Elizabeth Craig

Co-authored by Jeff Perry, Elizabeth Craig and Robert J. Thomas<br />
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One of the essential ingredients of a high-performance business today is talentan organization's people, from its current and future leaders to its frontline employees. <br />
Instead of being viewed as fungible commodities or interchangeable cogs, people must be seen as contributors who through uncountable interactions on teams and in workgroups, individually and collectively generate an organization's performance.<br />
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Further, in a world in which the balance of power is shifting from the one-sided dominance of developed economies toward rapidly developing economiesa phenomenon we call the multi-polar worldcompanies will win or lose based on their ability to manage a global workforce. Companies seeking to truly compete on talentand actually become talent-powered organizations must build a distinctive capability we call talent multiplication. <br />
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In the course of Accenture's research for The Talent Powered Organization: Strategies for Globalization, Talent Management and High Performance, we found that when an integrated system of four specific capabilities is in place, organizations are in a position to use talent multiplication to help them achieve high performance. These companies are better able to define their talent needs, discover new sources of talent, develop individual and collective talent, and deploy talent in the right places and at the right times. <br />
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<strong>Defining talent</strong><br />
Organizations that successfully build a distinctive capability in talent multiplication start by rigorously defining their talent needs. This requires identifying mission-critical jobs and key workforce skills and competencies, in light of current and future strategic goals. <br />
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Consider how Google has approached one of its strategic objectives, which is to surpass Baidu.com as China's leading search engine. Google concluded that to achieve this goal, it would have to win the talent war in China. <br />
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To that end, it lured away a former Microsoft Corp. executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to become president of Google Greater China. A charismatic visionary who is something of a hero to many Chinese university students, Lee's mandate is to build a research and development center that will serve as a "talent magnet to fuel Google's growth in China. Given his widespread fame, Google is betting an estimated $10 million compensation package that Lee can draw the best Chinese students to the company.<br />
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Defining talent needs is also a critical component of a successful mergers and acquisitions strategy. At AT&T, HR leaders actively evaluate acquisition targets early in the M&A process to determine the potential value of that company's workforce to AT&T's identified talent needs. <br />
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Discovering talent</strong><br />
The second capability is one that enables companies to aggressively seek out new sources of talent. Talent-powered organizations work strategically and systematically to discover broad, diverse talent poolsand then ensure that these pools do not dry up. <br />
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For example, consider Valero Energy Corporation. The Texas-based oil-refining giant developed a "talent supply chain by creating an expansive network of diverse talent sources and establishing systems for continuously monitoring their talent requirements, sources and acquisitions. <br />
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Valero has used this supply-chain approach to reduce the time required to fill an open position from 120 days to 40 days, and to reduce the cost per hire from $12,000 to $2,300. The most significant results, however, have been strategic. The talent supply chain enables Valero to forecast demand for talent three years out, by both business area and job title. These projections allow the company to make strategic decisions about whether to hire new employees, enlist contractors or outsource the work.<br />
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<strong>Developing talent</strong><br />
The ability to develop talent has long been a key to sustained business success. For organizations that multiply talent, however, the focus must be on building individual skills, knowledge and competencies in ways that expand the organization's collective capabilities. Talent-powered organizations invest in developing the capabilities of all employees, with a particular focus on accelerating the development of skills and workforces that are most clearly linked to business strategy. <br />
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A leading exemplar of this approach is Avaya, a communications systems, applications and services company. Avaya created a formal business function called "business interlock to link employee learning to business objectives. Avaya employee development activities enabled and supported the corporate business strategy of accelerated new-product introduction. <br />
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The use of technology to accelerate learning, especially across geographic boundaries, is a key approach to better developing talent. The field of radiology, for example, boasts a number of innovations in this area. Dr. Donald Resnick, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, explains how the global distribution of radiology work creates opportunities for accelerated learning by providing doctors with more varied cases. "At one site you might have only chronic diseases, but at another place you might get only sports medicine, he says. "So all of a sudden [by redistributing the work] these fellows are getting experience in [chronic diseases and] sports medicine. To me, the educational value is spectacular. <br />
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Deploying talent</strong><br />
In sprawling multinational companies, deploying talentthe final capability included in talent multiplicationrequires the kind of thoughtful moves that a chess grandmaster might employ. Talent-powered organizations deploy the right talent in the right place at the right time to align employees' strengths and aspirations with the organization's goals. <br />
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UPS often deploys its own star performers to start strategic initiatives. For example, when it wanted to move down the supply chain in the early 1990s, UPS recognized the untapped opportunity to capitalize on its own core business and deep knowledge of the customer. Instead of going outside for logistical support, it searched in-house for top-performing employees to launch what became known as the Service Parts Logistics initiative. As of 2006, UPS Service Parts Logistics managed $1 billion in contracts for multinational customers such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and GE Medical, and was a critical part of the integrated package of services that UPS offered its customers. The 30 "UPSers who were deployed to the initiative were able to expand their own skills and experience while making meaningful contributions to the business.<br />
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Putting it all together</strong><br />
Accenture research has shown that the development of a distinctive capability is one of the three building blocks of high-performance businesses. When companies master the four talent management capabilities discussed above, they create a distinctive capability in talent multiplication that generates the talent power they need to become high-performance businesses. But as with so many management ideas, the execution is not easy. From the start, leaders must provide the vision and communicate the passion for talent multiplication. After, they must use data and metrics to measure the return-on-talent investments and guide talent decisions. And the efforts of middle managers are critical: they must have the people management skills that will enable them to effectively define, discover, develop and deploy talent. The importance of line managers and supervisors in engaging and multiplying talent cannot be overestimated. <br />
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Just as executives and employees had to become technology-savvy when information technologies became strategic, and just as they had to learn to think globally when the world's markets changed, they now need to become multipliers of talent. This task is crucial for those who want to create, and be a part of, a high-performance business.<br />
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