is that for many businesses, the people best placed to do the high-value work are spending a disproportionate amount of their time on the transactional layer. Not because they’re inefficient. Because the transactional layer has always been part of the job.

AI is changing that. The question is whether businesses are changing with it.

A 2023 study from MIT found that AI tools reduced the time workers spent on routine cognitive tasks by up to 37%. That’s significant capacity. But capacity without direction doesn’t become productivity , it can get quietly refilled with more transactional work, or people spend it on things that feel busy but don’t move the business forward.

What are you planning to do with that 37%?

Most businesses don’t have a clear answer because they haven’t done the planning

This is where workforce planning becomes urgent rather than academic.

Workforce planning is the process of understanding what your business needs in terms of skills, capabilities and behaviours, not just now, but 12, 24, 36 months from now and making deliberate decisions about how you get there. Who you develop. Who you hire. What the shape of roles looks like as the work evolves.

Most scaling businesses haven’t done it properly. Many haven’t done it at all.

The CIPD’s Good Work Index found that only 30% of SME employers have a clear workforce plan that connects to their business strategy. The rest are making hiring decisions reactively, filling vacancies as they appear, rather than shaping the workforce toward where the business is going.

That was a manageable gap when the pace of change was slower. It’s a significant risk now.

If you don’t have a clear view of what skills and capabilities your business needs to deliver its next phase of growth, you can’t answer the AI question properly. You don’t know which roles are likely to change shape, which new capabilities you’ll need, or where the highest-value human work actually lives in your business.

You end up deploying AI tools on top of an unreconstructed workforce model and getting mixed results.

What happens when you get this right

The businesses getting the most from AI aren’t just the ones with the best tools. They’re the ones who are being deliberate about what the human role is.

They’ve thought about which work requires human judgment, creativity, relationships, and context and they’ve designed roles and teams around that work. They’ve freed their people from the transactional layer not as a cost exercise, but as a capability exercise. Because when people are doing the work they’re actually good at, the work that requires them to think, create, build relationships, solve problems, they are more productive, more engaged, and more valuable to the business.

This isn’t a theory. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report consistently shows that employees who feel their strengths are being used are significantly more productive and significantly less likely to leave. The businesses that design for this, that are intentional about where human capability is focused build teams that compound in value rather than plateau.

The reverse is also true. Businesses that use AI to do more of the same, without redesigning what the human layer is for, tend to find that the productivity gains are short-lived. The capacity gets absorbed. The people feel underutilised. The competitive advantage disappears because everyone has access to the same tools.

The advantage isn’t the technology. It’s what you build on top of it.

The questions worth sitting with

If you’re a founder or leader of a scaling business, here are the questions I’d encourage you to take seriously:

On your workforce:

• Do you have a clear view of what skills, capabilities and behaviours your business needs to deliver its strategy over the next two years?
• Are the right people focused on the high-value work, or are they carrying too much transactional load?
• How would your roles need to change if 30% of the routine cognitive work disappeared?

On your use of AI:

• Are you using AI to do more of the same, or to do different things?
• Where in your business is AI releasing capacity and is that capacity being redirected deliberately?
• Which roles in your business are likely to change shape significantly in the next 24 months, and are you planning for that?

On your human layer:

• What is the work in your business that genuinely requires human judgment, creativity, and relationship?
• Are the people best placed to do that work actually doing it?
• What would need to change for them to spend 80% of their time there?

These aren’t hypothetical questions. They’re the questions that determine whether your business is building competitive advantage or drifting toward irrelevance, not because of AI, but because of what you decide to do with it.

Where to start

The place most businesses need to begin is with honest workforce planning. A clear-eyed look at where the business is going, what it needs from its people to get there, and whether the current workforce model is designed to deliver that.

That conversation usually surfaces some uncomfortable truths. It also usually surfaces significant opportunity roles that could be redesigned, capabilities that are being underused, people who are capable of more but are being kept busy with the wrong things.

If this is a conversation you haven’t had yet, it’s probably overdue.

Start with our Free Diagnostic →

Or if you’d rather talk it through directly: Book a conversation with Nici →

<p>The post The Human Layer first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

There’s a lot of noise right now about AI and performance management.

New tools promise to automate your review process, generate objectives, summarise feedback, and cut the time managers spend on admin from hours to minutes. Some of them are genuinely impressive. The technology is moving fast and the efficiency gains are real.

But there is something important being lost in the conversation. And it matters particularly for founders of high growth/scaling businesses, where the people setup is still being built and the team is still finding its feet.

AI can build you a framework. It cannot build you a team.

Let me explain what I mean.

The businesses I work with are typically between 15 – 50 people. They’ve grown fast, hired people they know, like and trust, and the founder has been so focused on the business itself that the people infrastructure has quietly lagged behind. No clear objectives for most roles. No development plans. Review conversations that happen occasionally and feel awkward when they do.

When I ask founders why, the answer is almost always the same. There isn’t time. The team doesn’t have experience building this. It keeps getting pushed to next month.

These are real constraints. I understand them. And in that context, the idea of an AI tool that can generate a performance review template or draft a set of objectives in seconds sounds genuinely appealing.

Here’s where I would push back.

The framework was never the hard part. Most founders already know roughly what good looks like in each role. They know who is performing and who isn’t. They have a sense of who has potential and who has plateaued. The hard part is the conversation. Sitting across from someone and being honest. Talking through what’s working and discussing what needs to change. Making a person feel genuinely seen and not just processed.

That cannot be delegated to a tool. Not now and not in the foreseeable future.

What AI can legitimately help with in a growing business is the scaffolding. Use it to build a template for objectives that your managers can adapt. Use it to create a simple one-to-one structure that keeps development conversations on track. Use it to draft the written summary after a review conversation so the manager can focus on the conversation itself rather than the paperwork.

But the conversation still has to happen. The manager still has to have the skill and the confidence to lead it. The expectation still has to be set clearly before the review, not invented in the moment. And someone in the business still has to care enough about development to make sure these conversations actually take place.

This is where most growing businesses struggle. Not with the template. With the habit.

I see it consistently. A founder invests in an HR tool. The tool is good. It sits unused because nobody has the confidence to use it properly, or the culture hasn’t caught up with the process, or the managers feel the whole thing is an HR exercise rather than something that actually helps them lead their teams.

The technology does not solve the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that the basics of good people management — clear expectations, honest feedback, genuine development conversations — haven’t been established as a normal part of how the business operates.

There is a line I come back to often: business is still about people. It always will be.

AI is genuinely useful. I use it. I encourage founders I work with to use it. It can save time, reduce the administrative burden on managers, and help build consistency across a team that is growing faster than its processes.

But it is a tool in service of human judgment, not a replacement for it. The founder who thinks they can solve their people challenges by buying a better platform is going to be disappointed. The founder who uses the platform to free up more time for the actual conversations — that is a different story.

If you are building a team right now, the most valuable thing you can do is not find a better tool. It is to get clear on what good looks like in each role, make sure your managers know how to have a development conversation, and create enough of a rhythm that feedback is normal rather than annual.

AI can help you build the structure. But you still have to show up for the people inside it.

Nici

P.S. If you’re not sure where your biggest people gaps are right now, the People Blindspot Finder takes five minutes and gives you an honest picture. Link here: The People Blindspot Finder

<p>The post Everyone’s talking about AI and performance management. Here’s what it can’t do. first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

What Investors Look at Before They Look at Your Numbers

Originally published in the Talent Gateway newsletter.

The question that derails deals

There’s a moment in many investment processes that founders don’t see coming.

The numbers are strong. The growth story is compelling. The founder is articulate and credible. And then someone on the other side of the table asks a question — quiet, almost conversational — that the founder hasn’t prepared for.

Something like: if you stepped back from the business for six months, who would run it?

Or: which members of your leadership team could operate without you in the room?

Or simply: what happens to this business if you get hit by a bus?

It’s not a trick question. It’s one of the most important questions an investor can ask. And the founders who answer it badly — who hesitate, or who give an answer that doesn’t quite hold up — have handed over a significant piece of negotiating leverage without realising it.

The problem almost never starts in the due diligence room. It starts much earlier, in the years before anyone was asking.

What investors are actually looking for

Most founders assume investor scrutiny on the people side means: do you have good people? It’s a reasonable assumption. It’s also incomplete.

What institutional investors are really asking is something more specific. They’re trying to understand whether this business can scale and perform without being entirely dependent on one or two people — usually the founder. Whether there’s a plan, not just a team. Whether the leadership infrastructure exists to support the next stage, not just the current one.

There are five dimensions where I see this scrutiny land most often.

One: founder dependency

How much of the business runs through you personally? Not just the decisions — the relationships, the institutional knowledge, the things that only work because you’re the one doing them.

A business with a strong product and a compelling market can still be uninvestable if the answer to this question is ‘almost everything.’ It’s not a reflection on the founder’s ability. It’s a structural risk. Investors are buying future performance, not past performance — and a business that depends entirely on one person is a fragile investment.

The founders who navigate this well have usually already done the work of building the team around them, creating documented processes, and being honest with themselves about which things genuinely need them and which things they’ve just never let go of.

Two: leadership team depth

Can the people directly beneath you actually lead — or do they manage tasks and escalate decisions?

This is a harder question than it sounds. Many businesses at the 20–50 person stage have people in senior titles who are, in practice, still operating at a level below what the title suggests. Not because they’re not capable — often because the business has grown around them faster than their role has been redefined.

Investors want to see a leadership team that can make decisions, hold accountability, and develop the people beneath them. Not a group of talented individuals who are good at their specific function but haven’t been built into a team.

Three: clarity of roles and ownership

I sat with a senior leadership team recently — six people, three of them with over a decade in the business. On paper they looked like a strong, experienced team. In practice, nobody was quite sure who owned what. Things got done twice or not at all. Frustration was building quietly beneath the surface.

This is extraordinarily common at the growth stage. The business scales faster than the structure does, and the people inside it adapt by doing whatever needs doing — which works, until it doesn’t.

Investors notice this quickly. Not because they’re looking for a perfect org chart, but because ambiguity about ownership is a reliable predictor of execution problems at the next stage. If nobody is quite sure who’s responsible for something now, that problem compounds when the business is twice the size.

Four: a talent plan, not just a headcount

Most businesses have a hiring plan. Far fewer have a talent plan — a considered answer to the question of what the business actually needs from its people over the next two to three years, how it will attract and keep those people, and what happens when it doesn’t.

An investor thinking about putting money into a business is implicitly also thinking about the people that money will need to work through. If the answer to ‘what’s your talent strategy?’ is a list of open roles, that’s not a strategy. It’s a wish list.

The businesses that answer this question well have usually been deliberate about it — worked through their EVP, thought about which roles are business-critical, have an honest view of their current team’s capability versus where they need to get to.

Five: culture that can scale

Culture is the hardest of the five to articulate and the easiest to dismiss as soft. Investors don’t dismiss it.

What they’re looking for isn’t a values statement on a wall. They want to understand whether the way this business operates — the real norms, not the stated ones — will survive being 3x the current size. Whether the things that make it work now will translate, or whether they’re entirely dependent on the founder’s personal influence holding everything together.

A culture that can scale has been made somewhat explicit — people can describe it, and more importantly, they can describe what it isn’t. The businesses where culture is just ‘vibes’ tend to fragment under growth pressure in ways that are expensive and slow to fix.

The case for finding out now

None of this is terminal if you find it now. All of it is more difficult to fix under the pressure of a live process.

Due diligence is a bad time to discover you have a significant founder dependency problem. Or that your leadership team, for all their talent, hasn’t been built into something that can operate without you. Or that your talent plan is a spreadsheet of headcount targets rather than a considered strategy.

The founders who come through investment processes well are almost never the ones who’ve been lucky. They’re the ones who started asking these questions early — who did the diagnostic work, faced what it showed them, and built the things that needed building before the pressure hit.

That work takes time. Which is exactly why the right time to start is now, not when someone is asking the questions across a table.

If you’re thinking about investment or exit in the next few years, the Investment Readiness Assessment benchmarks your business across all five dimensions. It takes five minutes and gives you an honest picture of where you stand before anyone else is looking. talentgateway.net/investment-readiness-assessment

Nici

P.S. Next week I’m going to write about the one people decision that trips up almost every founder going through a growth transition — and why the obvious answer is usually the wrong one.

<p>The post What Investors Look for in your leaders that changes the terms first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

In the whirlwind of scaling a business, it’s easy for you as a leadership team to be swept up in the momentum, often taking on more responsibilities than ever before. While this approach fuels rapid growth, there comes a crucial juncture where pausing to plan a comprehensive talent strategy becomes imperative for sustainable success. This is particularly true for businesses which have experienced rapid growth and are now poised for the next phase of expansion.

Step 1: Assess Current Talent Capabilities

Before diving into talent strategy, take a step back and assess your current talent pool. Ask yourselves: Do we have the right people in the right roles? Are there skill gaps that need addressing? This evaluation will provide a clear picture of your workforce’s strengths and areas for improvement, laying the groundwork for a targeted talent strategy.

Step 2: Align Talent Strategy with Business Goals

Your talent strategy should be a direct reflection of your business objectives. This alignment ensures that every hiring or training initiative directly contributes to your company’s growth targets. Determine what skills and roles will be critical in the next phase of your business and plan accordingly.

Step 3: Invest in Leadership Development

As your business grows, so should your leaders. Investing in the development of your leadership team is crucial. They need to evolve from hands-on managers to strategic thinkers who can steer the company through its next growth phase. Consider leadership training programs or mentorship opportunities. Sometimes, looking for external mentors can work well.

Step 4: Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning

Creating a culture where continuous learning is valued not only helps in upskilling your current workforce but also makes your company more attractive to prospective talent. Encourage your team to engage in ongoing professional development, and provide them with the resources to do so.

Step 5: Embrace Flexibility and Innovation in Talent Management

The traditional models of talent management may not suffice in the dynamic environment of a rapidly growing business and particularly in this continued changing talent landscape. Be open to innovative approaches, such as remote work, flexible hours, or project-based roles, to attract and retain top talent.

In Summary

Taking the time to develop a robust talent strategy is not a detour from growth; it’s a vital step towards ensuring your business is structured to thrive in its next phase. By assessing your current talent, aligning strategy with business goals, investing in leadership, fostering a culture of learning, and embracing innovative talent management, you’ll be well on your way to sustainable success. Remember, the right talent strategy is your key to unlocking the full potential of your fast-growing business.

<p>The post Planning to Succeed: The Critical Role of Talent Strategy in Business Growth first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

In the complex and ever-evolving landscape of leadership, one trait stands out as a cornerstone of success: self-awareness. The ability to understand one’s own strengths, weaknesses, communication styles, and motivations is not only crucial for personal growth but also for effective leadership. Self-awareness empowers leaders to make informed decisions, connect with their teams, and navigate challenges.

Harnessing the power of psychometric tools can significantly enhance a leader’s self-awareness and consequently, their leadership prowess.

The Essence of Self-Awareness in Leadership

At the heart of self-awareness lies the understanding of one’s personality, behaviour, and emotional responses. A self-aware leader possesses insights into their strengths and limitations, which enables them to leverage their strengths and proactively address areas that require improvement. This awareness extends beyond personal traits to encompass interpersonal dynamics, allowing leaders to adapt their communication styles to resonate with different team members. Such a leader is better equipped to lead by example, communicate effectively, and foster an environment of open communication and trust.

The Role of Psychometric Tools

Psychometric tools, rooted in psychological principles, offer a structured way to uncover various dimensions of an individual’s personality and behaviour. These tools, like Hogan Assessments, Clarity 4D, Insights, Thomas International, and DISC, provide data-driven insights into one’s preferences, tendencies, and cognitive patterns. By using these tools, leaders gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the intricacies of their interactions with others.

Enhancing Self-Awareness through Psychometric Tools

1. Personal Insight: Psychometric tools provide comprehensive reports detailing an individual’s personality traits, communication styles, and work preferences. These insights offer leaders a mirror into their own behaviour, highlighting both strengths to leverage and areas for growth.
2. Communication Styles: Effective leadership hinges on communication. Understanding one’s preferred communication style and recognizing the diverse styles of team members leads to improved collaboration and reduced misunderstandings. Insights from tools like Clarity 4D and Insights enable leaders to tailor their communication for optimal engagement.
3. Team Dynamics: A leader’s self-awareness extends to recognizing team members’ strengths and differences. Armed with psychometric data, leaders can strategically build teams that complement each other, resulting in a harmonious and productive work environment.
4. Conflict Resolution: Conflict is inevitable in any team. Self-aware leaders can use psychometric insights to identify potential sources of conflict and proactively manage them. This prevents escalation and fosters an atmosphere of mutual respect.
5. Emotional Intelligence: Effective leaders possess high emotional intelligence. Psychometric tools provide insights into emotional tendencies, enabling leaders to manage their emotions and respond empathetically to team members.
6. Personal Growth: Continuous improvement is a hallmark of successful leadership. Psychometric assessments highlight areas for development, guiding leaders toward targeted growth efforts that directly impact their leadership capabilities.

In leadership, knowing yourself well is like having a map to make good choices, communicate better, and work well with your team. Tools that measure your personality can help you learn about yourself in an organized way. As you get to know yourself better, you can build strong teams, handle problems confidently, and find lasting success. In today’s complex leadership world, using these tools isn’t just a choice – it’s a strategic imperative.

Here is just a small list of some of the psychometric tools we’ve used at Talent Gateway.

1. Hogan Assessments: Hogan Assessments is a suite of personality assessments that provide insights into an individual’s work-related personality traits and behaviours. The assessments are designed to predict workplace performance, leadership potential, and potential areas of strengths and development. Hogan Assessments include tools such as the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI). These tools help organizations make informed decisions about hiring, development, and team dynamics.
2. Clarity 4D: Clarity 4D is a personality profiling tool that categorizes individuals into four different personality types: Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue. Each color represents certain traits and tendencies. This tool is often used to enhance communication, teamwork, and personal development within teams. It helps individuals understand their own and others’ communication styles, preferences, and strengths, which can lead to improved collaboration and more effective interpersonal relationships.
3. Insights Discovery: Insights Discovery is a psychometric tool based on the work of Carl Jung’s personality theory. It categorizes individuals into four colour energies: Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green, and Cool Blue. These colours represent different personality preferences and communication styles. Insights Discovery is used for personal and professional development, team building, and enhancing communication skills. It aims to increase self-awareness, improve relationships, and promote effective communication strategies within teams.
4. Thomas International: Thomas International offers a range of psychometric assessments and tools for various purposes, including recruitment, talent management, and employee development. Their assessments cover personality traits, cognitive abilities, and behavioural preferences. Thomas assessments help organizations make informed decisions during the hiring process, create development plans for employees, and build high-performing teams by matching individuals’ strengths to roles and tasks.
5. DISC Assessment: The DISC assessment is a widely used tool for understanding behavioural styles and preferences. It categorizes individuals into four main personality types: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). The DISC assessment is often used for team building, leadership development, and improving communication. By identifying one’s own and others’ DISC styles, individuals can adapt their communication and behaviour to collaborate more effectively and create harmonious work environments.

<p>The post The Power of Self-Awareness: Using Psychometric Tools to Enhance Leadership Effectiveness first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

<p>The post How to write a great job advert toolkit first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

<p>The post Company culture in your Start-up first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

In such a fast paced technology driven world we live in, having a growth mindset enables us to stay positive and continutally grow as individuals and teams.   For those with a growth mindset, obstacles are seen as opportunities to achieve more and enables us to expand our creativity and innovation rather than running away from challenge in the belief that they don’t have the right skills or knowledge.  

We work allot with scale up businesses and what is clear is that those individuals who thrive in these sometimes fronetic environments have a growth mentality.  I was keen to learn more about this and whether it is something that we are born with or whether it is a skill we can develop.

Through my research I discovered Dr. Carol Dweck and have watched several of her talks and read much of her work.Whilst her work is focuses on children and developing a growth mindset and the positive impacts this has, it is completely relevant to all of us at every stage of our lives.

Dweck suggests, that if you apply ‘yet’ to the end of statements it encourages a growth mindset.  For example: I don’t understand behavioural economics ‘yet’ or my budgeting skills aren’t what they need to be ‘yet’.  The results are astounding.

If businesses want to build a culture of experimentation, learning and growth then setting learning goals rather than performance goals delivers better results.  It enables the following attributes which empower learning and growth and more of a risk taking  and rapid experimentation culture:

• Perseverance
• Creativeily
• Optimism
• Collaboration
• Resillience
• Determination

How do you grow and develop.  How do you develop your growth mentality?

I challenge you to start applying ‘yet’ and I guarantee you will see a difference.  Share your experience over the coming weeks….

Sources: https://www.bigthinkedge.com/what-does-it-mean-to-have-a-growth-mindset/

<p>The post The importance of a growth mindset culture in your scale up first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

We have built this playbook based on our experience over the last decade. Much has changed but there are common themes which remain constant. Now more than ever seems like the right time to share because scale ups face a fiercely competitive market and the challenge of building out teams at pace, embedding talent acquisition processes and using technology to improve the candidate experience is vital. The insights are practical and based on experience across multiple sectors globally.

1. The importance of hiring managers being able to interview well and to feel confident in their abilities.  
2. Understanding your employer value proposition is key to standing out from the crowd
3. Ensuring you communicate your employer value proposition through your careers site and social platforms ‘tells your story’
4. It’s not what you do it’s the way that you–do it – candidate experience is vital
5. How to advertise out of your own network effectively and how to utilize your network to extend your reach
6. Think about the sequence of scaling your hiring – don’t try to onboard too many people at any one time, the impact on a small scaling business can be huge
7. How to understand and read your candidate market – you might want to consider left field options
8. Why you must consider your business culture when hiring- this goes back to the candidate experience.  There needs to be a match between what the candidate thinks they are buying in to and what they actually experience.

We are always happy to offer guidance or support if you are facing challenges. Drop us a note: info@talentgateway.net and one of our team with come back to you. Happy reading!

<p>The post Take aways from the playbook first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>

<p>The post Hybrid working-legal considerations first appeared on Talent Gateway.</p>