The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Bill Conaty (Author), Ram Charan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 9, 2010

If talent is the leading indicator of whether a business is up or down, a success or a failure (and it is) . . . do you know how to accurately judge raw human talent? Understand a person's unique combination of traits? Develop that talent? Convert what supposedly are "soft" subjective judgments about people into objective criteria that are as specific, verifiable, and concrete as the contents of a financial statement?
     The talent masters do. They put people before numbers for the simple reason that it is talent that delivers the numbers. Success comes from those who are able to extract meaning from events and the forces affecting a business, and are able to look at the world and assess the risks to take and the risks to avoid.
     The Talent Masters itself stems from a unique combination of talent: During a forty-year career at General Electric, Bill Conaty worked closely with CEOs Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt to build that company's worldrenowned talent machine. Ram Charan is the legendary advisor to companies around the world. Together they use their unparalleled experience and insight to write the definitive book on talent—a breakthrough in how to take a business to the next level:

• Secrets of the masters. The specifics on how companies regarded as world-class—GE, P&G, Hindustan Unilever (and others)—base their stellar performance decade after decade on their systems for finding and nurturing leadership talent.
• Intimate and systemic. Why deep knowledge and intimacy with your talent and a systemic rhythm of reviews are the foundation for creating a steady, selfrenewing stream of leaders for all levels of an organization—from first-line supervisors to the CEO.
• The competency that lasts. Financial results, market share, brand, and legacy products all have a half-life that seems to grow shorter by the year. Talent is the only competency that endures.
• What to do Monday morning. The Talent Masters tool kit provides the specific guidelines for assessing and improving your company’s talent mastery capabilities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Corporate guru Charan (The Game Changer) and Conaty, a 40-year HR leader at General Electric, reveal how successful companies stay on top by developing leaders at every level of operation. Heading the list is GE under the leadership of Jack Welch. Nicknamed "Neutron Jack" for his ruthless willingness to fire non-performers, Welch created a new culture at GE by transforming the criteria for executive performance so that management had to get to know their workers, which allowed them to choose future leaders to develop in a series of room-to-grow jobs. The authors offer suggestions for adopting Welch's methods for today's global environment, examining not only GE but also Novartis, Hindustan Unilever, and Proctor and Gamble to suggest that today's leaders need to manage multiple brands in one country, shepherd a single brand across the globe, and spend time working abroad. A liberal use of jargon ("He searches for discontinuities in the external landscape") will distance general readers, but business types will find this useful.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review

“Enduring principles and powerful practices combine in this must-read human resource manifesto for leaders at every level.”
—Jack Welch

“…The definitive guide to the art and science of talent development.”
—Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products

“…Practical, readable and very actionable …”
—A.G. Lafley, retired chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble

"Knowing how to spot top talent and where exactly to place it is at the crux of this marvelous book, The Talent Masters. Its pages provide a vivid recounting of many true-to-life leadership dilemmas in contemporary organizations that reveal just how critical it is to make good, sound judgments when choosing from amongst the talent of an organization."
—Stephen R. Covey, author, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The Leader in Me

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (November 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307460266
• ISBN-13: 978-0307460264
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 80 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars But The Numbers ARE The Ultimate Measure January 6, 2011

By David H

Format:Hardcover

I was attracted to "The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers", because of the implied promise in its title that herein lies a confirmation that people really do matter in generating business performance. So much for titles. The content disappoints, as the material is a collection of oft-repeated stories and well-known anecdotes about several long gone CEOs. The focus on GE and Jack Welch is old news. By the way, has the GE model proved to be successful outside GE? Is it still effective at GE today?

Most shocking is a total absence of metrics and hard data. Not even an appendix or a notes section in the book. Why didn't the authors identify numbers that correlate talent initiatives to business performance? Isn't creating shareholder value what it's all about? The real reason Jack Welch became famous at GE is because he grew market cap from $12B in 1981 to $375B when he retired in 2001. Does that mean that Imelt and team have killed the GE talent machine since GE market cap has dropped to $197B today? Or is the mastery of talent an isolated discipline with no direct relationship to business performance? Perhaps business performance is more a function of environment, regulatory issues, competitive landscape, M&A or luck. At any rate, the authors don't weigh in on this one or GE post-Welch.

Also, how did the Goodyear CEO get classified as a talent master? He joined that company in late '00 when the stock was $18.01 / share and left in late '10 with a share price of $10.93 - a destruction of about $1.75B in shareholder value over a decade. Hardly a master of anything....

In "Good To Great", Jim Collins determined through research that in his 11 great companies, of the 42 CEOs that served during the study period, only 2 were outsiders to the company before becoming CEO. Do Conaty and Charan have any thoughts on where the talent that the Talent Masters use comes from? Are they internal or external? The comment by the authors that a "blend" is necessary is not helpful. It seems that in today's environment of mercenary executives, the mix has shifted since Collins' study, but this needs confirmation. It would be interesting to determine performance variations between companies that engage in a continuous cycle of outsider executives versus those that emphasize internal talent for promotion.

One of the few charts in the book (page 216) shows a "Market Focused Business Model" which is an insult to the great corporate leaders who profitably grew their businesses long before the executive tenures profiled in "The Talent Masters". Was converting manufacturing capacity to higher value added capability just invented? Hasn't overhead recovery always been critical for profitability?

The Talent Master Tool Kit (pages 257 - 273) is right out of a basic HR leadership guide from the 70s (if not earlier). These pages reflect nice, common sense guidelines, and little else.

Because this book is a story about the behavior of CEOs in several companies where Conaty has worked or consulted (see inside text on dust cover), the criteria for inclusion in the narrative seems to be driven by "these are the guys I know" rather than a metric-driven analysis of high performance companies where results can be tied to talent factors.

Understanding how talent impacts business performance is a field ripe for detailed analysis, similar to Collins' approach of a full blow research project. Regrettably, the anecdotal orientation and limited scope of "The Talent Masters" adds little to our understanding of the subject Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unprecedented insights from legendary talent generating organizations March 26, 2013

By Nathan Ives

Format:Hardcover

The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan provides unprecedented insight to the people development programs of several legendary organizations including General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, and Novartis. Conaty and Charan illustrate in great detail the specific programs these organizations use to develop talent and plan for and execute on succession plans; including the behind-the-scenes consideration of organizational, cultural, and operational impacts such changes incur. They also share their experience-based insights on the critical personal traits and organizational supports needed for succeeding leaders to excel in their new positions.

I like The Talent Masters because of its in-depth, behind-the-scenes insights to the talent management practices of globally recognized `leadership factories.' Many case studies highlight the mechanics of these organizations' programs but Conaty and Charan present the intimate executive discussions and thought processes on personnel development and succession that only insiders possess. This book captures the nuance of thought that makes these processes work so well at creating some of the world's most sought after leaders.

The in-depth real-world business experience of leading companies presented in The Talent Masters makes this book on personnel development a StrategyDriven recommended read.

All the Best,
Nathan Ives
StrategyDriven Principal

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Observing Talent, Making Judgments About It...And Figuring Out How to Unleash It! November 14, 2010

By Thomas M. Loarie TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Business has gotten a whole lot tougher in the past decade with globalization, regulation, geopolitics, and, most recently, the failure of the global financial system. Sustainability and survival of an organization depend more than ever on the recruitment, development, and retention of its human capital.

In my work, medical device start-ups, it has been well understood for years that there are three keys to success - management, management, and management. Leadership talent has been and will continue to be the differentiator in maximizing the commercial success of an unproven technology and the creation of value.

In "Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers," authors Ram Charan and Bill Connaty show how a few large and mostly mature companies - some with experience over many years and some newcomers - have "embedded in their culture the habits of observing talent, making judgments about it, and figuring out how to UNLEASH IT." Companies highlighted include General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, Hindustin, Goodyear, UniCredit, the Texas Pacific Group. They fully appreciate that talent is required for value creation and good numbers.

These companies "analyze talent, understand it, shape it, and build in through a combination of disciplined routines and processes, and something even rarer and harder to observe from outside: a collective expertise, honed with continuous improvement in recognizing and developing talent. These companies have disproved the myth that the judgment of human potential is a "soft" art."

Charan and Conaty have organized the book into three sections:

* First, an insider's look into GE's much admired talent management system and why it works.... The authors each have 40+ years of experience with GE - Charan as an outside consultant, and Conaty as an executive insider.
* Second, a look into a wide range of approaches by Talent Masters from a number of other companies.
* The third and last section show the application of talent master by companies who have entered the "talent growth" game recently.

A weakness I have observed here in Silicon Valley with many medtech executives is a reluctance to "stretch" talent. This goes against my training at American Hospital Supply Corporation (now Baxter) where "talent" was stretched over and over again. (I served as a Director of International with 11 operations at the age of 28, and as a Division President at age 32). AHSC, a pioneering talent master, left a legacy by producing many of the health care executives that led the industry over the past thirty years.

Charan and Conaty note that Talent Masters place "stretch" bets for three good reasons.
1. People facing stretch situations are not likely to be overconfident and are eager to learn more from others.
2. Stretching people helps to retain talented people who are itching to advance and may look to greener pastures if they do not get a chance.
3. Successful stretches attract better candidates in the future because ambitious and capable people will know that they won't have to wait for slots to open.

"Talent Masters" turns managerial succession upside down - "Rather than finding people to fill positions, this approach puts the emphasis on opening paths for leaders to grow their talents and become ever more capable."

"Talent Masters" is a good "how to" book for those company executives who are seriously focused on increasing the bandwidth of their "talent pool," want to retain the high potentials they have, and want to recruit top talent in an ever competitive environment. Read more ›

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How to develop "robust talent pipelines and same-day succession plans" November 19, 2010

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I agree with Bill Conaty and Ram Charan that Steve Jobs is the archetypical "talent master." Few others possess his combination of intelligence, temperament, energy, and determination (indeed tenacity) when the objective is to sustain generation of what Jobs characterizes as "insanely great ideas," then dominate markets with the products those ideas suggest.

However, all of us can be "more like Steve" if we are willing to become more astute in terms of (a) identifying a person's talent more precisely than can most other people by observing and listening; (b) strengthen our abilities through constant and intense practice; (c) make better judgments by mastering what Roger Martin characterizes as "integrative thinking" (i.e. "the predisposition and the capacity to hold two [or more] diametrically opposed ideas" in his head and then "without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other" to "produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea"; and master, also, their people skills when involved in various social processes and interactions.

Whereas Steve Jobs is the archetypical "talent master," General Electric is the archetypical "talent master" organization. "When a valued leader does leave the fold - even one who may seem indispensable at the moment - the people in charge know what to do. They understand the business, know the candidates' strengths and development needs [not weaknesses], and are well prepared to fill the slot with the right match quickly - even in a matter of hours. The goal is clear: no pause, no time for people to commiserate, no laxity in decision making, and no opportunity for the competition to poach talent."

Conaty and Charan offer a case in point.... "When Larry Johnston resigned [to become CEO of Albertson's], GE set itself a new record for speed, naming his successor and three others down the line in half a day and announcing the changes before the day was over. That performance has been the model to shoot for ever since. GE does not allow a top leadership vacuum to exist, even for a day." The institutional response to Johnston's unexpected resignation was possible only because GE had (and continues to have) "robust talent pipelines and same-day succession plans" in place and operational. The rapid response also demonstrates "the strength and power of the GE system of talent mastery, one centered on the Session C system.

Robust talent pipelines, C Sessions, and same-day succession plans are worthless without people who know how to make the most effective use of them. The development of talent therefore requires the mastery of skills needed to sustain that development. The ever-practical Conaty and Charan identify five specific organizational "How-Tos":

1. Get all senior leaders centrally engaged in talent recognition and selection
2. Hire for demonstrated leadership, not just for credentials
3. Learn as much as possible about values and behavior before hiring
4. Be humble enough to hire "outsiders" but ensure cultural assimilation
5. Be totally honest about who has greatest leadership potential

They also identify five specific "How-Tos" for the individual:

1. Make talent development an obsession
2. Drill down deep to the specifics of each person's talents and potentiality
3. Give frequent, honest, and specific feedback
4. Make talent development a core competency with accountability
5. Provide intellectual challenges and opportunities fir additional growth

I presume to suggest that an extended metaphor, "gardening," is instructive in this context: establish a culture of rich "soil" that has sufficient sunlight and moisture; plant the best "seeds" and then nourish them; prune, relocate, or remove one or more, if necessary; and meanwhile protect the garden as "plant" growth continues.

Talent is a resource, an asset, not a title or position. Most knowledge transfers in any workplace occur informally during interactions between and among those involved. To varying degree, each person should be both a "teacher" and a "student." That is why this book can be immensely valuable to those who have supervisory responsibilities as well as to those entrusted to their care. Read more ›