At our March Human Capital Roundtable, real estate & real assets CHROs explored how organizations move beyond disconnected talent programs toward a coherent talent strategy. While many firms have strong initiatives in place, participants emphasized that the real challenge is embedding talent decisions into business strategy, leadership behavior, and operating cadence. The discussion surfaced practical approaches for aligning strategy, structure, and people; strengthening accountability through clearer role outcomes and metrics; and building leadership continuity across the organization. Here are our key takeaways.
1) Most organizations are still building a truly integrated talent strategy
- In our live poll, the majority of participants describe their current state as “coordinated initiatives with shared goals,” and almost 40% of participants thought their offerings are “a collection of strong but disconnected talent programs.”
- The discussion reinforced that “talent strategy” is not a set of strong programs; it is an integrated set of choices, priorities, trade-offs, and operating mechanisms tied to business outcomes.
- A consistent theme was that institutionalization, not design, is the hard part, and that the key is to embed talent choices into leader behaviors, decision-making, and cadence.
2) Strategy -> Structure -> People
Many participants faced issues where leaders want to hire “great talent” before clarifying the strategy, structure, and what success looks like in the role. Participants gave feedback around scorecards & role outcomes to mitigate this behavior:
- Define a small set of role outcomes (often 5 or fewer) to anchor hiring, assessment, and internal moves. This outcome-based framing makes it easier to depersonalize “legacy relationships” and focus on business needs, skill requirements, and cost/ROI.
- Using the same scorecard logic across hiring, performance, and development creates consistency and reduces “moving the goalposts.”
3) Data, measures, and accountability remain a major gap.
Participants identified data, measures, and accountability as the least institutionalized area, noting that the hardest part is building the discipline and comfort to hold leaders and their teams accountable to clear KPIs. One concrete practice shared is to establish role-based goals that cascade in the HR system, and reinforce them through recurring scorecards and monthly feedback loops.
4) Succession planning is most effective when treated as leadership continuity
Succession planning was the second-largest gap area, and the group aligned that it should extend beyond the CEO/C-suite into “roles a level below” and other critical positions. Across the participants, there were some learnings for C-suite successions:
- Conduct formal annual succession reviews with the board, document leadership deep-dives (SVP and above, plus VP pipelines), and have clear internal/external replacement plans.
- It is common to have robust annual conversations, but insufficient follow-through on development actions (exposure, coaching, assignments) between cycles. Creating Individual Development Plans and incentivizing leaders to follow through (financially and non-financially) helps elevate talent development as an expected part of leadership performance
As well as for mid-level leadership continuity:
- Structured programs at the VP/director levels focused on manager effectiveness: coaching, feedback, delegation, leadership presence, and “how work gets done.”
- Effective models included 360 assessments + external coaching, cohort-based development tied to promotion moments, and intentional exposure to senior business forums.
- A recurring insight: HR can support, but sustained impact happens when the business leads recruiting and development (with HR enabling the system).
5) Communication and repetition are the glue that makes talent strategy “feel like one plan”
- Participants emphasized that programs stay relevant when leaders keep a consistent narrative and connect initiatives back to business priorities repeatedly.
- Sharing wins and outcomes helps shift perception from “HR initiatives” to “how we run the business.”
- Practical examples included highlighting promotions and internal moves through newsletters, town halls, and quarterly communications to reinforce talent mobility and desired behaviors.