The Rise and Fall of the Talent Era: When Myth Transcends Reality
The term ‘talent’ is one of such ubiquity these days that it seems now both simultaneously generic and meaningless. Yet, despite the hollowness of the term, most businesspeople are convinced that ‘talent’ is a critical ingredient in the recipe for organisation success. The misguided myopia surrounding ‘talent’ meaning has welcomingly being challenged in a recent Harvard Business Review article ‘Unpacking 5 Myths About Management’.
In the third of 5 myths, the article questions the importance of winning the war for talent and whether a ‘talented’ few really in the end make a huge difference. The author contends that the performance of the organisation relies as much on the knowledge, judgement, and skills of those deemed ‘non-talent’ as it does on the very talented few. The article contends for individual talent to make a difference, the individual must be able to effectively integrate within the organisation and largely work through others to create results.
In Australia, we prefer to understand talent in individualistic terms as the critical enabler of business performance improvement. Little thought is given to the nature of the organisation environment as the predominant driver of business outcomes. A preference to create ‘heroes’ rather than celebrate ‘bureaucratic process’ seems a far more colourful and idiomatic Australian way to personalise critical business success factors.
As practitioners, in our focus on improving performance, we put our emphasis on extolling the advantage of talent whilst underplaying the advantages involved in interactive human capital development processes such as organisational learning, knowledge transfer, cooperation, culture creation and innovation. Such processes are the outcome of the social capital generated within organisation networks sharing similar values and understandings as well as the organisation capital reflected in internal infrastructure, organisation processes and routines. Whilst ‘talent’ advantage is about ensuring the best people are hired, the human capital development process is critical to ensuring ‘talent’ can be successfully integrated into the organisation for business benefit. Ultimately, business benefit is maximised by the successful integration of ‘talent’ within the social and organisation systems governing business performance.
Yes, I know this sounds like commonsense, but you would be surprised that many practitioners and academics in the talent field do not share this understanding. The importance of talent on organisational performance is over-estimated whilst the performance contributions of company social and organisational systems, processes and practices is neglected. Evidence continues to gather that ‘talent’ is not the mythical short term business panacea that so many businesses have put their faith in.
A major problem for ‘talent’ meaning is that no-one is too sure what actually defines it. Research continues to highlight that managers do not understand its meaning in business performance terms. Increasingly, talent is framed as a social construct informed by organisation context and management biases. A very recent study consisting of over 200 interviews with Polish HR professionals, senior managers and potential talent candidates found substantial discrepancies between senior leaders’ and talents’ view on the meaning of talent within organisations.
The interviewed HR and line management professionals viewed natural ability and an ability to perform as relatively unimportant talent criteria. Skill mastery was held to be important by both groups. However, potential was the most critical element of talent meaning. The evidence of potential appeared to be predominately about possessing the ability to be promoted to a higher-level management or leadership position. Organisation fit was also vital. For HR professionals, potential, personal commitment and fit were the three talent non-negotiables. This view of talent meaning is very much about an individual’s ability to quickly ‘plug into’ a company’s social and organisation systems more than a focus on immediate business performance.
These findings have a great deal of overlap with my own local research into HR professional meanings of talent. You will find a summary of this research on this Website. Organisation fit and potential were also deemed the most critical elements to talent meaning again emphasising a social rather than economic priority in talent meaning. The importance of these criteria to talent meaning, introduced a great deal of subjectivity and bias into talent evaluation. This bias manifested in an association with younger rather than older people as talent.
Why, might you ask after all my years of being an unquestioning advocate for the importance of talent to business have I seemingly recast myself as a ‘talent’ whistle-blower? Because no longer do I believe our focus on defining talent is a constructive way to helping businesses navigate an increasingly complex and turbulent economic, social and financial world. Talent focuses our mind on exclusion. Talent meaning narrows our thinking. Talent meaning promotes discrimination. Talent meaning is about driving with our eyes on the corporate rear vision mirror rather than the company road ahead. Talent is not about performance but rather social compliance. Talent is not about embracing change but avoiding risk.
Our company encourAGE EQUALITY recognises that adopting an inclusive approach to work force management offers a different perspective to conventional talent wisdom. We focus on broadening management thinking in building workforces fit for purpose for our modern world. We respect and learn from company history but do not allow it to imprison our thoughts and actions when change offers valuable opportunity. Our views see the marketing term ‘talent’ removed from the management speak lexicon, replaced by a more authentic focus on the value people of all ages and backgrounds, possessing an invaluable diversity of skills, experiences and outlooks, bring to more productive workplaces and adaptable organisations. The time is right for ‘Winning the War for Talent’ to be relegated to a chapter in the history of management. The people management caravan is moving on.
References
Jones, T., J., Whitaker, M., Seet, S.-P., & Parkin, J. (2012). Talent management in practice in Australia: Individualistic or strategic? An exploratory study. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 50, 399 - 420.
McDonnell, A; Skuza, A; Jooss, S; & Scullion, H. (2021): Tensions in talent identification: a multi-stakeholder perspective, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2021.1976245
Marchington, M., & Grugulis, I. (2000). ‘Best practice’ human resource management: Perfect opportunity or dangerous illusion? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 11(6), 1104-1124.
Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, I., R. (2006). Hard fact, dangerous half truths and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence based management, . Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
Thunnissen, M., Boselie, P., & Fruytier, B. (2013). A review of talent management: 'infancy or adolescence'? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(9), 1744-1761.