Herding cats

Aligning values is the battle cry of the new generation manager. The division between private life and work blurs as the competition for talent increases - and it will be even more intense when we start to feel the real pressure of aging populations. Corporate Social Responsibility programs will be a must to retain talent because of the fusion of personal and professional life.
Photo by Howard Lake Flickr CC

Talent hunt and unemployment

Unemployment among the young and educated is running high in Europe, many countries fear that some will never enter the market and spend their life on welfare. How is it possible to talk about lack of talent when there is an abundance of people looking for jobs? The reason can be seen from a historic perspective.

After the second world war, industry was destroyed and there was a general lack of goods. Anyone that had a factory prospered, salesmen did not need focus on customer needs, only find the one willing to pay the highest price (which made everyone focus closing techniques). Later, when immediate needs were satisfied, industry started talking about customer focus to sell something more to the masses. Now, as populations are aging - meaning that they have complete homes since many years - innovation is needed to create new opportunities. This is where talent comes in.

To answer the question about the young and highly-educated that can't find jobs, I think the answer has two angles. Firstly large parts of industry is failing exactly due to the lack of talent, it takes talent to find new talent. Secondly, all highly educated are not talent, not entrepreneurial and not natural networkers. It might seem harsh, but the talent industry needs is highly educated, plus something else.

Talent does different things

To do more of the same is not talent. Doing something different means willingness to take risk, which is based on self-confidence.

Imagine that you recruit a group of irreverent persons, convinced that they are the masters of their own lifes... how do you keep them? Is it like trying to herd cats, do they just wander away? This is where the aligning of company and personal values comes in. Only if they can do at work what they would have done on their private time, will they stay. If they would have done volunteer work, the company better be into some kind of Corporate Social Responsibility program.

Go with the flow

The consequence of accepting the idea of focusing talent, and that human resources are the only resources worth fighting for, is to give up control. Managing has to be done through motivational and inspirational efforts, what I call Open Management.

Innovation versus depreciation

With the increased rhythm of innovation, production runs become shorter and highly specialized machines have shorter lifetimes. Through economic history, investment in equipment has been directly related to improvements in productivity. Now, with shorter runs, employees need to be able to rebuild, reuse and reinstall equipment and procedures so that many products can be delivered from the same factories - talent is needed at all levels.

What about the small companies?

There is a definite future for small companies, if they can cooperate on large contracts. The use of technology for coordination, the specialization of equipment, the use of experienced managers to avoid beginner's errors and hold together temporary alliances - all these factors are important for a new industry.

It is not a new idea, it has worked for a long time, the difference is that I believe it will spread. Today we find this model in Silicon Valley, but also in Northern Italy and the enormous trading houses like Marubeni. The trading houses have always operated by putting together alliances and delivering everything from simple textile trading to complex nuclear power stations. Now imagine temporary trading houses, uniting small talent driven companies, this can be a rewarding environment for the open minded manager - for one, it will not be boring.

Any thoughts? Is this only for the strong, or is there space for everyone?