In Talent Management, the harvest will only be as good as the planting and the maintenance. As in agriculture, you get out of it what you put into it–planting at the right time, with the right seeds, in the right soil, watered and fertilized at the right times and harvested in the right way and then sold for a good price. There are no shortcuts. If you’re short on funds or food in winter, it means something went wrong during the growing season.
The same is true in talent management. If you’re scrambling to fill critical roles or address capability gaps, it’s often a sign that development and succession planning were neglected when the time was ripe. Many times, it is a CEO and/or a less than fully capable CHRO or Talent Management team leader who doesn’t see it as critical enough to be doing today,
If you find yourself short on food in the winter, you can always buy more at the grocery store—but it’ll cost you. If you are short funds, you can get a loan. The same goes for talent. If you’re short on your internal bench, you can turn to the external labor market or executive search, but that approach is more expensive, often slower, and comes with greater uncertainty. Strategic talent development—like planting and tending crops in season—yields a more reliable and cost-effective harvest. Growing your own food and developing your own leaders is the best way to flourish.
Talent makes the world go round. Talent is required for most organizations to flourish. Top Talent, collectively, sets the vision, mission, strategy and goals. Top Talent, along with the Board, establishes performance metrics and creates a reward framework for success. Talent creates a structure. Talent sets a culture. Top talent shapes not only outcomes, but atmosphere—defining how it feels to belong, contribute, and grow within the organization.
Middle talent translates strategy into action. They create tactical plans by division, department, function, geography, and customer segment. These plans are executed by teams of talent, each accountable for directing individual contributors, coordinating with vendors and partners, and driving day-to-day progress toward strategic goals.
First line customer-facing talent does most of the work. Ultimately, it’s frontline, customer-facing talent who carry out most of the heavy lifting—serving internal clients, solving problems, mitigating risks and delivering on the brand promise through every interaction. They turn tactical plans into real-world results, one experience at a time.
It’s a complex, matrixed network of individuals operating in one or more teams to get great things done.
Optimal Performance Against the Unknown
When functioning optimally, the whole talent system is aligned, coordinated, and collaborative, each part reinforcing the other to drive performance and progress.
You know as well as we do, there’s always something around the corner, where the unexpected event strikes. A black swan lands in the lobby of your building, just like COVID did. A sudden competitor emerges. Political upheaval. Regulatory shifts. Natural disaster. A jumbotron scandal. A wave of unexpected talent exits. A global disruption. Whatever the form, disruption doesn’t send a calendar invite, it just shows up. And when it does, your talent system is either ready and good enough…or it’s not.
Then the entire talent system has to be adjustive to the challenge of changing conditions. Top to bottom, from the Board and CEO to the janitor.
The capacity and willingness to go with the flow and take action to make productive and responsive changes is key to long term survival and success. It takes quick assessment, creative problem solving, decisive action, immediate feedback and flexibility.
The Meaning of Talent
One meaning of talent is the ability and motivation to do a good job (top 10% results) in whatever current role, position or job assignment no matter the context. Another is a competitive frame: my division or group of talent has to be better than the talent at the competitors’ place.
A common finding is that roughly the top 2% of employees at the top and in other critical jobs make 80% of the material decisions. While all the top 2% of jobs are important and critical, there are some jobs that are more important than others. You could roughly rank order jobs in the top 2% based upon criticality to the mission and strategy, and necessary for the tactics. Talent management development efforts should be parallel to that rank order. Place the best people in the most critical positions. This is when we depend on the talent we’ve already developed. If you’re coming up short, it’s worth asking whether anything was planted. Did we water our Talent?
For the future, the rank order of initiative criticality will change frequently. So, as you are developing the future 2%ers, steering the best up and comers toward the most critical roles and jobs is the alignment task. One answer to the question of top talent potential: Potential for what?
As you execute on forward-back planning, trying to estimate the issues and challenges at a date certain in the future, you would need to inventory the talent pool to see if you are covered. You may have to add some mid-career talent from the outside if your future need pool of talent falls short. Like crop planning, you must know what to grow, when, and whether your current soil can support it. Some roles need rotation, some rest, and others require outside seed. You’re not just planning for today, you’re cultivating for what the business will need seasons from now.
Three Critical Talent Pools to Manage
1) High Potentials, who if properly nurtured and developed, will be candidates for roles in the top 2%.
2) High Protentials, who are needed now and then for the organization to flourish, plus they tend to help to develop the High Potentials, and
3) The talent pool of those capable of top international service.
Being willing and able to effectively serve in international (out of home country) assignments is a special kind of talent. Flexible, adjustive and quick studies whop are full of grit, resourcefulness, tolerance for differences, and political savvy plus other skill sets. People in the international talent pool may also be High Potentials or Protentials, especially given the added global experience.
Developing the Three Top Talent Pools
Each of the three pools needs different developmental protocols and different support. Along the career journey, people might switch pools.
The rarest pool is the effective ‘anywhere in the world’ versatile internationalists, followed by the High Potentials working toward the top 2% domestic jobs, and lastly, the High Protentials.
Engagement, treatment and retention protocols are also different for each. They have different goals and expectations.
The strength of today’s top 2% is the result of the succession planning and leadership development efforts of the past along with recent external hires or M&A gains. You can only reap what you have sown in the past. There are no shortcuts, and you may have to pay a great price to fix errors, gaps and mistakes in talent development.
The quality of the future top 2% going forward will be dependent on what you do now for later. Some development initiatives, like moving people through jobs quickly, may create the possibility of hurting performance today. However, most well-planned developmental initiatives not only get people ready for the future but allow them to perform well now.
Although talent from all three pools can excel along the way, it’s not until they reach the top in their final role that their impact can become truly legendary.
It takes investing in the future yet not ignoring performance today. It’s tempting to press “pause” on future-focused efforts when times are tough. But that pause can come at a high cost down the road. You don’t plant a seed in Spring and harvest a legend by Fall. Just like the finest wine grapes or century-old oak casks, great leaders—like all-star athletes or Walk of Fame actors—are cultivated over seasons, not seconds. It takes years of nurturing, pruning, weathering storms, and patient tending to develop someone worthy of the Leadership Hall of Fame.
The one saving grace is that proper development (70/20/10) uses work as the classroom. So, they perform and add value on the way to being developed.
The future has few current customers. By the time early-in-career talent takes their place in the top 2%, today’s stakeholders are gone, shareholders have moved on, most of the current 2% have retired, the Board has turned over and most of the executives who have helped develop the next few generations of leaders have retired.
Challenges Along the Way
The real challenge—and most critical “sale”—in talent management is convincing today’s top 2% that they hold the keys to developing tomorrow’s stars. Many don’t rise to that responsibility. Inspiring them to see talent development as part of their legacy is where the work begins. You would have to take time out of your terminally busy job of performing today to help the organization to continue to perform in a future you will not be part of. It’s a tough message to busy executives.
Talent Management Professionals are the most likely and possibly only function to be invested in the future. Even those in TM who managed the planting, growing and harvesting of future talent, won’t be around to see the full yield.
As with farming families, it takes a lifetime to train and educate children to take over the farm and continue the legacy. It’s driven by selfless stewardship and a long game view. Sadly, it doesn’t work all the time, so many sell off their properties when the cycle ends. That’s the last thing enterprises want to do.
3 Prime Talent Management Directives
The three Prime Talent Management Directives lay out the critical priorities for any organization serious about developing top-tier talent and building both a leadership legacy and an organization that lasts.
Prime Directive 1
Develop and install top talent in the top 2% of the organization today. They will, in turn, run a great company to work for which will attract additional talent. They should contribute to the development of future generations of top talent even though they will not benefit directly from putting in the effort.
Prime Directive 2
Source, attract, intern, and hire the raw material for the next generation of top talent. Install and facilitate leadership development best practices including creating and managing a developmental culture. Reinforce the need for top management to actively engage in the effort.
Prime Directive 3
Manage the talent pool inventory against the most likely future needs, as best as can be estimated. The High Potentials will perform now and lead later. The High Protentials will perform over the long term and assist in the development of the High Potentials. The Internationalists will perform now and in the future, whether abroad or back at headquarters.
So…
Sell the plan. Plant wisely. Tend consistently. Think long term. Use best practices. Because in both farming and talent management, the future doesn’t reward the rushed—it rewards the steady. And the harvest will reflect the hands that shaped it.
Authored by Robert Eichinger with contributions from Lisa-Marie Hanson.
