Fit

CHAPTER 1 TALENT IS NOT THE ANSWER

Over the last few decades we have become increasingly obsessed with high performance, in the sporting arena and in business. We've needed to be, because competition is fierce. In business customers are much more discerning; in sport there is considerably more money involved. As a result it's become necessary to squeeze every last drop of value from every resource and to find a way to elevate performance across the board. Not only is breakthrough development harder and harder to come by but the information, knowledge and insights around those breakthroughs are also becoming harder and harder to protect. We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, and this drive for elevated performance is not going to subside. If anything, it will accelerate.

The problem is that, so far, all the solutions put forward to address performance have focused on what someone does. When it comes to securing high performance, conventional wisdom tells us that talent is the answer.

Our collective obsession with talent was largely started by McKinsey & Company. Of course, when one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world talks, people listen. During the dotcom boom of the 1990s McKinsey launched an initiative called the War for Talent. The objective was to find out what made top-performing American companies different when it came to hiring, firing and promotion. They distributed thousands of questionnaires to businesses across ...