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

Amazon.com Review

Guest Reviewer: Larry Bossidy on The Talent Masters

Larry Bossidy is the retired CEO and chairman of Honeywell International and the co-author of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done and Confronting Reality.

During my years as CEO of Allied Signal and Honeywell, I spent a great deal of time on people issues. In fact, I often surprised CEOs at other companies when I personally called them to check references on a person I was considering for a key position. Quite often they would ask, “Why are you calling?” My answer was always quite simple: “The success of my business depends on talent more than anything else.”

Just about everyone believes that “people are our most important asset,” but my experience has been that they are not quite sure about how to translate that truism into action. Now, along come Bill Conaty and Ram Charan with the book on how to make that translation, on how to judge raw human talent, pinpoint a person’s unique combination of traits, and develop that talent so that leaders improve and don’t just mark time.

Anyone who thinks that making judgments about people is totally subjective will quickly change his or her mind after reading The Talent Masters. Conaty and Charan’s great accomplishment—using in-depth examples from companies that have been talent masters for decades, as well as those that are still “works-in-progress” —is demonstrating that making judgments about how to help people grow in their jobs can be specific, verifiable and right-on-the-button. Moreover, in what may prove to be their most important point, they show why it is absolutely necessary to have the courage to take the actions the data suggests. They have written the book about the art and science of talent. If you are looking for an edge in a brutally competitive marketplace then there is no better place to start than The Talent Masters.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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.

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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: #175,633 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

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.