The Talent Advantage E-Book

Alan Weiss

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 259

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A fun and creative guide to keeping customers ecstatically happy Businesses are used to competing for market share, inexpensive labor, and time-to-market, but today's biggest competition among top firms may be the war for top talent. Today's best organizations are reaching across traditional geopolitical and cultural boundaries to attract and retain the best and brightest workers. In The Talent Advantage, authors Weiss and MacKay tap into their long experience as experts in talent recruitment and retainment to explain why today's business leaders must take firm control of the talent hunting process to ensure great hires. Here, they show leaders exactly how to do that.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

About the Authors

NANCY MACKAY

ALAN WEISS

CHAPTER 1 - Why Leaders Must Fight the Battle

STRONG LEADERS ATTRACT STRONG PEOPLE

THREATENED SUBORDINATES SINK THE SHIP

STAFF FUNCTIONS ARE, WELL, STAFF FUNCTIONS

WOULD YOU BE HIRED BY YOUR OWN HR DEPARTMENT TODAY?

CHAPTER 2 - The Five Failings of Non-Extraordinary Leaders (and their cures)

PRIORITIES: NOT MAKING THE PRIORITY LIST

ASSESSMENT: NOT KNOWING IT IF YOU TRIPPED OVER IT

EXEMPLAR: SETTING THE WRONG EXAMPLE (COGNITIVE DISSONANCE)

CONNECTIONS: CAREER DEVELOPMENT DIVORCES SUCCESSION PLANNING

WOMEN: NOT UNDERSTANDING MALE FILTERS

CHAPTER 3 - The Three Priorities of the Talent-Seeking Leader

WINNING THE WAR FOR TALENT: PEOPLE

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT: INVOLVING THE RIGHT PEOPLE

STRATEGY EXECUTION: CREATING A CULTURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR RESULTS

CHAPTER 4 - Talent is More Than Pure Performance

WHAT IS TALENT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AND OUTSTANDING

TALENT “OUTS”

ASSESSING YOUR RESOURCES: THE TALENT TEST

CHAPTER 5 - The Semi-Renewable Resource

IF TALENT WERE READILY RENEWABLE, EVERY COMPANY WOULD BE EXCELLENT

TREES DON’T MOVE, TALENT DOES

TALENT ISN’T FOREVER—IT CAN OBSOLESCE

THE LAST THING YOU NEED IS PARITY

CHAPTER 6 - Talent Is Attracted, Not Recruited

COMPETING BY DOLLARS IS SILLY AND EXPENSIVE

WHY “MOST DESIRED” LISTS DON’T MATTER

MAXIMIZING APPLICATION OF TALENT DRIVES UP ATTRACTION

“SHANGHAIED” SAILORS EVENTUALLY MUTINY

CHAPTER 7 - Competitive Advantage Is All Around You

APPROACHING THE MARKETPLACE FROM A POSITION OF STRENGTH

THE VALUE OF A STRONG BENCH

THE POWER OF HUMAN AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

WHY TALENT IS OFTEN SUBSUMED

CHAPTER 8 - The Process of Retaining Talent

NONFINANCIAL INCENTIVES AND MOTIVATORS

INCLUSION

THE DYNAMIC OF SKILLS, EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, AND BEHAVIOR

EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS

CHAPTER 9 - The Aerodynamics of Leadership

YOU MAY BE ON THE HORSE, BUT DO YOU KNOW WHERE IT’S GOING?

STRATEGY AS A DAILY GUIDE AND FILTER

ACCEPTING DISSENT BUT NOT REBELLION

MICRO- AND MACRO-MANAGING

CHAPTER10 - Counterintuitive Development

MINIMIZING DYSFUNCTIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE INVESTMENTS

RECOGNIZING THE ALL-STARS

CREATING ACCOUNTABILITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

SHARING SUCCESS AND CREDIT

CHAPTER 11 - Six Strategies to Win the War for Talent

CREATE A LEADERSHIP STYLE THAT IS CONSISTENT AND TRANSPARENT

CREATE ACCOUNTABILITIES FOR TALENT CREATION AND RETENTION DOWN THE LINE TO ...

MARRY CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND SUCCESSION PLANNING

BECOME THE LEADING ADVOCATE AND AVATAR FOR TOP TALENT ACQUISITION

VIEW TALENT HOLISTICALLY, EMBRACING LIFE BALANCE

ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN EXTRAORDINARY LEADERSHIP AND TALENT

Index

Copyright © 2009 by Alan Weiss and Nancy MacKay. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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eISBN : 978-0-470-49854-5

To my mother and father, Jack and Roseanna Weiss.

—Alan Weiss

With love and appreciation to Rob, Garrett, and Devon, who bring me joy and happiness every day of my life.

—Nancy MacKay

Acknowledgments

I hereby shower praise and plaudits on the thousands of people in my mentoring and related communities who have kept me sharp, put up with my barbs, and joined me in the great learning challenge.

—AW

I want to thank all of my clients who have provided me with the opportunity to have such an amazing and fulfilling career. My thanks also go to Alan Weiss for his extraordinary mentor-ship and the transformational impact he has had on my life.

—NM

Introduction

What we hear from CEOs searching for top talent:

Employees are our biggest source of competitive advantage; finding and grooming talented people is our biggest challenge; we have all of the top talent in our industry; there are no other world-class people out there in our industry; we have to groom our own because we’ve had failures bringing external people into our company; recruiting companies aren’t doing their jobs; we’ll do our own informal search and we’ll likely promote from within even if we don’t have ready-now people internally; we don’t have enough internal people to grow the business; the board wants us to hire externally because they think we are too inwardly focused.

What the research shows (McKinsey studies):

There is a world-wide shortage of talent and most companies are not prepared for the challenge of attracting, retaining, and developing people; talent management is typically led by HR and is not at the heart of business strategy; less than two-thirds of HR directors report to CEOs (due to lack of business knowledge), and they earn up to 50 percent less than peers in finance, marketing, IT; the influence of HR has declined significantly over the past 10 years.

Our work as executive coaches and consultants for the past 25 years shows:

Too many companies are not taking action at the CEO/senior executive level, and they delegate to HR; talent management is not a core competency of senior executives, and time and effort in this area is viewed as taking away from what they are rewarded for (growing the business); they are not held accountable for developing and retaining people; succession management and leadership development are not linked, and execution plans are rare; most senior executives were exposed to the sink-or-swim method of leadership development; new tailored approaches to internal/external coaching, peer coaching, job shadowing, mentoring, apprenticeships, and training are viewed as costs versus investments in people; silos get in the way of developing people; underperformers are not managed and are blockers for high potentials.

Role of the CEO:

The role of the CEO is changing due to the war for talent; winning the war for talent starts at the top with the CEO; CEO is the brand for attracting, recruiting, retaining world-class talent in your industry; CEO is the exemplar for striving for extraordinary leadership; CEO must play a lead role in building a leadership talent pool for competitive advantage; CEO is key to holding senior executives accountable for attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent; CEO must partner with HR to align talent management strategically; this book is about practical techniques and approaches to win the war for talent.

This is our attempt to bring a combined 50 years of consulting results to those executives who are in the talent wars and must gain that competitive advantage. Someone has to win. Heretofore, it’s been our clients. Now, it can also be you.

—Nancy MacKay, PhD Vancouver, British Columbia

—Alan Weiss, PhD East Greenwich, RI March, 2009

About the Authors

NANCY MACKAY

Dr. Nancy MacKay is president and co-founder of MacKay & Associates Advisors Inc., a consulting firm specializing in corporate strategy, organizational development, and leadership effectiveness. Nancy coaches and facilitates six CEO networks involving more than 70 CEOs. In addition, she operates forums for senior executives involving more than 50 high-potential executives. Her clients include Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Teekay Corporation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, RBC Royal Bank, Telus, Methanex, Best Buy, and many other leading organizations.

Much of Nancy’s outstanding success can be attributed to her exceptional ability to collaborate with corporate management and help leaders get to the heart of what is holding their companies back. Her uncanny talent for identifying issues is matched only by her practical, straightforward implementation style.

Nancy has facilitated hundreds of workshops with CEOs, boards, senior managers, and executives. Her work as a consultant, executive coach, professor, and keynote speaker has taken her from New Zealand to Finland and throughout North America. She speaks at major conferences on organizational change, leadership development, and strategy.

A former university professor, Nancy has been on the faculty of the executive MBA program at Simon Fraser University and has taught at the University of Waterloo and Lincoln University in New Zealand. She has also been a visiting faculty member at the University of British Columbia.

Nancy is on the board of the Vancouver Chapter of the YWCA. She is a Circle of Care Member of the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation and is a past member of Rotary International. She has also received numerous awards, including being named a World Class Consultant by an international group of her peers. Nancy was also named in 2008 to the list of “Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women.”

Nancy holds a Bachelor of Mathematics and a Masters degree in Management Sciences, both from the University of Waterloo in Canada, as well as a PhD in Business from Canterbury University in New Zealand. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles that have been published in international research journals and many popular business publications.

ALAN WEISS

Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times-Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, and more than 300 other leading organizations. He serves on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony-Award-winning New England regional theater, Festival Ballet, and currently is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Newport International Film Festival.

His speaking typically includes 30 keynotes a year at major conferences, and he has been a visiting faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, Boston College, Tufts, St. John’s, the University of Illinois, the Institute of Management Studies, and the University of Georgia Graduate School of Business. He has held an appointment as adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Rhode Island, where he taught courses on advanced management and consulting skills. He holds the record for selling out the highest priced workshop (on entrepreneurialism) in the 21-year history of New York City’s Learning Annex. His PhD is in psychology, and he is a member of the American Psychological Society, the American Counseling Association, Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He served as a member of the Board of Governors of Harvard University’s Center for Mental Illness and the Media. He has keynoted for the American Psychological Association on two occasions.

He is a member of the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame® and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top one-percent of professional speakers in the world.

His prolific publishing includes more than 500 articles and 30 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (McGraw-Hill). His most recent is The Global Consultant (with Omar Kahn; John Wiley and Sons). His books have been included in the curricula of Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and have been translated into German, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Korean, and Chinese.

He is interviewed and quoted frequently in the media. His career has taken him to 57 countries and 49 states. (He is afraid to go to North Dakota.) Success Magazine has cited him in an editorial devoted to his work as “a worldwide expert in executive education.” The New York Post calls him “one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America.” He is the winner of the prestigious Axiem Award for Excellence in Audio Presentation. The Providence Journal wrote about him as “one of the top motivational speakers in the country.”

In 2006 he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Press Institute, the first-ever for a non-journalist, and one of only seven awarded in the 60-year history of the association.

He has coached the former and present Miss Rhode Island/ Miss America candidates in interviewing skills. He once appeared on the popular American TV game show Jeopardy, where he lost badly in the first round to a dancing waiter from Iowa.

CHAPTER 1

Why Leaders Must Fight the Battle

Human Resources is to Talent Search as Airplane Food is to Fine Dining

The fundamental reason that leaders must lead the talent wars is that no one else is doing so within the organization. The acquisition of talent is not analogous to finance, or property management, or legal affairs, or public relations, which can justifiably be delegated to specialists.