Talent Management

Sometimes an apparently random topic catches your eye, and then you start to see it all around you. That’s happened to me recently with the topic of “talent management,” so I thought I’d share a smattering of what’s out there and written with your boss, or you, in mind. The term used to refer to the care and hiring of models, actors and athletes, but now seems to bring the cachet of those worlds to less celebrated lines of work. Boning up on talent management may help you manage the talent working for you, or help you direct how your boss manages the talent that is you.

The Future of Work Weblog is an interesting blog from the organization of the same name (a membership organization for HR, IT and facilities professionals). It links to another evolving-workplace blog called Future Tense. Both of these sites explore the peculiarities of managing the new generation of workers. (If you don’t have any of those workers, you might read CIO’s The Kids Are All Right, on recruiting and training entry level workers.) There are upsides (creativity, assertiveness) and downsides (entitlement, casualness) that you need to work with.

In Agility: The Next Talent Management Imperative, Tony DiRomualdo of Next Generation Consulting says, “Creating work environments that promote people agility across jobs and organizational boundaries is the next imperative for companies seeking competitive advantage through their talent.”

Marshall Magazine, from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, has a faculty article in its current (but still kind of old) issue called How to Grow Global Executives. While conceding that “one doesn’t get to be CEO on a platform of talent management” (the prize going instead to the biggest bottom line), the authors offer a six-point approach to gaining a deeper bench across the organization.

No revolutionary theories revealed, but the methodical line of attack may be noteworthy in itself–and unusual enough. The steps are:

1. Get a strategy in place.
2. Translate the strategy into challenges.
3. Design a process for helping executives learn the essential lessons.
4. Vaccinate against failure.
5. Mind the transitions.
6. Stay the course.