The Truth about Talent: A Guide to Building a Dynamic Workforce, Realizing Potential and Helping Leaders Succeed - Hardcover

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Jacqueline Davies
is a respected HR leader with 18 years' experience in strategic human resource management. She has led the global talent agendas in two FTSE top 10 companies and driven executive integration programmes for two of the largest acquisitions in corporate history. Jacqueline is a recognised thought leader in how companies can deploy talent strategies to achieve commercial advantage. Jacqueline is a non-executive director of two charities and has recently been appointed to the Advisory Board on Leadership Ethics at the Bristol Business School. She can be contacted at truthabouttalent@btinternet.com.

Jeremy Kourdi
is a writer and executive coach. His experience includes commercial leadership, writing and coaching expertise gained with leading brands. During his career he has worked in Europe, North America and the Middle East with a range of organizations including HSBC, Pearson, London Business School, IMD and he was Senior Vice-President with The Economist Group. For further information visit www.LeadershipExpertise.com.

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Key themes in the book are:

1. The need to revaluate how people contribute and create value in today's economy - it is about knowledge, innovation and relationships today rather than executive potential tomorrow.

2. Challenging the conventional wisdom that talent refers to a 'special few' rather than the 'vital many'. Perhaps we don't have enough because we keep looking in the wrong places and doing the wrong things?

3. Conditions facing organizations are tough and competitive and markets are turbulent. To withstand this, we need to build talented organizations and talented individuals.

4. Interdependence between people within and across organizations is critical. The way that each individual relies on each other and how talent is realised through social and team ties makes a decisive, defining difference.

5. Individuals control when and who their potential is shared with. The idea that an organization can manage talent and potential is an outdated conceit.

6. The nature of work itself matters hugely. The extent to which it is stimulating and engaging - and how people can make the connection with what they do and the wider difference it makes - is vital.

7. The way talent is generated is affected by the whole 'ecology' of an organization - its sense of purpose, rituals, the behaviour of its leaders, how it hires and how it fires people all influence the way talent is generated.

Aus dem Klappentext

Key themes in the book are:

1. You can't manage talent: it is mercurial, easily bored, opinionated and often lost.
2. The talented few are the overwhelming priority: while there is a top 10% of high performing employees – people who look good, work the system, attract the best investment and get to the top – focusing your attention exclusively on the top 10% while neglecting the rest is clearly flawed. Invest in your core, the talent right under your nose.
3. Getting people to fulfil their potential is a global challenge: if you don't invest in your people's skills, someone else will, and they are on the other side of the world. India and China continue to develop and their growth is no longer about cheap labour, outsourced call centres and mass manufacturing. Their economic model is shifting with more consumers, a growing middle class and more millionaires, scientists, research and development. The growth is sucking talent from the West.
4. Technical specialists matter as much – or more – than generalists. Why do we still lavish our attention on elite general managers? Specialists are invariably a firm's source of differentiation and competitive advantage. It's time to take them out of the backroom and onto the catwalk.
5. Talent, development and people management are part of the same issue: we need to find new ways of adapting to engage our people and help them to succeed.