Increasing the value of your company is not just about “collecting talented people.” It’s about aligning your people with the company’s overall strategy, getting them to buy-in and to commit to a common vision. More importantly, you need to compel them to work towards the idea not because you told them – but because you gave them impassioned reasons to do it. Only then will employees take responsibility for how their actions affect the business. The days of simple command-and-control structures: I lead you follow – are over.

Companies today need leaders who are capable of managing a community of people with a common mission willing to routinely operate at levels of peak performance. That’s how organizations compete in a knowledge based economy as centres of excellence – without leaving dead bodies at every gun fight.

Are you Quick or Dead?

Talent as we all know is not the person – it is the ability for someone to bring a certain skill set to the table and leverage that for the production of some work, service, etc. To call that most people are untalented – that is a far cry from the truth and short-sighted. Frankly I know a lot of non talented people when they are in the office, however have great Fantasy Football teams or are superior at Guitar Hero. Bottom line it is simply not talent that anyone in the work field is interested in.

What people are looking for is a SKILL SET, one that allows a person to come into a particular job, do it with the most amazing efficiency, handle complex issues, and grasp company nuances in a matter of minutes. That is some that is TALENTED but only as it relates to a specific position. Talent can be defined as everyone, or better yet no one – all depends on what your measuring it against.

So when it comes to talent as we are so defining it, yes I want everyone in my company to be talented and we do not hire people that are not. The measurement for that talent is depending on the function in which they will be doing, and therefore the scale is adjusted accordingly.

Throwing a 98 mph fastball

Sixth Dan in Aikido

Typing 100 wpm

Writing OO Perl code that automates the Oracle provisioning tasks of a DBA

A young model who earns $20M/year

Being able to scam people and the government with a $50 Billion Ponzi scheme

(yes, talent is both good and evil)

We have a generation of people who have grown up believing they’re all special, all deserving of being number one, all carrying within them the words of people – parents – who told them they are talented.

The government and all associated pollyhannas want them to belief this too.

Media gives people their 15 minutes of fame and these people believe they are now talented. The middle class looks at their lot in life, looks at a CEO earning $1 Million/year, and believes that because somewhere inside is a voice that is still telling them they’re talented and deserving, want that same $1 Million and if they can’t get it, will try and pull down that person who is at the top of the pedestal.

You need more than a pat on the back to be at the top of the game.

“It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one’s nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.” ~Wystan Auden

It’s so nice to have him here that I am really tempted to just agree with his definitions.

And, I do agree that he does a wonderful job defining the kinds of people who create the most value in our organizations. Jeff’s entire series on Talentism is an amazing dissertation on the way we can and should harness human capital. Jeff, more than any other thinker in the business wrestled all of the meaning out of the question. (oh, my faint heart, why doesn’t he write more often).

Sadly, people don’t use Jeff’s definitions any more than they use the fabled FSLTP (oops, I mean the UsGOOP or was it the JKLMNOP?). Jeff’s definition is the way ‘talent’ should be.

‘Talent’ has a very specific meaning in the culture. When you try to turn it into a technical word, there is confusing carryover. People who are unfamiliar with the technical definition use the term with its conventional definitions. Talent is unusual and special.

That is what causes all of the management problems.

Mary Anne, when you add all of those additional attributes, you change the definition. My sense is that you need ‘diligence, emotional intelligence, sensibility and an honest work ethic’ to harvest your natural gifts. If you have no natural gifts, those things can be the foundation of your success.

Back to the point. The real trouble is that the use of the word ‘talent’ is a symptom of the kind of thinking that got us into this economic and cultural mess.

http://www.talentism.com/business_talent/2006/03/what_exactly_is.html

Thanks to John for keeping us honest.

endowment: natural abilities or qualities
a person who possesses unusual innate ability in some field or activity
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

a unit of weight and money used in ancient times in Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Middle East; a marked ability or skill; the potential or factual ability to perform a skill better than most people; attractive man or woman; large breasts
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/talent

Informal term for actors and extras.
http://www.teako170.com/glossary6.html

From the Greek talanton = scales; Greek and Roman weight unit for a certain sum of money. We have shifted the word´s association of material, monetary value to one expressing admirable human characteristics: talents are a person´s inherent abilities, as given by God.
austrian-mint.at/5

Sumser declares Jihad against Innovation !! I love it.

Everybody recruits in Lake Wobegone, where every candidate is above average.

And what’s REALLY with this seat at the table stuff ? You have juice, or you dont. You dont get it, show it, or use it sitting around any table, unless you think boards of directors do anything but rubberstamp what the power players want….meetings are to tell the proles what they will do….not to decide much of anything…we leave that to the deciders, and who knows where they do their deciding ?

As far as the government defining “talent”, need I say any more? What’s next – David Hasselhoff becoming the government’s appointment to run the DOL because he’s been a judge on the show America’s Got Talent?

John, thanks for the call you big lunk!