Corporate Talent Detection and Development

1 Rethinking the Issue of “Talent Development”

1.1. Crisis at stake: the crisis is that of thought. We’ve forgotten where we think from

1.1.1. The forgetting of an “ability to think” attitude

Over the last two months, the human resources departments of two companies have been verbalizing a problem for which they do not know how to “get out” of or how to “think” about it. In both cases, this issue might have seemed trivial, as it was inserted into a broader discussion of talents and skills. However, if we look at the latter from a strategic point of view, we detect weak (but increasing) signs that allow us to draw a correlation and consequently a trend.

The first company – with more than 180,000 employees – finds itself stuck in its jobs “site” because of years of technical and declarative writing related to the organization’s professions. None of these professions, like all the companies that we know of in France, including those run by foreign parent companies, address the question of the abilities and skills (in the operative sense and not the “human qualities” sense) underlying competencies. Blocked by semantics rationalized by decades of concepts of “suitcase expressions” and (meaningful) words without (meaningless) observable principles, this company, like so many others, finds itself caught up in the meshes of its model, like a fisherman, falling then drowning in his own nets, unable to untangle himself. The HRD we met told us: “the repository is more focused on technical ...