The Truth about Talent: A guide to building a dynamic workforce, realizing potential and helping leaders succeed

CONCLUSION

Creating a Talent Flywheel

Our aim in writing this book has been to highlight where talent management thinking is limited and propose a more effective alternative. Our first hand experience and research tells us that an alternative is overdue. Our organizations require an approach that is simple and competitive. Our colleagues need this to be compelling. We can no longer operate in the belief that talent is an absolute quality that applies strictly to the most able individuals. Nor can we continue to think about talent as something that the organization controls and manages. The world has moved on.

The world we now live in demands much more of us. This is changing the way we need to work and how we choose to shape our careers. The 'Capability Crunch' is the biggest threat to our competitiveness and organizations must act to reach the potential of all their people. This isn't about training it's about engaging. This means being resolutely clear about the purpose of your organization; why it exists and how it will make a difference. It also involves organizing work in ways that allow people to 'dial up and down' to balance personal commitments. We must also realize that humans need work to be stimulating. We love to learn, we relish solving things and we are built to be creative. We guarantee that the absence of stimulating work will dry up your talent supply.

Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion we have drawn from our research is the importance of belief in the talent ...