Customer Reviews

The War for Talent

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The New Yorker (July 22, 2002) had an article that referred to "The War for Talent" that summed up what I felt after finishing the book (I paraphrase): The book largely amounts to an argument for indulging A employees, fawning over them, and "allowing them to find out what they like most to be doing." Malcolm Gladwell's article really articulated my feeling about Enron, my former company and how management talked about encouraging risk and allowing "A talents" to be the dynamic driving force WITH little regard to organizational structure or goals. The resulting chaos of having dozens of self-proclaimed geniuses pursuing their objectives, while often hidden from outsiders, makes me very wary of some consultant's pet theory that ignores divisions duplicating efforts, repeating mistakes, raiding each others "talent" employees, low office morale and intense political jockeying for advancement (which, ironically, was independent of performance). This book is another tiresome example of tired old "hero" worship; it makes me regret ever having gone to b-school. We MBAs are really screwing things up.

Easy reading, entertaining, interesting and informative. Light on details but a very good general overview of the topic.

Conceptually excellent. The value is in how you implement the recommendations - which is where you will find this book wanting.

If you get nothing else out of this book, the quote from Dee Hock (founder of Visa) will make it worth buying:

"Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second motivation; third capacity; fourth understanding; fifth knowledge; and last and least, experience.

Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind."

You can no longer be satisfied with "C" players in your organization. To compete in today's world, you need a powerful team of "A" players-top talent. Every savvy employer knows this fact, at least intuitively. Incredibly, relatively few act on this knowledge, satisfying themselves instead with "warm bodies." And they wonder why they aren't more profitable. (Shake your head in disbelief here.)

Produced by three consultants from McKinsey & Company, "The War for Talent" is based on five years of in-depth research on how companies manage leadership talent. [The research is explained in the book.] From what they learned from surveys of 13,000 executives at more than 120 leading companies and 27 case studies, the authors propose a talent-based approach to recruiting and holding management employees. The concept is simple: emphasize a deep conviction that competitive advantage comes from having better talent at all levels. Execution of that talent is more difficult, requiring total commitment and consistent action on the part of all leaders throughout the organization.

The authors have limited their focus to managerial talent, ignoring the tremendous contribution made by non-management employees. Their contention is that if you have highly talented managers, everything else will work just fine. I had a problem with that concept, feeling that it takes strong talent at all levels to achieve corporate success. As I read the book, I found myself mentally extending the authors' approaches and recommendations to all workers.

The book begins, aptly enough, with a chapter explaining the War for Talent. Wake-up call statements include recognition from 99% of the companies surveyed that their managerial talent pool needs to be much stronger in three years. At the same time, there is an understanding that the pool from which companies will recruit that talent will shrink. Therefore, competition for talent will become more like a war. In the first of many interesting comparison boxes in the book, we learn that the old reality says people need companies and that jobs are scarce. The new reality is that companies need people and that talented people are scarce. These comparison boxes deliver valuable, thought-provoking insights throughout the book.

The authors explain that most companies are poor at talent management. This situation must change. Executives who read this book will be in a more advantageous position to do something about this problem-if they take action based on what they read. The book is filled with action stimulators.

The second chapter shows readers how to Embrace a Talent Mindset. It's a way of thinking that drives the whole process. In chapter three, we learn how to Craft a Winning Employee Value Proposition. This is an essential part of the book, emphasizing the relationship between the management employee and the company. It talks about what managers are looking for in a job-in an environment, and how to give it to them. Included are culture, growth opportunities, compensation and much more. It's the total experience that makes a company so attractive to the kind of people it seeks.

With a clear idea now that your company is different, much more oriented toward giving talented managers what they need to achieve, chapter four explains how to Rebuild Your Recruiting Strategy. You'll shift from chasing all over trying to get people to work for you to becoming so attractive that talent gravitates to you. Recruiting becomes more targeted and takes place over a longer period of time. You're growing your future workforce by engaging with people even years before it's time for them to join you.

Chapter Five captures a trend which is growing in America, but not nearly as fast as it needs to: the personal development of high potential talent. The authors describe in page after page how coaching, mentoring, and bosses with high expectations can propel a talented person to greater heights and greater performance in much less time. Candid feedback enables people to stretch and grow in ways that hold them with the company so they can do more. We know how important growth is to talented people, so the ideas and illustrative stories in this chapter will be eye-opening for many readers.

In the next chapter, the authors present the concept of differentiating among employees. Workers are ranked as "A,", "B," or "C" players, in consideration of their performance and their potential. This chapter shows "how to invest in the most capable people (A players), grow the solidly contributing middle (B players), and act decisively on the low performers (the C players), and put the spotlight on all three in a rigorous talent review process." D players-the clearly incompetent or unethical-are not discussed since they shouldn't even be there anyway. The plan is to Differentiate and Affirm Your People. When high performers are appreciated, they become even more productive. They develop a pride which drives them to greater heights . . . and pulls others along with them.

The final chapter, Get Started-and Expect Huge Impact in a Year, presents a process for implementing the authors' concepts in your organization. Of course, you won't see immediate results. However, if you're serious about the transformation, results will come. Expect huge impact in the first year, the authors encourage; set the bars high. It can happen. It must happen if your company is going to be a high achiever, a winner in the ongoing War for Talent.

Roger Herman, co-author of "How to Become an Employer of Choice"

Based on quantitative surveys, this study identifies that few US companies are good at recruiting, retaining and developing talented people and that excellent performance produces qualitatively and quantitatively superior results. The key cause of success is a mindset among leaders that gives high priority to excellence across all aspects of building talent. The advice provided for achieving excellence with talented individuals is well set out and, not surprisingly, mostly obvious. What needs explanation is why so few leaders give real attention to their stock of talent. The book also tends to assume that talented individuals produce good results, with out looking at the system within which they work.

The War for Talent is a great book for the leaders of an organization to read. Why? They are the ones who can affect the culture of the organization. Most workers, even A Players, do not have the power to drive cultural change.

As a contract recruiter (www.recruiterguy.com), when I go into a company for the first time, I interview the managers and ask them, in their view, "Why would a top performer want to work for this company, in this position, for you?" As the competition for talent begins to gain steam over the next few months, companies who do a better job of addressing the needs of the Gen X'ers will find themselves in the enviable position of attracting the replacements to the Baby Boomers who are retiring or otherwise leaving the workplace. Sure there is still a surplus of workers as a result of the recession. However, companies who do not have a recruitment strategy will soon find themselves spending much more money to attract the best talent.

In The War For Talent, the authors used specific examples of companies who had either a recruiting or attrition problem and then solved it by improving their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). For instance, SunTrust had a problem where they were losing 46% of their branch employees in their Publix supermarket branches in Georgia and 55% of their high performers. The book discusses the steps they took to dramatically lower their attrition rate in a relatively short time.

Unfortunately for the book, it came out just as Enron was spinning into the ground. Therefore, some people have focused more on the Enron EVP and other qualities and possibly not enough on the other companies' qualities. Enron, while it was growing, appealed to a specific group of people who were not afraid to take what now appears to be excessive risks. There are many examples of other companies with other EVP's who have survived and possibly thrived during this recession. They were able to attract and retain the high performers, who generally tend to be more strategic and less tactical than their counterparts.

Just as Brad Smart in his book "Topgrading" focuses on recruiting, developing and mentoring the A Players, the authors of The War For Talent stress the importance of the A players in a company. It is surprising that "The Peter Principle" came out in 1969 and we are still discussing the concept but in different terms.

The War For Talent concepts should be discussed from the boardroom to your hiring managers. Your leaders need to embrace a talent mindset (title of a chapter in the book), develop a winning differentiation for your company, and develop recruiters who have the ability to attract A Players.

Read this book if you want to win "The War For Talent." .........

I recommend this book highly for anyone who works in or owns a business. The information contained here is not original in concept, as many of the concepts can be found in (not surprisingly) successful and well know businesses.

The basic premise of this book is that the ability to attract, retain and engage the best talent available will give your business a competitive edge in the marketplace. Looking at these components in the "war for talent" the authors outline several strategies:

The first issue is that in order to be able to focus on talent, companies must "embrace a talent mindset" and realize that in this age of intellectual capital, getting the top talented people to work for you and your customers will make the difference in your results. "Embracing a talent mindset" means not just awareness of the importance of great people, but investing in development, setting high performance standards, and getting actively involved in people related decisions. In order to do this, companies must look closely at "EVP" or an "Employee Value Proposition" approach to keep top talent engaged in exciting work and value added opportunities.

The authors also discuss several different approaches to recruiting and identifying the key talent required for your business. In my experience, getting better talent up front makes all the subsequent processes better: training, communication, innovation, and of course business results.

The book also discusses a concept made famous by GE - differentiating performance and performers. While it sometimes feels like business Darwinism, differentiating your top performers and rewarding and investing in them accordingly will bring about better results than trying to raise the poorer performers up a level.

Overall, a great summary of the challenges and opportunities in this "war for talent" businesses are facing everyday.

A friend of mine recently sent me the old article from the New Yorker that was highly critical of this book and how the all out "talent is everything" mania drove Enron into the ground. I decided to also read the book and can't say I agree with any of it other than some of the obvious points of hiring smart people and motivating them. Duh!

Having worked for one of our illustrious big banks that basically failed in 2009 I can attest to the same cynical non-sense going on in our zoo as what may have occurred at Enron. By that I mean the endless shifting of the top managers regardless or experience or job skills into positions of responsibility. Ultimately a lack of accountability fails big companies far quicker than settling for pluggers over shooting stars. What is talent if not discipline, hard work, team work, humility and focus? I just don't see any of that covered here. These same consultants polluted my company for years getting into the ears of insecure senior managers that used the rest of as guinea pigs. I cannot think of one of the 8-10 programs launched by consultants that did anything but disrupt the company and hinder performance.

This book? Seems like it entertained some readers which is fine. But for serious management study it think it should be avoided.

This book has many interesting things to say - although the selection of case studies is somewhat unfortunate. A cynic might say that by following the suggestions of this book, your company can be as successful as ... Enron. I, of course, am not that cynical.

Great book, I recommend it for anyone who is in Human Resource management. It will change the way you think about running your organization.

In a market characterized by uncertainty and instability, one thing holds true for all organizations: building strong talent is crucial to success. "The War for Talent" delivers a powerful argument for why this is the case, illustrating the need for leaders to adopt a "talent mindset" and develop a strategic approach to talent management. Executives and managers will find this book a valuable guide that lays out the steps required to attract, develop, excite and retain highly talented employees.

McKinsey & Company consultants Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones and Beth Axelrod translate five years of in-depth research and analysis into a clear perspective on how to develop a corporation's greatest asset - its people. The authors artfully weave examples of success stories from such companies as Amgen, GE, The Home Depot and Enron into a comprehensive framework for addressing long-term talent management. Their approach continually challenges the reader to assess his or her own organization and to take action. Leaders from all levels of organizations will gain practical knowledge and an insightful roadmap for winning the war for talent.