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Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First Hardcover – March 6, 2018
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Radical Advice for Reinventing Talent--and HR
Most executives today recognize the competitive advantage of human capital, and yet the talent practices their organizations use are stuck in the twentieth century.
Typical talent-planning and HR processes are designed for predictable environments, traditional ways of getting work done, and organizations where "lines and boxes" still define how people are managed. As work and organizations have become more fluid--and business strategy is no longer about planning years ahead but about sensing and seizing new opportunities and adapting to a constantly changing environment--companies must deploy talent in new ways to remain competitive.
Turning conventional views on their heads, talent and leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey provide leaders with a new and different playbook for acquiring, managing, and deploying talent--for today's agile, digital, analytical, technologically driven strategic environment--and for creating the HR function that business needs. Filled with examples of forward-thinking companies that have adopted radical new approaches to talent (such as ADP, Amgen, BlackRock, Blackstone, Haier, ING, Marsh, Tata Communications, Telenor, and Volvo), as well as the juggernauts and the startups of Silicon Valley, this book shows leaders how to bring the rigor that they apply to financial capital to their human capital--elevating HR to the same level as finance in their organizations.
Providing deep, expert insight and advice for what needs to change and how to change it, this is the definitive book for reimagining and creating a talent-driven organization that wins.
- Print length192 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
- Publication dateMarch 6, 2018
- Dimensions6.25 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-109781633691186
- ISBN-13978-1633691186
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Advance Praise for Talent Wins:
Alain Bejjani, CEO, Majid Al Futtaim Group--
"Turning human 'resources' into human 'capital'--a prerequisite to win in this era of talentism. An inspiring read for those who are trying to make a difference!"
Ed Breen, CEO, DowDuPont; Lead Director, Comcast--
"If you believe you've read all there is about the role of human capital in propelling value creation, think again. Charan, Barton, and Carey have crafted their many experiences into a compelling and concise book that frames a 'people before strategy' argument that is refreshingly new and different."
Kenneth I. Chenault, Chairman and CEO, American Express; Director, IBM and Procter & Gamble--
"Engaged employees are the key to success in any business, and Talent Wins offers real-world insights on how to foster talent, inspire creativity, and lead winning teams for the long term."
Alex Gorsky, Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson; Director, IBM--
"Talent is the difference between a good company and great company. And nurturing talent--helping people flourish--requires continuous action, effort, and work. It is critical to the mission and the aspirations of an organization that leaders be inventing, and then reinventing, the talent development playbook. Talent Wins helps you do just that."
Hein Knaapen, Chief HR Officer, ING Bank NV--
"This book gives compelling arguments for treating talent management as a crucial competency for any company that wants to succeed. The authors' proposed approach is a real departure from many accepted practices in talent management. Taking their recommendations to heart will significantly change the role of CEOs as well as the requirements for HR professionals in the future."
William McNabb, Chairman, The Vanguard Group--
"Business leaders have talked about the importance of people for years but often were vague about how to turn talent into a competitive advantage. In this new book, Charan, Barton, and Carey turn conventional views about human resources on their head and create the ultimate playbook for making human capital the ultimate edge for organizations of all types."
Alan Mulally, retired President and CEO, Ford Motor Company; former CEO, Boeing Commercial Airplanes; and Director, Google and Carbon3D--
"Talented people working together is the catalyst to deliver profitable growth for the benefit of all stakeholders. Talent Wins provides compelling strategies and tools to continuously develop the talent in your organization!"
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft--
"Millennials will soon account for over half of all workers. They want to be not only more creative, productive, and collaborative than ever before, but they also seek a greater sense of purpose and a deeper connection to their company’s mission. Talent Wins implores senior leaders to know their employees as well as they know their finances and the capital they deploy."
Susan Peters, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, General Electric--
"With real-world experiences from broad industries, Charan, Barton, and Carey bring to life a game plan to identify and develop talent--and leverage that talent for winning outcomes."
Denise L. Ramos, CEO and President, ITT Inc.; Director, Phillips 66--
"A groundbreaking book for the next twenty years that focuses CEOs' attention on the strategic value of employees and the necessity of bringing HR into the leadership circle. A must-read!"
Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook; founder, LeanIn.Org and OptionB.Org; and Director, Walt Disney Company--
"In a competitive global economy, no business can afford to leave talent on the sidelines. Talent Wins provides an innovative framework for cultivating talent--and shows that diverse teams are critical to unlocking an organization's full potential."
Ivan Seidenberg, former Chairman and CEO, Verizon; Director, BlackRock--
"Talent Wins exquisitely captures the essence of creating a modern digital platform and management practices to reinvent the HR role in your company with the goal to develop, manage, and nurture the talent in today's demanding marketplace. The book includes excellent case studies and practical examples that provide guidance and insights for every executive to consider in building a successful company."
Masahiko Uotani, President and Group CEO, Shiseido Company--
"Talent Wins can be a key to unlocking the full potential of Japanese global corporations."
About the Author
Ram Charan is an expert on corporate governance, author of four bestsellers (Execution, Confronting Reality, The Attacker's Advantage, and Boards That Lead), and winner of best-teacher awards at Northwestern and GE. With forty years of experience, he is a world-renowned adviser and problem solver to boards and CEOs. He serves on six boards.
Dominic Barton is the global managing partner of McKinsey & Company. He has authored more than eighty articles on capitalism, leadership, financial market development, Asia, history, and the issues and opportunities facing global and Asian markets, and he is the coauthor of three books, including Re-Imagining Capitalism.
Dennis Carey is Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry, where he recruits board directors, CEOs, and their direct reports. He has published five books, including Boards That Lead, coauthored with Ram Charan and Michael Useem, and more than fifty refereed journal articles covering topics ranging from CEO succession and corporate strategy to M&A, corporate governance, and human capital.
Product details
- ASIN : 1633691187
- Publisher : Harvard Business Review Press (March 6, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781633691186
- ISBN-13 : 978-1633691186
- Item Weight : 13.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #216,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #296 in Human Resources & Personnel Management (Books)
- #1,566 in Business Management (Books)
- #2,224 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Dennis Carey is Vice Chairman of Korn/Ferry International. He has recruited some of the most successful CEOs in American business, including companies such as TYCO International, 3M and American Standard.
As a board recruiter, Mr. Carey has built new boards from scratch ranging from Covidien Health Care and TYCO International, to EMBARQ, TYCO Electronics, DELPHI and Visteon. He has also built boards for IPOs including Goldman Sachs and Ameritrade. During the past 20 years, Mr. Carey has recruited hundreds of some of the most preeminent directors for Fortune 500 companies across the United States.
He has authored three books, published dozens of articles, and is a frequent contributor and writer for the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and McKinsey Quarterly on CEO succession, corporate governance, and mergers and acquisitions.
Mr. Carey’s board affiliations include Composite Technologies Corporation, a cable company; NextGenTV, a media company; Airclic; a software solutions company; and ScanLife, a digital bar code scanning company. He formerly served as a director of Closure Medical, a medical device company which was sold to Johnson & Johnson.
Mr. Carey is the founder of G100, the Lead Director Academy and the CEO Academy, and the co-founder of the Directors Institute at The Wharton School, the Prium, the CHRO Board Academy, and the CFO Board Academy. He also serves as on the advisory board of BoardRoomIQ.com.

Ram Charan is a renowned CEO advisor, director of seven boards, and author or coauthor of 32 books (with four million copies sold), including Execution—a New York Times bestseller for 150 weeks—and six authoritative books on corporate boards on governance. Charan earned MBA (Baker’s Scholar, with high distinction) and doctorate degrees in corporate governance from Harvard Business School. A highly renowned and award-winning teacher at GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute and at Northwestern University, his work spans China, Brazil, Japan, Australia, India, and the US. He has worked with boards and CEOs of companies including Humana, Bank of America, and two of the four largest digital companies in China.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2024Talent Wins is a transformative guide that emphasizes the critical importance of putting people at the forefront of business strategy. Ram’s insights and actionable frameworks empower leaders to cultivate a thriving workforce and drive organizational success. A must-read for anyone looking to enhance their talent management and create a people-first culture.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2018Good thoughts on the future of HR as well as real examples as proof of evidence. Just feel a bit salesy on the OHI survey and e-tools.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2018As a career senior HR executive with a major pharmaceutical company and, currently, entrepreneur having conceived, launched and scaled a successful & comprehensive human capital development, talent management and leadership, team and organizational development firm, I LOVE THIS BOOK! In my opinion, the biggest constraint to what the authors define as three imperatives to a winning talent playbook, will be the lack of HR strategic capabilities. I appreciate all the letters showcased behind many HR professional's names these days (e.g., PHR, SPHR, etc.) however, these credentials are essentially impractIcal and obsolete when it comes to driving early stage, emerging mid-market or Fortune business financial success. For the proven business partner and vetted HR executive contributor (as measured by EBITDA), congratulations on an abundance of career opportunities as you share the reins with the CEO, CFO - as CHRO - in making a significant impact.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2018Ram Charan is most important management writer since Peter F. Drucker. In this work he teams with two world-class business leaders, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey to provide CEOs, CFO and CHROs a clear road map to optimizing individual and organizational performance by creating a new leadership team the call the G-3, composed of the above individuals integrate the quantitative and qualitative components to identify the "Top 2%" performers throughout the organization and how to recruit more top 2%ers from external resources. At the same time, the authors show how the role of the CHRO can be elevated as a permanent member of the C-Suite. Along with Thomas McGuire's "Talent Valuation", I have selected this book as a text for my Talent Management course at a local university.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2018What a great book ! I've been thinking about how HR is never put into it's proper perspective in many facets of a business and this book tells it like it is. It's a world that rewards the best companies that have the best employees. So if you are not putting your thoughts into how you can develop or recruit the best people, you are behind the curve, BIG TIME. This book certainly is appropriate for bigger companies but you can apply the overall themes to any size business. You may be the whole C-suite, but this CHRO hat you wear is very important too. Great stuff !
- Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2023I bought “Talent Wins” knowing the G3 concept from the July 2015 HBR article: “People Before Strategy” on which I had commented. HBR editors selected my comment for publication in a subsequent (October) issue of the Magazine.
My comment challenged the notion of the Critical 2% as an unnecessary and unwelcome talent/value oversimplification. Otherwise, I saw considerable merit in the G3 ‘Triumvirate’ approach.
I had read Robert Morris’s five-star review, as well, before buying the book.
Nevertheless, the book disappointed by failing to deliver (offer) any prescriptive “how to" procedure for matching people to jobs (roles) and jobs to people. Instead, under the Chapter 5 Heading of: “Use Software and Data to Get Your Top people into the Critical Jobs”, on pages 114-115 (in my hard copy)’ with the paragraph beginning with “Done right, …” the esteemed authors articulate the benefits of what they call ‘personnel analytics’ in the first sentence, and then spend the remainder of that paragraph asserting how difficult, expensive, and unlikely it might be to secure those admittedly desirable benefits.
Meanwhile, the definitive ‘recipe for success’ has stood substantially unchanged for more than 45 years (since 1978, 40 years, at the time of “Talent Wins” publication). The “Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures” prescribe in specific terms the processes whereby employers may make the best possible talent selection and deployment choices. Moreover, the Industrial Organizational Psychology (I/O Psych) community has, for decades, expanded the body of Psychometric assessment knowledge, upon which the Uniform Guidelines were promulgated. Simultaneously, ‘Test Publishers’, as personnel assessment developers and providers call themselves, have steadily advanced the state of the art in talent assessment, with many high-performance assessment instruments (tests) now available for pay as you go delivery online via software as a service (SaaS).
A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Elaine D. Pulakos, Ph.D., writing for the SHRM Foundation, wrote: “It is important to point out that the procedures outlined in the Uniform Guidelines are, in fact, the exact same procedures that an assessment expert would employ if the only goal was to identify the best qualified candidates for a job. Thus, at least in this case, compliance with legal [and regulatory] requirements also represent(s) best practice in developing and implementing the most effective selection practices possible.”
Any CHRO worth his/her salt must know the Guidelines and all the underlying science cold. That foundational risk/reward topic would have been worth sharing and developing. As Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry, co-author Dennis Carey, would certainly have had access to experts on the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2018Very aspirational and practical at the same time. This book is clearly laid out with plenty of case studies to refer to.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2021This book clearly articulates critical steps a CEO out to take to transition their business to a talent driven business. The ideas are straightforward and relevant to businesses today.
Top reviews from other countries
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Rodrigo FaroReviewed in Brazil on April 24, 20215.0 out of 5 stars Otima reflexao para quem acredita no modelo onde o talento é parte cenrtal de uma empresa
Nesse livro Charam nos mostra os desafios e escolhas que precisam ser feitas quando se coloca o talento como parte essencial para o desenvolvimento da empresa , é um guia de reflexão importante para qualquer lider
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E. A. MorenoReviewed in Mexico on March 17, 20205.0 out of 5 stars Otro hit de Ram Charan
Este autor es un genio en temas de capital humano. Escribe con la autoridad de un guru del tema y con la experiencia real del campo
Richard HarrisonReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 20215.0 out of 5 stars A book!
Wife purchased this for work.
Martin PelletierReviewed in Canada on December 17, 20195.0 out of 5 stars A1
a1
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BARALDO LORENZOReviewed in Italy on February 29, 20205.0 out of 5 stars Meravigliosa ispirazione
Ero stato attratto dal sottotitolo, Putting People first.
Ho trovato nelle pagine tantissimi spunti di riflessione e di miglioramento che mi hanno stimolato per creare il mio evento di team building, che a distanza di 3 settimane ricordo ancora potentissimo nelle emozioni che mi ha generato.
Uno dei concetti che più mi sono rimasti impressi è espresso nelle prime pagine: "devi gestire il tuo capitale umano come il tuo capitale finanziario".
Per gli autori che si sono impegnati in tantissime interviste ed esempi l'azienda deve essere guidata dal CEO che si avvale fortemente del CFO e del CHRO, chief human resource officer.
L'attenzione maniacale che va messa sull'allocazione del capitale, va posta anche sull'allocazione delle risorse umane.
Sono tante le domande che andrebbero poste, ma quella più potente pare essere "abbiamo le risorse umane per andare da questo punto dove siamo oggi a quello che abbiamo individuato voler esser domani?"
Spesso assistiamo a operazioni dove i capitali governano le scelte per poi accorgersi, solo dopo, che non c'erano le persone per eseguire quelle scelte.
Con questi concetti spesso ci si rende conto di necessitare di una talent first transformation, con annesso perfino il bisogno di una talent technology.
Viene sottolineato come sia necessario passare ad una nuova "TSR" definizione (da total shareholder return a talent, strategy, risk).
Il capitolo 3 è fantastico: mostra come creare una struttura più orizzontale e flessibile per connettere e moltiplicare i talenti, perchè una people first company dipende dal lavoro di piccoli e cross funzionali teams, supportati da "agility, platforms and meaning".
Il capitolo 4 è delicatissimo, reinventa tutto il settore HR, per farne un creatore di valore e un vantaggio competitivo. Vi lascio approfondire i concetti abbastanza forti direttamente nel libro.
Il capitolo 5 è un altro dei miei preferiti, perchè gli autori passano dall'organizzazione agli individui, proponendo una road map per far emergere sempre di più il talento delle persone.
E perchè è cosi importante? Perchè la guerra per i talenti non è mai stata cosi intensa.
Il capitolo finale è stata la mia "reason why" della lettura di questo libro: implementando i concetti del libro cambierai tutto rispetto a come tu "lead" (conduci).
Un libro dalla visione straordinaria che ho amato leggere e che vi consiglio fortemente lasciandovi questa domanda "Oggi che tutto il mondo ha scoperto grazie al corona virus di avere un bisogno assoluto di smartworking, la tua azienda ha le persone giuste per affrontarlo?"

