If you have a kid who is pretty good at a sport and has a passion for it, you fuel that talent and that passion. That means you go to more games than you can count. You support them and volunteer for concession duty and put up with the “politics of parents” that surround the little league team. Let me tell you – Washington DC ain’t got nuttin on the parents in little league when it comes to manipulation and influence. Trust me on that one.
The interesting thing is that when the kids are young – talent rules. There are always a few kids that you know just “have it.” Whether it’s the way they move on the field, how they swing the bat, or how they just seem to be good with very little effort. They have talent. They are good just because they are.
Fast-forward a few years. Those same kids who were good because they had talent are just as good as the kids who have skills.
What I mean is that there are those kids who maybe didn’t have the talent the others had, but took the time to practice and practice hard. Those kids got better. They took the little talent they had, added their passion to it and worked very hard to get better. Those kids are now competing handily with the same kids who, a few years back, were mopping up the field with them.
Skills Win
Talent will only take you so far. Skills are what gets you to the finish line.
Sure there will be a few outliers who never practice and yet still stay at the top of the game. But those are few and far between. Most of the folks at the very top of the pyramid of players are there because they worked at it and honed their talent until it became a skill that they continue to work on.
Talent is what you have. Skills are what you acquire.
HR Should Focus on Skills
I bring this up because I hear so much about “talent management” in the HR space. I hear HR folks yammering on about how their job is to “manage talent”, “find the right talent”, “recruit talent.”
Hey HR – You’re Wrong
HR’s predominate role should be about getting the folks in the company to hone their skills. To get more of the people in the system to be better at their jobs. The minute you attribute success to talent you absolve yourself of having any responsibility for their success or their failure. Talent isn’t something you can influence or enhance.
Talent just IS
Skills are what you can influence and enhance. Through training, through repetition, through review and revise. Skills grow over time with deliberate practice.
World-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck described something called a growth mindset. In a nutshell, if you praise children for being “smart” when they are successful at a task, they are less likely to work hard at a task that challenges them because they believe success was related to something they “have” – intelligence. However, if you praise children for the effort put into a task they are successful with, they work harder at a more challenging task because they believe success comes about through effort – and they can control their effort. They can’t control how smart they are.
Same applies in your organization. Attribute success to “talent” – then effort wanes. Attribute success to learning, working hard, researching – you get hard working folks who see every challenge as an opportunity to grow and get better. If you rely solely on talent – tough opportunities look more like chances to fail than chances to succeed.
HR’s Job Isn’t About Talent
If HR took the approach that their job was to enhance the skills of the people in an organization versus manage the “talent” in an organization, I think their approach would change drastically.
HR would focus more on evaluating skills versus identifying “talents.”
HR would focus more on training for specific skills versus hiring for a specific “talent.”
HR would focus more on finding people with a “growth mindset” versus finding people with “talent.”
Focusing on talent is an easy way out. Focusing on talent is a one dimensional gig. By focusing on managing talent you’ve really compressed the HR job down to recruiting. If you get the right “talent” in an organization, you’re done. The talent will take it from there.
Failure is also a selection issue. Didn’t work out – we hired the wrong guy/gal – didn’t have the talent. “Not my fault – they looked good on paper.”
Talent is Where You Start – Skills are Where You End
I guess the net-net in my mind is that talent is the raw material you look for in a candidate or a possible succession candidate. Instilling a “growth mindset” in them is what brings them to the next level.
That is HR’s job – helping identify those with talent and creating the path to success by developing skills. I see too much talk about the first half of the equation – talent. I think the second half of the equation is where time should be spent. That can be influenced and managed. Talent can’t.
Oh, and a side benefit – you won’t have to put up with prima donna “talent” who wants green M&Ms in their candy bowl on their Admin’s desk.
Don’t take it from me… Napoleon Dynamite knows it’s all about skills…
Paul:
Super post. You are spot on. The question is does HR really develop skills, other than in HR people? Or does HR facilitate the development of skills by the employee’s manager by providing the environment, the guidance, the incentive environment for skill development to occur?
I disagree but only because I don’t think that HR has the luxury of being able to do only one. In my opinion and experience, the successful companies do both. While approaching workforce development and planning from a unipolar perspective may produce positive results, they will only be temporary at best because one facet deals with now and the other deals with the future. If you deal with now and forsake the future you will always trail the leaders and eventually get lapped and run out of business. If you deal with the future only chances are great that you won’t be around to see it!
Additionally, talent management is where I believe HR can help maximize their business capability and potential. Although I am not a “strengths” only enthusiest, Gallup’s research with the strenths themes show that there is much greater investment return when a focus is given to strengths development rather than skill improvement. I say that with caution however because you HAVE to have both (my opinion of course).
Michael – you are also spot on. HR should help develop managers – not deal with the individuals employees. That is also another area that needs some attention IMHO.
Bo – agree totally. I’m a fairly big fan of strengths-based development with the caveat that any basic skills that are required for a job be at least “competent” before you start to really leverage your strengths.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Does HR really “find” talent, or do recruiters and sourcers? I agree that HR needs to focus on bringing the talent found by recruiters and sourcers into the company and when the talent gets there – work to keep them there. HR’s involvement in training employees is a MUST.
Geoff – I guess technically, if a company uses a recruiter you’re right – but the real gist of the post was that if we focus on “talent” we ignore the issue of skills building and abdicate responsibility for success to factors we believe are beyond our control – and therefore we have no accountability. I believe we can impact the success/failure of a company if we look at it from a “development” and growth mindset.
paul, ya had me w/the napoleon dynamite clip.i voted for pedro, too.
i like the “talent will get you only so far. skills are what get you to the finish line.” nice.
i’d add that good HR knows and does this. and great companies believe it’s not just HR’s job.
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Thanks for your response Paul. Agree that a development mindset, training, etc is a good approach and the right way to go about this. Only problem is that today, employees have a me-first mentality and are always a step away from leaving for a new job with those fresh skills and training we just invested in them. I don’t blame most people for this. You really don’t hear much about job stability anymore, people staying with the same company for 5, 10, 15 years. It’s rare today to have a company invest in an employee and have the employee invest themselves right back in the company.
Geoff – funny you should mention the lack of stability – check out the Compensation Cafe post today ( http://ow.ly/1v4Qt ) it talks about how security with a job is foremost on many minds right now with our recent economic issues. Maybe forward thinking companies can get ahead of this and start now to invest first – get their return later.
I do think there is a hangover effect with respect to investing in employees. In the past a lot of companies took advantage of their employees – got the work but didn’t invest. So now you have the employees “paying it back” so to speak (something called negative reciprocity.)
The next few years may be very interesting. I know I’d be looking at investing now with my employee base and give them reasons to stay instead of waiting for them to stay to invest.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with packing a lunch!
Paul,
As a thirty year HR veteran I can only partially agree. HR does have to management the talent in terms of rewarding and developing the talent so they stay with the company. HR alos has to acquire the talent and talent aquisition can be a huge part of HR’s job. That said, HR needs to focus on skills building as well. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
HR does a lot but if you want to argue that HR get out of the Talent game then how does an organization truly own it’s own process, culture and development of Talent. Best way to fix it is to have specialist for each area to help focus on developing every part of HR, i.e. generalists, benefits, comp, legal, OD, T&D, etc.
@BenjaminMcCall
http://ReThinkHR.org
Duncan – I don’t disagree. I do think HR has to worry about rewarding and developing “people” and recruiting “people”. What I think skews the effort is when you begin to think of those people as “talent” you start to believe they don’t need skill building – they just have “it.” By changing the focus from talent to skills it changes where you focus your efforts (short and long term.)
Benjamin – the idea here is to change the thinking from “finding the person with talent, let them do their thing, and all will be right with the world” to “find people who fit the organization, develop their skills continually as the business world changes, and all will be right with the world.”
I’m not saying HR should not worry about the stuff they do – just do it with a perspective of developing people rather than “hiring” people. Big difference in my mind.
What I like best about this post is that it attacks the ongoing dangerous and counter-productive idea that talented leaders are “complete” and that as long as a company has “great talent” it will be successful. Paul makes solid points differentiating between what is innate versus changeable, and that its a losing strategy to focus entirely on innate talents.
Having said that, a few constructive additional thoughts…
1) Very few, if any, HR leaders would say they are taking the approach that is picked on here. All would say “Of course we focus on developing skills too” so I would have appreciated less of a straw man argument. The “get good Talent” meme continues to have legs because Line leaders (not so much HR) think it works — they see some leaders be successful over and over again, and attribute those successes to talent.
2) I found the sports analogy interesting, but would say the analogy gets very complicated as you think about what “talent pools” you are thinking of. Paul uses an example of Entry-Level players — they have varying degrees of innate talent that is demonstrated in earlier demonstrated skills. He then describes how hard work and skills development allows others to ‘catch up’ after a few years. I immediately thought about a highly developed and sophisticated talent pool — professional baseball players. This is a talent pool who ALL are talented and ALL have to do some degree of skills development simply to survive. I think this is more closely related to executives in large companies — all have impressive resumes, all have had to show minimum levels of competence, and yet we still can easily (relatively) pick out the very best and worst, just as we can compare the very best and worst baseball players in the big leagues today. At that point, I think the talent vs. skills discussion gets much more complicated and much more interesting. Different teams make different choices based on their access and budget for talent, as well as their relative competence in skills development. Teams with great farm systems don’t have to buy talent in free agency, etc. etc. etc.
Regardless, thanks for writing a thought-provoking post!
Russ… appreciate the comments. I don’t disagree that there are quite a few HR folks that focus on skill development. But you know I made the point to start a discussion more than try to be right. I do think there is this nagging back of the mind thought though that talent will win out and skill development is a check box. At least in the companies I have had the pleasure and displeasure of working with/for. But I know there are those that do a great job (GE for example.)
And you’re right on the sports thing. It is very complicated. But if you think about it the whole farm system is predicated on – “you got talent – but we need to work on your skills before we really put you in the show.” I would say most companies first of all don’t have farm system in place (although they should) and I’d also say that they typically only pay for talent in specific top level positions. Most sports teams will make a bet early in a player’s career. I know a high school kid in my home town who just got a million bucks from the Red Sox – “hoping” he’ll turn out. How many companies will invest early and then work hard on that investment?
My post was more about changing the conversation to come up with a different point of view. Sometime just looking at something from a contrarian point of view brings up ideas you wouldn’t have considered before.
Can you write more about HR Should Get Out of the Talent Game..? I am making a list of the HR Should Get Out of the Talent Game..
John..