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Why talent management has become a leadership issue
Organizations recognize the need to attract and successfully manage talented people, but with the balance of power lying in the hands of the cleverest and most talented, this requires both courage and consideration. Marcus Powell and Guy Lubitsh of Ashridge Consulting discuss the results of recent talentmanagement research and propose a five-point plan.
TALENT MANAGEMENT HAS moved rapidly up the corporate agenda in recent years. Some regard it as the new holy grail, or the silver bullet, and it's now a central theme driving strategic human resource management. Recognizing the importance of taking a strategic approach, organizations across all sectors are investing heavily in their talent management systems, bringing in new and sophisticated software, undertaking reviews and utilizing assessment centers, devising new development plans and restructuring their approach to career management and succession planning.
In a global survey of over 9,000 executives, the supply of talent was ranked as the most significant managerial challenge.1 Yet from an individual's perspective there has been a shift away from a psychological contract that provides job security and a mutual employment relationship, towards one where employees have the luxury of picking and choosing employers who offer them the right form of currency, such as work/life balance or developmental activities. Now, as never before, talented people are a force to be reckoned with - and companies ignore their wishes, motives, needs and expectations at their peril.
In this context, the key question remains: Does the traditional approach to talent management have sufficient flexibility to evoke the right responses from the broadest spectrum of talent and, most particularly, from the most talented individuals? Following the recent publication of Ashridge Consulting's research on talent management, in this article we discuss the crucial development of a culture in which "clever" people can flourish.
Extraordinary talent knows its worth
Rob Coffee and Gareth Jones have coined the phrase "clever" to refer to a distinct group of talented people.2 They are "the handful of employees whose ideas, knowledge and skills give them the potential to produce disproportionate value from the resources they have available to them." They're the creative people, the innovators and the entrepreneurs - those people that seem to have a sixth sense for...