Harvard Business Review on Talent Management [Paperback]

This is one of the volumes in the "Pocket Mentor" series, each of whose articles originally appeared in an issue of the Harvard Business Review. In this instance, all of the articles appeared in issues that extend from March 2004 to June 2007; their subject is Talent Management. As the editors correctly point out, "If great talent is hard to find, it's even harder to keep. In today's world, you need the best and the brightest on your team in order to stay competitive. If you lose your key talent, you may find that you're also losing out on crucial business opportunities. This valuable collection offers insights and strategies to make sure you recognize - and retain - your company's vital talent." All of the eight articles were written or co-written by experts on this specific business subject. Here in Dallas near the downtown area, there is a Farmers Market at which several of the merchants offer a slice of fresh fruit as a sample of their wares. In that spirit, I now offer a sequence of brief excerpts that will, I hope, indicate the "taste" as well as the thrust of the ideas in the articles.

From "What It Means to Work Here": "The best strategy for coming out ahead in the war for talent isn't to scoop up everyone in sight, unless you want to deal with fallout: high turnover, high recruitment and training costs, and disengaged, unproductive workers. Instead, you need to convince the right people - those who are intrigued and excited by the work environment you can realistically offer and who will reward you with their loyalty - to choose you." Tamara J. Erickson and Lynda Gratton

From "`Players' or `A Positions'? The Strategic Logic of Workforce Management": "While conventional wisdom might argue that the firms with the most talent win, we believe that, given the financial and managerial resources needed to attract, select, develop, and retain high performers, companies simply can't afford to have A players in all positions." Mark A. Huselid, Richard W. Beatty, and Brian E. Becker

From "Growing Talent as If Your Business Depended on It": At companies that are good at growing leaders, "operating managers, not HR executives, are at the front line of planning and development. In fact, many senior managers now hold their line managers directly responsible for these activities. In this worldview, it is part of the line manager's job to recognize his subordinates' developmental needs, to help them cultivate new skills, and to provide them opportunities for professional development and personal growth." Jeffrey M. Cohn, Rakesh Khurana, and Laura Reeves

From "Make Your Company a Talent Factory": "If functionality is about focusing your company's talent management processes to produce certain outcomes, vitality is about the attitudes and mind-sets of the people responsible for those processes - not just in human resources but throughout the line, all the way to the top of the organization...Our research shows that the vitality of a company's talent management processes is the product of three defining characteristics: [begin italics] commitment, engagement, and accountability [end italics]."Douglas A. Ready and Jay A. Conger

From "How to Keep `A Players' Productive: "One of the biggest challenges for A players is their inability to set boundaries for themselves. Ordinary people usually know how to step back from situations where vague requests make them uncomfortable; but insecure overachievers typically exceed expectations because they are prepared to operate outside their comfort zones in their efforts to win recognition." Steve Berglas

From "Managing Middlescence": "Burned-out, bottlenecked, and bored. That's the current lot of millions of midcareer employees. In our research into employee attitudes and experiences, we heard many stories of midcareer restlessness, a phenomenon we call middlescence...Like adolescence, middlescence can be a time of frustration, confusion, and alienation but also a time of self-discovery, new direction, and fresh beginnings. Today, millions of midcareer men and women are wrestling with middlescence - looking for ways to balance job responsibilities, family, and leisure while hoping to find new meaning in their work." Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, and Ken Dychtwald

From "Off-Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success": "Perhaps most interesting, 24% of the women currently looking for on-ramps [to resumption of employment] are motivated by `a desire to give back something to society' and are seeking jobs that allow them to contribute to their communities in some way." Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce

From "It's Time to Retire Retirement": "If companies are to win back the hearts and minds of baby boomers and other generations of mature workers, they need to start with the work environment itself, which has become increasingly alienating to anyone over the age of 50. Human resource practices are often explicitly or implicitly biased against older workers, and these biases can seep into the culture in a manner that makes them feel unwelcome."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths and Strengths-Based Leadership co-authored with Barry Conchie, Lance Berger and Dorothy Berger's The Talent Management Handbook: Creating Organizational Excellence by Identifying, Developing, and Promoting Your Best People, William J. Rothwell's Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent From Within, Dean R. Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

Thank you very much, this book is very useful for my research.The book helped me to evaluate strategies and main concepts of talent management.

Retaining talent in today's increasingly competitive business environment is one of the biggest challenges that organizations face. Keeping prized employees happy takes a lot more than money. People want their jobs to matter. They want to work for companies that share their goals and ethics. The eight essays that make up this entry in the excellent Harvard Business Review management series illustrate the symbiotic relationship between talent management and corporate prosperity. Growth and success require a formalized system that stimulates, rewards and encourages skilled employees. Numerous examples throughout this tightly written book also demonstrate the value of planning. getAbstract applauds the way this collection analyzes talent management. It is an impressive addition to a respected set of business anthologies.