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Leadership and the art ofmanaging talentJANUARY 31, 2013

Gyan Nagpal provides a compelling

picture of how the 3 billion global

workforce is changing and how this is

challenging current management

mindsets.

Gyan is an award winning

talent strategist and

commentator. He has helped

some of the worlds largest

organisations build significant

business franchises across Asia

Pacific. He is author of “Talent Economics –

The Fine Line between Winning and Losing

the Global War for Talent”.

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Leadership and the art of managing talentAuthor: Gyan Nagpal

Specially commissioned for ogilvydo.com

Most wars, history tells us, have been fought over scarce resources. Yet the “war for talent” we see

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raging across offices from Seattle to Shanghai, is being fought in the midst of abundance. The numbers

prove that we are bang in the middle of an unprecedented explosion of human potential. Appositely

enough, if you want to view this abundance on a global scale, your best vantage point lies on the

surface of the moon.

On 20th July 1969, when Neil Amstrong famously took mankind’s first step on lunar soil, he did so

representing 3.6 billion other human inhabitants on his home planet. More recently, the popular press

has been awash with China’s stated goal of sending man back to the moon by 2020. The truth is, if a

Chinese astraunaut does manage to achieve this, he or she will go there representing more than double

the number of people Armstrong did.

Why is this significant? Consider this – It took 200,000 years since the first homo sapiens existed to

grow earth’s population to 3.6 billion. We then doubled that number in less than 50!

So if scarcity isn’t to blame, what then explains the shortage of capability being reported by managers,

consultants, headhunters and everyone in between? Why is finding and keeping talent today proving to

be such a headache? And why aren’t all the fancy talent management frameworks and programs in

common use delivering the breakthrough value they promise?

As a talent strategist, I spent three years with these very questions – interviewing leaders, researching

talent management practices and trawling the numbers – before writing Talent Economics: The Fine

Line Between Winning and Losing the Global War for Talent.

I found several core reasons why organisations across industy and geography are struggling to get their

talent recipe to work. Let’s go over the main ones in brief.

To begin with, a mountain of evidence points to the fact that over the last 30 years, the emotional bond

between employer and employee has eroded with each passing year. In good years the best talent is no

longer averse to monetizing employment value and moving to the highest bidder, and in bad years more

and more companies today look at employee costs as a variable expense. Not only does this represent

a lose–lose proposition in talent terms, the data tells us this battle between resignation and pinkslip is

set to get considerably worse by 2020.

Another vector driving our talent woes are rapidly changing employment preferences. The 21st century

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employee turning up for work today is more aware, assertive and empowered than ever before. A fact

which is challenging the earstwhile supremacy of 20th century management practices and mindsets still

commonly found on shopfloors across the world. It is about time we accept that the employee is

evolving, and hence the very concept of employment must evolve to keep pace.

Amplifying the largely external trends above, organisations too have been unable to craft a credible

response. We have all been guilty of throwing disparate processes, programs and best practices at the

problem, hoping something sticks. The truth is that very few organisations have been able to craft a

strategic response to a rapidly changing talent landscape.

If there ever was a moment to press the reboot button on a reactive agenda– this is it. What we need

instead is deeper diagnosis which helps us get ahead of talent trends. By studying how the workforce is

changing, we can build a proactive talent strategy. One which balances short term “binge and purge”

tendencies with long term talent pipeline development. Or for that matter, talent strategy which balances

global ambition with the vastly divergent ground realities in Sao Paolo, Seville or Singapore.

In the future, the data tells us, this war for talent will get considerably worse. Because while the global

circumstances for business are converging, the 3 billion strong global workforce isn’t. In some places it

is ageing rapidly, in others, social, cultural or language barriers are holding talent back. And in countries

full of young personal ambition, a lack of infrastructure or education is severely limiting potential.

Finally, if there is a need of the hour, it is for leaders who are willing to pick up the reins of their

organisations’ strategic talent agenda, as opposed to tossing the problem over the fence to an HR

expert. We need leaders who are willing to eschew the copy paste practices of the past, in favour of

new age ideas which reinvigorate the workplace. Because as Albert Einstein once famously explained

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them”.

You can follow Gyan’s work and research at www.PLGAonline.com and order the book at –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Talent-Economics-Between-Winning-Losing/dp/0749468483

Talent Economics has already leapt to top slot in Amazon’s Hot Releases.

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