As the years pass, we at Checkster attempt to forecast what will come next in the talent management industry. One important shift that has taken place in the last 10 years involving talent management could be called the end of the Michael Jordan Era.

Handling the change
Ten years ago, the new Internet marketplace was creating overnight wealth and the talent that drove it was considered the core fuel for this economy. It was not uncommon to see seasoned executives leave established institutions to join the Webvans of the world. In this raging new economy, the title of McKinsey’s book, The War for Talent, became the motto of the talent management industry. The core argument presented by McKinsey was that in order for a company to focus on its top contributors, one must have a talent mindset, but the implied idea was to focus only on top talent. I’ve personally presented on numerous occasions the most telling statistics about talent management, which is that those considered to be “A” sales people increase a company’s revenue 67% more on average than those considered to be “B” and “C” players. However, when looking at A-level general managers, it is the profits that increase by 49%.

Would-be poster children
The GE model of 20, 70, 10 (20 percent “A” players, 70 percent “B” players, and 10 percent “C” players) was at the center of many debates as this model gained exposure.

The argument was crystallized to the extreme in 1998 by Fast Company’s catchy slogan, “How to hire the next Michael Jordan?” The underlining idea was for companies to focus on superstars. I can remember a discussion I had with the proponents of this approach in which we debated the concept of a star player and the necessity of organizations to hire a team, or as an industry, to hire a league. In short, the talent management industry used the analogy of the “star” to design their processes, but this analogy has failed to deliver results. The analogy really started to erode when Enron collapsed. Enron was one of the poster children for McKinsey’s War for Talent book. How can an organization that was focusing so well on top talent have gotten it so wrong?

Global forces at work
The other interesting force that has been at work is the speed of globalization of knowledge workers. For instance, if I compare how we at Checkster recruit today versus 10 years ago when I started at iLogos, the way we leverage human resources globally has shifted dramatically. It is now common practice to have one part of your team off-shore in any size organization. This happened faster than many thought possible, and the concept of a flat world is commonplace today. It only emphasized one point: organizations see more today the diversity of resources and talent. When you associate these findings with the generation gap that begun to exert influence – between baby boomers remaining in the workforce longer and Gen Yers who expects something else from work than just work – you have what we could call a huge mosaic of talent. That mosaic obliges any organization to use a variety of approaches to define and attract talent, as one voice is not enough.

The importance of the “vital many”: inclusiveness
Finally and maybe the most convincing body of research is the latest article from McKinsey (Making Talent a Strategic Priority, 2008) that has crystallized this change of heart. McKinsey’s self-examines his company’s obsessive and unique focus on acquiring top talent. Not that the impact of top talent disappeared, but as they say, “organizations can’t afford to neglect the contributions of other employees.” Several authors in recent years have rightly emphasized the valuable contributions of “B” players: capable, steady performers who make up the majority of any workforce. The insurer Aviva, with its strategy of managing “the vital many” rather than risk alienating the bulk of its workforce by focusing exclusively on highfliers, is one company that makes this commitment explicit. Research on social capital has also highlighted the importance of inclusiveness: “top talent is more effective when it operates in vibrant internal networks with a range of employees,” according to McKinsey.

A company is like a sport team; you don’t play alone. Even though within a team you only have one captain by default, a captain can only shine if there is a team around him or her. Our analogy was wrong. Think about recruiting for a team and not a single player.

So what are the impacts on your talent management practices?
We see three major impacts:

1. HR needs to be more broadly focused on the company, and not narrowly focused on executives. When you speak to the VPs of HR, their most important concern comes from executive succession planning. That is why sometimes when HR believes it’s being strategic, it is in fact only an internal search firm targeting the executive team. They are thinking in terms of individual players and not a team. Talent development and career planning should be made available to all. Self-services, such as Checkster, are democratizing what was once only for the executive team.
2. One employee’s value proposition is not enough. You need to tailor your employee value proposition to the different segments that makes your workforce. That can be done geographically, by performance, or by generation. Yet, one voice for all employees is not sufficient anymore. In other words, we start to see that a long tail appears in employment marketing as well.
3. Selection implies contextual performance. For 99% of jobs, you are not hiring an individual performer that will act without team interactions. An interview — a show of individual performance — is not enough to gauge someone’s full potential. The best indicator of all is how that individual behaves within a team, and not only as an individual in front of you. How can this be measured? Visit Checkster, or investigate emerging thought leadership on what is known as “collective intelligence.”

For the past 10 years, the talent management industry has been focused on individual talent, with the analogy of “let’s find the Michael Jordan” being at its core. During that time, talent only meant “one.” We believe that the next 10 years will give birth to a new talent management industry with collective, multiple and social intelligence at its core. The underlining forces of this change are globalization and generation divide as well as the long tail of employment marketing. What will be the core analogy? That remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, it won’t be the image of a magic savior.