6 Faces of Thought Leadership

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I’m not sure when this started, but recently I’ve been introduced as a “Thought Leader”.  At first is was flattering.  Wow, a ‘Thought Leader’!  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded cool.  You mean, I’m a ‘Thought Leader’ like Steve Jobs? Well, slow down Sparky, not quite like Steve Jobs. Oh!? Then a Thought Leader like whom?  (The thought leader in me wants to ‘who’, not ‘whom’, but something tells me my blogger thought leader friends will tell me I should have used ‘whom’, but knowing I used ‘whom’ at all means it’s probably wrong!)

That’s when it hit me.  Thought Leaders come in many different sizes and shapes.  I wasn’t a great Thought Leader of our generation.  I was more of a great Thought Leader of that specific moment. Context is everything.

Let’s face it, we all have different perceptions of who and what we believe to be Thought Leadership.  Here are my Faces of Thought Leadership:

1. The Thought Righter.  This is a Thought Leader that you agree with. You believe they are Thought Leader, because you agree with what they are saying, so they must be a leader!

2. The Thought Stayer. This is a Thought Leader who has been around for a long time.  Well, they’ve been in the industry for thirty years, they must be a Thought Leader at this point!

3. The Thought Thinks Differently Than Everyone Else. Yep, this person just thinks differently, thus they are Thought Leader.  This is probably what a lot people believe is ‘true’ thought leadership (Leading thought, thus they are thinking it before you).

4. The Thought Best Practicer. This is conference thought leadership at its best. It’s not really thought leadership, it’s thought leadership from five years ago.  It’s now just popular thought leadership.

 5. The Thought I Work For  A Cool Company. If you work for a cool company you automatically garner status of thought leadership, when in actuality, you might be a thought idiot. I won’t give you an example, you know who these folks are.

6. The Thought Innovator.  This is a person who believes everything is perpetually broken and they must fix it.  “You know what is wrong with babies, they don’t come out of the womb talking and walking. If we just forced gestistation to 218 weeks and planted electrodes into their brains we could be having babies that were as smart as Einstein!”  Um, what!?

Thought leadership is a funny little silly thing.  You can call yourself a “Thought Leader”, but that basically just informs everyone you’re not.  If it is bestowed on you by someone else, they basically are defining what you are as a Thought Leader in. Which can be dangerous, if you really aren’t that person.

I like to think of Thought Leaders as people who come up with ideas before everyone else, but will eventually become popular belief.  This means, you are really only a Thought Leader in hindsight.  Steve Jobs was a Thought Leader because he did things before others saw them, then they became wildly popular.   In this scenario, I might be a Thought Leader in a few years if Hugging becomes wildly popular in the workplace!

 

T3 – WANTED Analytics

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be T3 – send me a note.

I love when I get to demo a company and I have absolutely no idea who and what they are going into it!  That was me with WANTED Analytics. From the name I was guessing they were some sort of analytics HR company, like Visier, but I was pleasantly surprised that they were completely different.   The name throws you, but the reality is they are a Sourcing Strategy company, not an HR analytics play.

What WANTED gives you is a complete picture of your sourcing environment, which allows you to build and plan the best strategy to attract the talent you need.  What they deliver, in terms of data, charts and information is completely insane!

A common problem we face in Talent Acquisition is trying to build proper expectations when it comes to hiring with our hiring managers and our executive teams.  Many times, our workforce plan is critical to a successful, or unsuccessful, launch of major programs and products.  It’s critical that we provide a real-life view of the market conditions we are facing, and set realistic expectations with our hiring managers.  WANTED gives you really easy ways to do this, and the ‘arts and charts’ they provide make it easy to consume for those folks you are working with you are visual learners.

You can also use WANTED to do some really cool sourcing using their historical hiring analysis.  This basically gives you a quick look back in the market you’re searching of who was hiring just a few month, to year ago, for the same types of positions.  So?  This gives you an instant sourcing model on where to find your the talent you’ll be going after, and many times provides you with leads you never thought of.

What I really like about WANTED Analytics: 

1. The data set they pull from is stupid big. Over a billion job postings collected since 2005, and 10 Million per week in the US alone, gives you piece of mind that the market data you’re basing major sourcing decisions on is better than you’ll get anywhere else.  This amount of data allows you to get very specific in your sourcing.

2. They’re data source neutral.  Many data companies are pulling only from a handful of sources, and sometimes specifically leaving a source out for competitive reason. WANTED is Switzerland, they pull from everywhere!

3. ATS plugin which allows your recruiters and sources to use this within their native tools, and really gives them the ability to leverage WANTED on an entire never level.

4. Gives Talent Acquisition leadership a tool they really have never had in terms of ‘live’ market data, to assist them in building realistic talent, sourcing and workforce plans. Provides unmatched competitive compensation data, job descriptions and historical competitive hiring data. Global in reach, covering the world’s largest 22 economies.

5. Really pretty Heat Maps!  Let’s face it, hiring managers and executives love arts and charts, and heat maps, and WANTED knocks this out of the park.  Critical in delivering the message you want. Plus, from the sourcing perspective, none of these charts are ‘flat’, everything is click through. This was super power.

WANTED Heat Map

 

For those interested, WANTED Analytics isn’t super expensive, and you can definitely make it back on sourcing alone, although, the TA executives will love it for forecasting and planning.  1 user will run your around $12K, 10 users $24K.  For big shops, a tool like this easily pays for itself. SMB players will probably have to justify it more specifically.

Do Your Employees Really Like Your Organization? #EWS2014

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Hey, gang I’m running a sponsored post by the great folks at Spherion regarding their 2014 Emerging Workforce Study which has some really great data, check it out.

I’m a company guy.

When I make the decision to go to work for an organization, I’m both feet in.  I’ve always been that way. I’m the dork who loves to get the company logo gear and I don’t just wear it to work on ‘casual’ Friday, I’ll wear it to my families holiday get-togethers!  To me, supporting the organization you work for is a non-negotiable. I want to work with people who want to work with the organization we work for, and if you don’t, get out!

Spherion’s 2014 Emerging Workforce Study found some really interesting statistics around this, that blew my mind!  Crazy as this will seem to you, not everyone thinks like me! Check this out:

    • Only 35% of workers would say something very positive in discussing their company with other people.

35%! If you would have asked me this question, without me first seeing the data, I would have said this was 75%.  I was way off.  This is a major problem for organizations!  65% of your employees basically believe they could not say something very positive about your organization.  Ouch! That hurts.

You want to see another major disconnect that is playing into this lack of engagement?

    • 64% of companies believe their younger workers lack the business and life experience required for leadership positions.
    • While companies believe younger workers lack experience, 61% of Gen Y workers agree they have greater opportunities available to them because of their age.

Organizations are finally really starting to feel the pain of their aging Baby Boomer workforce beginning to leave their positions.  This is that ‘oh crap’ moment when you realize you don’t have the proper succession in place for the future. To make this situation worse, your younger workers believe they’re ready to ‘drive’!  They want the keys to the executive washroom, but you know they’re not ready.

Put on top of all of this, about ten years of not developing your leadership competencies because of the recession, and you my friends have some major organizational issues you are about to face!

What can you do about this? Here are a few ideas:

1. Hire people who really, really want to work for you. Brand advocates will stick with you through thick and thin, even when you’re not at your best.

2. Teach your leaders to be ‘great’ at performance management.  Spend money and time on this.  There is great technology out there that can help as well.

3. Know who your true internal influencers are on your staff, and invest in them.

There is no easy way out of this, for any of us.  But, the awesome part of this mess, is that HR can have a great impact in making our organizations better.  Time to sharpen the saw and get to work HR Pros!

 

Disclosure Language:

Spherion partnered with bloggers such as me for their Emerging Workforce Study program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any idea mentioned in these posts. Spherion believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Spherion’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations. 

5 Things HR Pros Secretly Have to Deal With

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I really don’t give a hoot if you’re extroverted or introverted, the fact of the matter is I’m sick of you focusing on yourself and how others can pander to your every whim.  You want to know what real HR Pros have to secretly deal with every single day?  Idiots like you!

Yeah, I said it.  I don’t care that you’re a millennial, or that you’re a baby boomer, or that you’re gay, or straight, or both.  I don’t care that you need to leave every other Tuesday for some religious reason, or that you sneak out every Friday to meet someone who is not your spouse.

I’m an HR Pro and I’ve got to deal with crap that you can’t possibly fathom.  What I care about is that you actually show up to work, ready to work, excited about work, and do work.  I know, life is hard, and coming to work every single day is hard. But, I’m paying you, so just work and get over all of your hangups.

You know want to know why I feel this way? Because I’ve got to deal secret stuff, secret HR stuff, like this:

1. Figuring out how to keep it quiet that we actually do know that our females are getting paid less than our males, but we don’t actually have the money to make it right, and don’t want to get sued.  All the time hating our executives who force us to continue this idiotic practice, knowing it’s wrong.

2. Carrying around, sometimes for months, those names of our coworkers and peers who we’ll be laying off.  It sucks.  We carry around baggage that we know will ruin the lives of people we care about.  Hello, alcohol abuse.

3. Knowing which executives are sleeping with employees who are reporting to them, but knowing turning them in will be career suicide.

4. Understanding which employees are actually ‘gaming’ the system, increasing our healthcare costs, ruining it for everyone else, and wanting to scream at the top of your lungs what’s going on.  But not. Letting the ‘system’ play itself out.  I hate you employees who ‘game’ the system.

5. That hiring decisions are sometimes made based on religion, race, sex, marital status, maternity status, sexual preference status, etc., and that actually might be the best thing for the organization’s success, and the employees who rely on that success.  That many times the ‘best’ person isn’t hired for the job, but 100% of the time we say that they are.

See?  Listening to someone tell you their secrets sucks.  Your coworkers and peers don’t really want to hear your secrets.  They want you to shut up, so they can tell you stuff about themselves.  That’s the real secret.

We all have issues. There’s no way you are going to be able to understand how to deal with everyone.  The secret is to stay off the fringes professionally.  Track down the middle, be consistent and don’t break stuff, just to break it.

 

The Container Store Doesn’t Want to Hire Harvard Grads

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You probably saw this on the web this past week, but in case you didn’t a former Harvard University graduate and Emmy award winning writer got rejected for a job at The Container Store for the holidays.  She was very surprised by this, in a pompous I’m-really-to-good-for-you kind of way, but I’m desperate, so you would be lucky to have me. Here it is in her words:

“The email from The Container Store asking for holiday help arrived a week before my rescheduled MRI. Of course I applied! You would have, too, if you had one kid paying his own way through college, another applying, no health coverage, a bum boob, a broken marriage and an empty bank account. There is no time for shame in a recession. You do what you have to do. There are worse ways to spend your day than greeting visitors at the front of a store run by a company whose products you actually use. A week later, I got an email from the Manhattan Loss Prevention department at The Container Store. Here’s what it said:

Hello Deborah —

Thank you for your interest in employment opportunities at The Container Store.

We carefully review all applications and consider each person for current or future opportunities. At this time, we are moving forward with other candidates for this position.

Again, we thank you for your interest in The Container Store. We wish you much success in your job search.

Sincerely,

The Container Store
Manhattan Loss Prevention

Reader, first I laughed when I read this. Then I cried. Oh, Reader, I cried and I cried, long and deep and mournfully. I cried for me and my kids, then I cried for everyone else in my same boat, then I cried for everyone in far worse boats. Because seriously, if an Emmy Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author and Harvard grad cannot land a job as a greeter at The Container Store — or anywhere else for that matter, hard as I tried — we are all doomed.“

Really?  We are all doomed because someone who has a Harvard degree and can write can’t get a service level holiday job?

Let’s take a look at why she probably didn’t get hired. I’ll give you some possible reasons on why The Container Store decided to go another route:

1. It’s a temporary job for the holidays, where they need someone to greet stressed out holiday shoppers.  Many people work these jobs each year to get extra holiday money, they have experience doing this, they can be counted on, not to quit after the first rude person yells at them. Experience counts. Even in ‘crappy’ jobs.

2.  These jobs are boring and monotonous. Service level companies know that most Harvard educated folks would be bored and not engaged in these positions.

3. Looking at the application of someone with a Harvard education and being a writer, they might have decided the person would work only until they got a better job, and they wanted to ensure the person stayed on through the completion of the assignment.

4. Maybe they had someone who has worked ‘temporarily’ for them in the past apply to come back, that had previously performed well.

5. Maybe they got internal referrals of friends and family from their employees, and decided those hires might ‘fit’ better.

No doubt Deborah is smart and a good writer. That doesn’t mean she would be good for the container store, and it is pompous of her to believe she would be.  She didn’t see this ‘job’ as good, she saw it as a step down, and something she was ‘forced’ to do.  Sounds just like someone you really want working for you, right?  “Well, I don’t have anything else Container Store, I guess I’ll take your crappy job.”

The Container Store rejected a Harvard graduate because a Harvard graduate isn’t the best hire, the best talent, for the position they were hiring for.  I might not be a Harvard graduate, but that seems pretty simple to figure out.

How to Kill a Hiring Manager and Get Away With It!

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My wife and I just finished watching the entire series of Breaking Bad!  All five seasons, sometimes we went three episodes deep in a night. It was tough, but we persevered. You’re welcome!

This really isn’t a Breaking Bad series post, I promise. If you haven’t seen the series, I thought it was worth it. Something funny happens to you when you watch so much darkness in such a short time.  I will warn you about that.  You begin to feel like it’s somewhat normal. Like somehow I could actually get away with the stuff Walt is doing on TV!

That leads me to how you can kill a hiring manager and get away with it!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard recruiters say, “Ugh! I hate my hiring managers! I wish I could shoot them!” Or, something to that effect.

Next to candidates who bomb or don’t show up for interviews, Hiring Managers have to be in every recruiters Top 3 worst things they have to deal with.  “Of course, it isn’t every hiring manager”, we say out loud, so the ones that are listening think they’re still awesome, when they really suck.  “There’s only a few hiring managers that can be difficult to deal with”, we say out loud again, like it really is going to matter.

I’m guessing there must be some law about posting something on a blog about instructions on how to kill a hiring manager and get away with it.  I don’t remember reading anything from WordPress when they allowed me to sign up this blog.  You would think that would be bolded in the instruction: “HEY! Don’t write sh*t about killing hiring managers! Or you could be put in jail!” 

I better be strategic about how I word this.

Well, after watching 62 straight episodes of Breaking Bad, apparently it’s fairly easy to dissolve a body in a big 50 gallon drum with some acid.  In the show, they always wore protective gear, like rubber suits and gloves.  They also had the equipment to pick up and transport said 50 gallon drums of disgusting liquid. As you can imagine this takes care of the not getting caught part.

Here are a few ideas, for entertainment purposes only, on how you might kill a hiring manager, but of course ‘we’ never would:

1. Disgruntled Crazy Candidate.  We actually protect our hiring managers so many times they don’t even know it!  We know the crazies, but we filter them out.  Not this time! This time not only do we pass them along, but we let the Crazy Candidate in on a little feedback, “Yeah, the hiring manager hated you, and thinks you’re crazy, and here is her address…”

2. Strange White Powder on the Resume. You hear about this stuff all the time with crazies sending stuff to politicians.  I’m sure it works the same for hiring managers! But you put yourself in jeopardy as well. But, if you’ve read this far, my guess is you’re on the edge already, once one more step!

3. Nut Allergies. Hiring managers love conference room cookies!  This time all you need to do is make a special batch of your Chocolate Chip “Surprise” cookies, but don’t call them “surprise”, they’ll feel the surprise!

My guess is I’ll get at least 3 ‘unsubscribe’ emails after this goes live.  That’s always a good measurement of success as a blogger.  How many people did you alienate today?

Happy hiring folks!

P.S. – if this is the FBI or any other law enforcement agency reading this, I’m joking, this is a joke, I love my hiring managers. Well, most of them.

My Name is Tim, and I’m a Helicopter Parent

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I’m not here to apologize and tell you all how wrong I am.  I like being a ‘Helicopter Parent’.  I had kids for a reason, to spend time with them, to watch them grow, to help them grow, to show them right from wrong.

Let’s face it, I was raised in an age where being a helicopter parent wasn’t a ‘thing’.  My parents loved me, but having kids in their time was different.  It was almost like it was part of a job description for marriage.  Get married. Buy House. Have kids. Start your addictions. Die with more money than everyone else.  Hello, Baby Boomers!

I didn’t want to be the same parent that my parents were to me.  Not that I disliked my upbringing.  I had great freedoms.  It taught me to be very independent.  I don’t fault my parents at all, I turned out just fine.  They parented like most parents parented during that time.  Kids were meant to be seen, not heard.  The parents were the priority, not the kids.  Different time, I survived. I’m a happy and productive citizen to the world.

But that’s not me.  I wanted to go to my kids first preschool holiday party and watch him try to figure out Christmas, even though you couldn’t use that word at the party and he was Jewish.  I wanted to coach his little kickers soccer team, where we didn’t keep score and everyone got a medal and a snack.  I wanted to spend my free time, with my kids.  Unapologetically so!  If my kids were outside playing, I didn’t want to miss their joys and falls.  I also didn’t want the pedophile on the next block running off with them. Since I know there is a pedophile one block over from the pedophile site online.  My parents didn’t know this, ignorance was bliss.

I’m proud to be a Helicopter Parent.  I’ve seen most of the great moments in my kids life. I won’t regret this when I’m lying on my death bed.  I don’t think my kids will like me any more than I liked my parents at their age, that’s just life.  They’ll hate me as a teen, they’ll love me again once they find out it sucks to be an adult.  I’m sure they’ll respect me more as they get older, the way I respect my parents the older I get.  I’m doing it differently than my parents, not better.

Okay, gotta go, I need to ‘help’ put some details into my kids science project.

The Real Reason Feedback Sucks in the Corporate World

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So, yeah, I’m really lucky to have what I’ll call “professional” friends, thankfully many of which I now consider personal friends, that are willing to give me ‘real’ feedback.

What is ‘real’ feedback, you ask?

When I suck, they tell me I suck.  When I’m brilliant they tell me I suck! Just kidding. When I’m brilliant they tell me I’m brilliant.  When I can be better, they tell me that as well.

I’m Lucky.

You can’t have this in normal work feedback.

You see there are two things in a normal work feedback loop that make it impossible for you to accept and deliver real feedback.  One is competition. The other is trust.

My friends have only one intent when they give me feedback. They want me to be the best I can be at whatever it is I’m trying to be.  I/They feel absolutely no competition with me on any level.  When I do something great, they’re cheering for me.  When they do something great, I’m cheering for them.  We only want to see each other succeed. When you are delivering feedback from a place where your ONLY intent is to see the other person truly have success, then you can deliver ‘real’ feedback.

The other aspect is trust.  I must trust with all my being that they only want to see me succeed.  This way I’ll accept their feedback with nothing but positive intent and gratefulness, that they are willing to help me succeed.   When this happens, it’s magical.

I never feel defensive when my friends tell me I didn’t do ‘well’ (hat tip to Professor Marcus Stewart) enough.  I feel energized that I need to do better.  When they tell me I’m brilliant, I walk around on a cloud all day, because I know I was truly brilliant in that moment. They wouldn’t tell me otherwise.  I trust that.

That’s why feedback sucks in the corporate world.  Competition and lack of trust.  You and your boss and your peers are in a competition with each other.  You are all competing to reach the next level, many times at the sacrifice of one another. That’s why you never truly believe the feedback you’re getting.  It might be buried way deep down, but it’s there, a lack of trust that they really want to see you ‘fully’ succeed.  Succeed so much, you might take their job, or rise above them.

Feedback is different when your only intent is that you truly wish the greatest success possible for the person you are delivering it to, and they trust that it is the case.

Just a little something to strive for today, leaders.

 

Surge Pay

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My friend Laurie Ruettiman wrote about Uber’s Surge pricing recently.  You know, when Uber basically is super busy, so to advantage of this time, they up their prices to meet demand. Do you really want a ride?  Okay, that will be twice the amount as normal!  It’s basic economics of supply and demand.  No one really seems to mind all that much, people get it.  There are more people who need rides than their are rides available.  I’ve got more money than you, I really want a ride! Welcome to America.

Someone commented on her post about companies doing this with wages.  It was tongue in cheek, but I wonder…

Think of those times when ‘Surge Pay’ would really be welcomed!  Like the last time you were at the DMV and had to wait 3 hours to get your license renewed and you watched the state employees seem get slower and slower as the line grew longer and longer.

Surge Pay to the rescue!  Hey, Joe, step it up, bust through this line, and we’ll double your pay!  Do you think that would work?  I bet it would.  There are so many jobs that are like this.

When I was in college I worked at a movie theater. For about 45 minutes before a show started you worked your butt off! Then, you got a nice one hour and forty-five minute ‘break’ where you prepped for the next rush.  Do you know how many people skip the popcorn line at the movies because they don’t want to wait in that long line!?  A lot.  And it’s basically all margin! If you doubled the kids salary shoveling popcorn for those 45 minutes, you would probably get a lot of extra effort.

We get stuck in our ways.  We don’t do something like Surge Pay because we feel ‘it all works out in the end’.  We’ll just take the amount they should be paid and spread it out over 40 hours.  It all works out, Tim, relax!  But it doesn’t.  People in these types of jobs get use to working one speed, and it’s not on ‘high’, so productivity during rushes gets hurt.

It’s really an easy concept.  Find the hard, crappy part of jobs.  The ones you have a hard time feeling with productive workers, and do surge pay for those times you most need it.  Can’t find anyone to cover the Saturday evening shift, it’s now on surge pay! Who wants to make twice or triple what they normally do to work Saturday night!? You’ll find some folks for sure!

I know, I know, you call this ‘shift premium’, but guess what your 10% shift premium isn’t working! You want your second and third shift to be as good as first.  Surge pay is your answer!  You want to Timmy to sell more popcorn. Hello, Surge Pay!

Who knew Uber could solve your compensation issues!

 

It’s Not a Talent Contest

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I think most of us have gotten away from using the phrase “a war on talent’ throughout the industry.  It’s not really a war, and if it was most of you would lose.  Most talent acquisition shops are unwilling to do what it would take to win a war, that’s just a fact, not a shot at your shop.

There’s a better phrase that I think should encompass the plight of talent in our organizations that is used frequently in sports:

“It’s not a ‘talent’ contest. It’s a ‘winning’ contest!”

This means it doesn’t matter how talented the other team is, it all comes down to winning the game.  Great, you have the best talent, but if you’re losing the game/contest/event your high level of talent means nothing!

HR, Talent Acquisition and most executives have a hard time with this. They want to get the ‘best’ talent.  When, in reality, the best talent might not help your organization ‘win’.  Yes, you win or lose in most organizations.  You either make the sale or don’t make the sale. You either launch on time or don’t.  You either design award winning products, or you design products that never make it market.  Those are winning and losing in a business sense.

Business isn’t a talent game. It’s a winning and losing game.

What does this mean to HR and Talent Acquisition?  You don’t always need the most talented individuals to win.  What you need is people who are willing to give that little bit of extra effort, over those who won’t.  This discretionary effort gets you the win, over talented individuals who aren’t willing to give such effort.

You need individuals that put the goal, the vision, first.  Again, nothing to do with talent.  They believe in what you are doing as an organization, and do what it takes to make those goals reality.

You need individuals who want to see those around them succeed and are willing to sacrifice themselves, from time to time, to see their peers and coworkers succeed.  This sacrifice has nothing to do with talent.

I love talent, don’t get me wrong.  All of us need a certain level of talent to do what we do, but almost all of us don’t need to be the ‘most’ talented to be successful.  When we go out and build our talent strategies we have to be aware of this.  It’s not about hiring top talent.  It’s about hiring the talent that will make our organizations successful.

I don’t want my organization to be in a talent game.  I want my organization to be in a winning game.