[.uk] The War for Talent (ISBN 1578514592)

Amazon.com Review:
Talent, as defined by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, is shorthand for a key employee who possesses "a sharp strategic mind, leadership ability, communications skills, the ability to attract and inspire people, entrepreneurial instincts, functional skills, and the ability to deliver results." It's also, they contend in The War for Talent, an overarching personnel characteristic that companies of all kinds will require throughout their organizations in order to survive the competitive recruiting era that we appear to be entering. Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, authors of a 1997 McKinsey Quarterly article that uncovered a definitive connection between top performers and superior corporate achievement, spent the intervening years studying 13,000 executives in 27 companies to identify the programs and behaviors that help today's foremost firms attract and retain the best kinds of employees. The authors outline five common "imperatives" that they found these companies employed to strengthen their talent pools ("Embrace a Talent Mindset," "Craft a Winning Employee Value Proposition," "Rebuild Your Recruiting Strategy," "Weave Development into Your Organization," and "Differentiate and Affirm Your People") and construct a practical framework for making it happen in your company. --Howard Rothman

A worthwhile read:
Easy reading, entertaining, interesting and informative. Light on details but a very good general overview of the topic. Conceptually excellent. The value is in how you implement the recommendations - which is where you will find this book wanting. If you get nothing else out of this book, the quote from Dee Hock (founder of Visa) will make it worth buying: "Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second motivation; third capacity; fourth understanding; fifth knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind."

The War For Talent Is About to Begin In Earnest:
The War for Talent is a great book for the leaders of an organization to read. Why? They are the ones who can affect the culture of the organization. Most workers, even A Players, do not have the power to drive cultural change. As a contract recruiter (www.recruiterguy.com), when I go into a company for the first time, I interview the managers and ask them, in their view, "Why would a top performer want to work for this company, in this position, for you?" As the competition for talent begins to gain steam over the next few months, companies who do a better job of addressing the needs of the Gen X'ers will find themselves in the enviable position of attracting the replacements to the Baby Boomers who are retiring or otherwise leaving the workplace. Sure there is still a surplus of workers as a result of the recession. However, companies who do not have a recruitment strategy will soon find themselves spending much more money to attract the best talent. In The War For Talent, the authors used specific examples of companies who had either a recruiting or attrition problem and then solved it by improving their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). For instance, SunTrust had a problem where they were losing 46% of their branch employees in their Publix supermarket branches in Georgia and 55% of their high performers. The book discusses the steps they took to dramatically lower their attrition rate in a relatively short time. Unfortunately for the book, it came out just as Enron was spinning into the ground. Therefore, some people have focused more on the Enron EVP and other qualities and possibly not enough on the other companies' qualities. Enron, while it was growing, appealed to a specific group of people who were not afraid to take what now appears to be excessive risks. There are many examples of other companies with other EVP's who have survived and possibly thrived during this recession. They were able to attract and retain the high performers, who generally tend to be more strategic and less tactical than their counterparts. Just as Brad Smart in his book "Topgrading" focuses on recruiting, developing and mentoring the A Players, the authors of The War For Talent stress the importance of the A players in a company. It is surprising that "The Peter Principle" came out in 1969 and we are still discussing the concept but in different terms. The War For Talent concepts should be discussed from the boardroom to your hiring managers. Your leaders need to embrace a talent mindset (title of a chapter in the book), develop a winning differentiation for your company, and develop recruiters who have the ability to attract A Players. Read this book if you want to win "The War For Talent." .........

Good theory but doesn't work in the real world.:
This book is a good theory and in an ideal world it would all work out that way: the highly talented and highly skilled would get the promotions, good jobs, and plum assisgnments. But unfortunately, more often than not, the pie isn't divided so nicely. There are often other reasons, not work/talent related, that a person gets a promotion or a job. The classic example is the boss' son getting handed a top job in a company, which still happens today. I've also seen too many people get handed promotions who are not A) qualified or B) not college degree, they just happen to know the right people. Also how do you fit Affirmative Action into the equation? AA is not based upon talents, only gender & race. Personally I wish more management would read this book and use the basic idea but it probably won't happen. Companies keep talking about "needing good talent" but they don't walk the walk.

Winning The War Means Having a Plan:
Talent is now a critical driver of corporate performance; a company's ability to attract, develop and retain talent has not ceased to be important in the current slow economy. Managerial talent, in particular, is at the epicenter of the war for talent -- people with the ability to lead a company or division, guide a production team, or supervise a group of workers are the elements that differentiate great companies from merely good ones.

The War for Talent:
Great book, I recommend it for anyone who is in Human Resource management. It will change the way you think about running your organization.