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AWAKE AT NIGHT
Recently I listened to a brilliant presentation on a company's new business strategy. The person leading it was the company's head strategist -- very smart guy with an MBA from a great business school. He took the group I was in through a detailed and elegant explanation of the process the company used to create the new approach. Then he introduced the strategy in a very easy-to-understand way. We covered customer needs, business capabilities, the new operating model, and the integrated activities the company would follow to ensure uniqueness and advantage.
There was only one thing missing. He never mentioned people, the one element the company really needed to address so it could change the way it did business and adopt the new strategy. This was even more noticeable because at the time of the presentation the company had several high-level searches going on for talent absolutely essential to implementing the new direction.
I see this all the time, and it mystifies me. When I talk to executives, most of them define their strategies with great clarity and confidence. Then I'll ask, "What keeps you awake at night?" All over the world they get a very serious expression on their faces and tell me the same thing, and it's not the business strategy: "Talent -- I don't know how I am going to get and keep the talent I need to build my business." Yet there's rarely a strategy or plan to address the cause of their insomnia.
Consider this:
• Within a three-month span, four high-profile corporations -- Apple, AT&T, Waste Management, and Walt Disney -- all fired their newly hired CEOs or presidents because they couldn't perform to expectations.
• Michigan and Ohio began expensive national advertising campaigns to lure new skilled workers because unemployment levels were at record lows, despite employers raising salaries and expanding benefits. "There are $50,000 to $100,000 jobs going unfilled," said a director for the Michigan Jobs Commission.
• In China, a high-ranking ministry official responsible for helping state-owned enterprises privatize said the reform movement is struggling because the planned economy raised a generation of "lazy boys" who don't know how to work.
• The Far Eastern Economic Review reports that Southeast Asia needs at least 3 million more managers, double the current number, to catch up with the developed world. As a result, competition is fierce and wages are soaring for qualified people.
• Back in the U.S., the CEO of a well-known global consumer products company says the company's growth is not limited by money or technology, but by its inability to double the number of managers who can work around the world.
IN SHORT SUPPLY
If any of these situations feel a little familiar, take some comfort in knowing you're not alone. In the U.S. and growing economies worldwide, the issue is the same: how to attract, retain, and deploy talented people who can help you grow your business when these people are in short supply.
This was not such a big problem a few years ago. There appeared to be more than enough skilled people, and companies acted like talent was abundant. Global business had not yet started to boom. The U.S. was deep in the throes of reengineering and downsizing, so the rush was to get people out the door.
Now the tide has turned. Unemployment in the U.S.
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