‘Sharpen your organisation’s saw’: Roger Talayaratne 

Members at the gathering   

Roger Talayaratne is a longstanding member of The Management Club. Armed with a Master’s Degree, he is a Qualified Marketer and a Certified Management Accountant with 27 years of experience. He enthralled the large audience with his unique presentation on ‘Sharpening the organisation’s saw’.

He spoke very vividly and indeed very eloquently to develop the competencies of the most important assets of any organisations, ‘Its People’. A brief yet interesting interaction followed his presentation. 

Companies invest in the best infrastructure, plan innovative strategies, devote the best resources, and still fail to realise that it is its people and their skills and competency that actually determine how well the job gets done vs. competition. 

At Ebenezer Double Edged Solutions we call this the companies ‘Traction Point’. Many companies fail to adequately and correctly invest in developing these competencies of their people and this causes suboptimal results; we call this ‘Wheel Slip’. This is easily proven when you calculate spend on people development percentage of other expenses and investments that the company incurred. It’s vital that companies follow the right process in developing people. 

Step 1. Understand the competencies need in the people in your company to take the company to the future.

Step 2. Measure the competencies of your key people by using assessments centres. 

Step 3. Invest in training to develop the required competencies in your people 

Step 4. Choose a training partner who is committed to tract the implementation in addition to just training.

Step 5. Review and link results to training objectives. It is important to engage the team and ensure everyone understands their role and contribution to the organisation’s goals and future. 

Right people with the right competencies will ensure your organisation gets the best chance to win even in perilous market conditions.

TMC February Members Speak: Comments from participants

Focus of the TMC member’s event this month was ‘People’. With his decades of experience in leading organisations to success, Roger Talayaratne inspired the minds of the audience by highlighting the importance of sharpening the saw of their organisations. 

As Roger clearly stated leaders have the habit of developing themselves continuously through reading, networking and participating in various learning activities. However, their effort on developing others is not given the same priority.

Taking many examples on how training and development increase effectiveness in building highly effective organisations, Roger has delivered a talk to remember while keeping the audience engaged and entertained throughout the presentation.  

The Management Club (TMC) has this unique event every month wherein a member of the TMC speaks on a topic that is relevant and pertinent to the times.

Taking a leaf out of Stephen Covey-Roger made a corollary of his own, probably we can name it Roger’s first habit of effective organisations! He called it – Sharpening the organisation’s saw!

This month we had the privilege to listen to a very practical speaker – Roger Talayaratne. The talk was outstanding as it was interspersed with many practical examples. The stand out example was the analogy Roger gave of a Vehicle Tyre. In all of the 100% of the tyre it is just about a small percentage that makes traction with the road and that is what really matters! 

Similarly, in an organisation, all strategies, investments and plans will come to a naught if the person meeting the customer or touching the market is not ready or inadequately prepared or not sufficiently motivated/confident.

Thus, it is essential to build and sustain an organisation in these turbulent and disruptive times by developing the staff and team members. Most of the leaders take pains to develop and train themselves but neglect the team below them. It goes a long way in managing and retaining the talented youth today in organisations. At times money is overlooked if the organisation has a conducive culture and a career development plan in place. Kudos to Roger for making the talk extremely simple which really captivated all the audience present.