
CHAPTER 8
T
HE
A
RT
OF
D
EPLOYMENT
Nothing is more difficult than the art of
maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver
is to make the devious route the most direct
and turn misfortune to advantage.
—S
UN
T
ZU
,
T
HE
A
RT OF
W
AR
The best t alent strategies are useless without sol id executio n. For
the talent stra tegis t, executio n takes the form of leadership deploy-
ment—the abili ty to levera ge an organi zatio n’s stronge st lead ers
against its biggest b usiness cha lleng es. Deploym ent is one of the
talent ma nager ’s most underutilized weapons. Man y of us get so
caught up in analyzin g the front-end co mponents of talen t mana ge-
ment, such as leadership recru ...