Jim Collins' famously colourful, if slightly simplistic, analogy that talent management is all about 'getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats' still works.
In fact for most, the McKinsey-coined 'war for talent' is just a straight fight to hire better and faster than (or from) the competition, whether that’s in shop floor coach class or CEO first class.
A war whose risks according to PwC (2011) have become the number one board room priority, with most boards planning to make 'major' changes to their talent strategy (83%) over the next 12 months. If only, as McKinsey themselves wryly observe, boards could get bums on seats more often (currently board air time devoted to talent is flat-lining at 10%).
But although the front lines still focus on the attraction and retention of talent, things are shifting in three new and important ways:
- 'A great bus to ride' - To ensure the bus only picks up - and keeps - the right people - increasing attention is now being paid on what your bus looks like and on what kind of a once-in-a-lifetime trip it offers
- 'Who's driving the bus' - Which in turn has shifted attention onto how talented the driver is - what kind of a seat they have as well as how much influence they (and others) have in scheduling the bus route
- 'The Magic Bus Theory' - Which has finally led to brands looking at how integrated, sophisticated and even mature their approach to talent is - as measured against competitors
Together, these three shifts of emphasis mean less that we are talking about a 'war for talent', and more about a 'war for talent management'.
Split into three short sections densely packed with links and references for further reading, The War for Talent Management is a free white paper which helps you digest the main concepts; but always with a view to guiding you around the talent management bus of the future for practical benefit. We then offer a phony war myth debunking conclusion perfect, well, for reading on the bus or the train.
