Sensei International Newsletter

November 2006

THE TALENT WARS

Does excellence owe more to talent or to committed practise? Of late, the talent mantra was clearly in the ascendance. Recently, FORTUNE magazine reported research that claims to challenge the talent contention. As this is so critical to leadership, to performance, to teams, to organizational results, let's look deeper and find a way through the thicket.

THE TALENT CLAIMS

Some years back, the word 'talent' firmly entered the leadership and management lexicon. Marcus Buckingham became the public face of Gallup Research in a strikingly incisive business book called, FIRST BREAK ALL THE RULES. It was clearly a book whose time had come -- as it roughly coincided with, among other things, the landmark McKinsey study on 'The War for Talent' -- we had clearly entered a new age in people and performance management.

The overdue realization that these studies trumpeted was that people aren't 'resources' to be consumed, but at the very least 'capital' to be invested, or ideally 'talent' to be enrolled and catalyzed.

Buckingham and his colleagues challenged conventional thinking in a variety of ways. To understand the provocative wisdom of their insights, we have to first however be clear on what we mean by talent.

In this discourse, talent is considered your 'natural ability'. More precisely, a naturally recurring pattern of actions and behaviors that can be productively applied.

If it isn't 'natural' to you, it isn't a talent. It may be an acquired skill, but not a talent. If it doesn't recur, isn't consistent and present more often than not, then it is an accident, not an ability. If it isn't revealed regularly in actions and behaviors then it is wishful thinking. And only productive application makes a capacity worthy of being crowned with the appellation of 'talent'.

With this definition on board, the talent enthusiasts turned conventional thinking on its head by suggesting for example that we:

Hire for talent, not experience.

Spend our time on our best people, not our most difficult ones.

Provide outcomes, not precise steps when it comes to implementation.

Not use just promotions as a way to reward excellence.

Very briefly, the key justifications for the claims are as follows.

Research and experience show that those who have talent outperform people of equivalent or even greater experience, not by a small factor, but by as much as 10 or 20X. The talented hotel manager for example can produce ten times the revenue and customer satisfaction of an 'average' one. Talented customer service reps will have a retention rate that is 100-200% or more than those of 'average' reps'. And our mistake is that we set performance benchmarks based on the 'average', rather than what our most talented contributors show us is possible. Imagine what would happen if we set the base-line according to the truly talented, and recruited, incentivized and recognized accordingly?
Therefore, while experience isn't irrelevant, and certainly more critical in certain industries and jobs...the most critical thing to test for, and recruit for, is talent. In other words, look for those naturally recurring habits of mind and heart that produce excellence in a given job or role. This demands then that we develop and continue to hone a 'talent profile' for success in key roles.

We can quite readily provide someone with technical training, mentoring and experience. But virtually nothing will breathe into them inspiration, imagination and natural drive for a particular type of work, or industry, or accountability.

Usually we pay attention to what is broken. And so we spend the bulk of our coaching and development energy on those who aren't performing. We hope to bring them 'up to the average'. And if we do, we consider that a huge success!

At the same time we estrange, alienate or often ignore, the really talented. They often also need guidance and encouragement, would respond fantastically to coaching and mentoring and to receiving the prime-time energy of the top leaders. But the ROI we get with them would be off the charts! Helping the best get better should be what leadership is about.

Those who don't display capacity, as opposed to a temporary slump in performance, need to get less of our attention. If they have dormant talents, this will call them forth as they see that achievement is what gets attention. Moreover, if they see us model support for high-level result producers, those who are experiencing challenges but want to join the ranks of the high performers won't be nervous about confessing where they need assistance -- they'll see it's forthcoming to those who have the talent and will to excel. If none of this happens, we need to 'manage up' the acceptable base-line of performance and upgrade the talent make-up of our team.

When we deal with people who don't have a talent for a particular role then we have to provide extremely detailed, precise steps, that allow for no deviance or novelty. This is a mass production model and isn't very attractive once we cultivate talent.

Of course neophytes, no matter how gifted, do need models of excellence. Pavarotti had to learn the musical scale, and Tiger Woods had to understand the mechanics of a golf swing, and Jack Welch had to be introduced to a balance sheet as a young man. However, beyond learning the fundamentals, people of talent begin to improvise away from the 'official' way to their own approach -- they adapt, they experiment, they customize. And if we straightjacket them too much, we won't get the soaring breakthroughs we should.

So we need to be very precise and clear about expected outcomes and quite unambiguous about priorities and measures of success. We need to also ensure that people are aware of what has worked before, and what the basic models in the field are. But then while holding them absolutely accountable for the outcomes, we have to allow talented people to develop their own 'style' or 'approach' and not hem them in with the one 'official' way we have seen work. Otherwise the limits of our own vision or experience, becomes the limit of the possible. Talent has to be allowed to pave new pathways to success for us.

No two great sales people sell in precisely the same way, no two great communicators write or speak with the same vocabulary or structure, no two musicians wield their instruments or interpret a piece in exactly the same way. Vive la difference!

The old model was if someone excelled you promote them. As long as they went higher up the hierarchy, we rarely investigated if their talents and abilities fit in with the new role. For example, someone may be technically gifted, but managerially hopeless. So now, in the old way of doing things, we thank them by 'parking' them in a management role when they are abysmal people managers let us say. And while they are frustrated, and frustrate countless others, the company loses the cutting edge of their technical talent, expertise and experience.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PUZZLE

So, given all this, what can FORTUNE and the research they allude to, be complaining about? Well, let's take a look.

One, while I've tried to present the most substantive view of the above claims, frankly these are often presented in a slipshod manner. It is sometimes almost implied that experience is irrelevant, that people just don't develop really (all they do, it is claimed, is sharpen their talents), that processes and discipline are always inevitably stifling, and that if success isn't forthcoming it must be the 'role' and its 'fit' that are to blame, not the person. Moreover, people seem to take 'talent' as a suggestion that if 'you have it', you are destined for success. You can hold on to the coat-tails of your talent and let it carry you forward.

Given the sometimes superficial exposition of these views, Geoffrey Colvin refers to British researchers who point out that the Warren Buffets and Tiger Woods, the Bill Gates and the Yo Yo Mah's, doubtless had and have great gifts...but these gifts became 'talents' (i.e. were able to applied at extraordinary levels consistently) only after years of often tedious, unromantic, unrelenting application and practice.

The researchers refer to 'the 10 year' rule. Even child prodigies, average 9-10 years of intensive application and study, before they show more than remarkable 'promise', but actually generate results in line with their talent. There may be the odd 'Mozart-esque' exception, but we can't draw conclusions about human performance based on such a rarity.

Of course the researchers realize that hard work by itself can't be the key. There are people who have devoted life-times to areas where they remain confirmed mediocrities. So quantum of time spent in a field can't be it either...at least not in and of itself.

Fascinatingly, the research alluded to here, finds a crucial distinction. Those who improve, it is claimed, engage in 'deliberate practice'. Activities are set up in ways to precisely engender improvement. Each time practice is engaged in, standards are set, new ways sought, results measured and tracked, and better ways forward minted.

So if you just kick soccer balls at a goal that won't qualify. If you aim to practice putting 80% of your soccer shots in say the upper right hand corner of the goal from various angles, observing results, and making key adjustments, that will create a base of applicable skill. Giving presentation after presentation to your team won't make you a compelling communicator. But aiming, for example, to create some ACTION from each speech, even one key, relevant, business-furthering action from the team; and judging each presentation on the basis of how much it gets people to take stock and then take action, would be a way to become the type of communicator who gets 'people to march' rather than just swoon at their rhetoric.

So great performers DO work harder (the top violinists average 10,000 life-time hours of practice compared to 7,500 for the next-level, 5000 for the next-level after that, etc), as do say the greatest surgeons. But they tend to work always challenging themselves to improve various indicators of great performance in their field through the practice.

Moreover, if we are after results, except in a few fields where a certain raw talent...for example kinesthetic intelligence (physical acuity) for surgeons, or a predisposition to respond to rhythm (for musicians), is probably indispensable... is it the case that those with the most innate ability always perform the best? Hardly.

We all know of talented underperformers whose talent has been glimpsed but not fulfilled. We know teams made up of great players who haven't practiced AS a team, or synergized their abilities -- ending up flopping against average players who have truly collaborated and parlayed each other's abilities powerfully and decisively. The US basketball team in the Olympics alas, or the British soccer team in The World Cup, come to mind as instances.

Winston Churchill was a shy stutterer who 'sent the English language into battle' at a crucial moment in the world's history. Though initially wracked by self-doubt, he showed us what true courage and fortitude can be. A life-time of living leadership, failing as well as succeeding, and returning to the fray undaunted, allowed him to convert his 'talents' into combustion that ignited a nation and exemplified a message that touched people well beyond the British Isles.

Colvin, in the same piece in FORTUNE, points out as an another demonstration of this that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school team. If natural ability was largely behind the skill he developed, surely that would have been unlikely. Jordan actually practised relentlessly, but gave each practise shot the same intensity as if it were 'the championship point'. Team-mates who watched him at practise frequently remarked on this intensity and the simulating of the pressure of a key moment. Deliberate practice yet again!

The business application of this insight is that when you face your daily tasks -- don't just try to get them done, try to do them BETTER each time in discernible ways that will add real value to what you are doing overall.

So, decompose a task. Writing a presentation involves research, analysis, engaging others to get additional insights, creating a way of conveying conclusions, and delivery. Each of these are improvable skills.

Jack Welch arguably became the unofficial 'emeritus professor' of business leadership because he did precisely this. He took 'budgeting', for example, and improved how he and his team did it. It became a 'swing for the fences' exercise and a way to allocate resources for breakthroughs, rather than a 'negotiation' that landed the iterative 'last year plus 10%' that is the bane of so many businesses. He took people management, and included 360 degree assessments, talent reviews, coaching, ranking of people each year, etc. He created processes therefore that allowed for 'deliberate practice' in the art of leadership. All turnaround masters, Gerstner in the US or Leighton in the UK, are accomplished at this.

Andy Grove of Intel, Bill Gates of Microsoft, indicate how this becomes replicable and portable. Hungry for feedback, and creating multiple feedback loops and reality-checks throughout the business, top business leaders like these use the feedback they get from their practice, to create mental models of what works in their industry and what doesn't. As it becomes clear what delivers results, then we have to consistently, fervently, and with passionate focus, DO those things with all the energy and imagination we can.

SO IS IT TALENT OR PRACTICE...OR TALENT IS AT LEAST PARTIALLY PRACTICE?

So, where does this leave us? Actually at the end of Colvin's article, he inadvertently provides the connective tissue between the Gallup research and this British research to which he alludes.

He cites Noel Tichy, who worked with Jack Welch at GE, has been a professor and performance coach for over 30 years in various guises. Mr. Tichy says that after 30 years of working with managers, HE doesn't know why some individuals engage in deliberate practice and others don't. In other words, why are some people so much more motivated than others?

And there's the rub. The earlier definition of talent wasn't complete, that's where the confusion has arisen. Talent IS the very desire to practice...in a field where our abilities are such that the ROI on application is significant...there are increasing returns to scale...perhaps not immediately, but in time. Even if externally the results take their time to show up, internally we feel ourselves making strides each time we engage, and within us, it gets easier to show up fully as each forward stride, however miniscule, is experienced.

Talent isn't just the 'possession' of naturally recurring abilities that are productively expressed in actions and behaviors -- it is the desire to DEVELOP and EXPRESS such abilities in productive arenas.

Why are some people more motivated than others? Because to some extent, they are more talented. There are other reasons too. For example self-respect. Some people who haven't been encouraged to respect themselves, encounter a mentor or opportunity, that unlocks their potential. So sometimes, despair, or apathy, or conditioned laziness or lack of belief, leaves our abilities lying fallow.

Hence the need for leaders to help us light our own flame.

But also there is the need to channel that energy in arenas where we are predisposed to be interested, where we learn relatively quickly, and therefore will achieve the 'quick wins' necessary to make application and commitment into habits.

All the 4 points made by Buckingham & co. are essentially correct...with the caveats I've provided above. However, what is often not glimpsed, is that talent provides the natural motivational drive because we experience both joy from the engagement as well as from achievement.

Grueling as the engagement may be, we sense we CAN do it...and that drives us forward. In arenas where our hard work will at best make us 'average', we have to wrestle ourselves to make even modest gains. It is definitely character building to do so...no one can make a life or career solely out of what they excel in. But if the bulk of our time is spent here, then our energy is leeched, our abilities are deadened, and our vital spark is misapplied.

Because a Tiger Woods can sense the golf shot he knows he can one day make, because Pavarotti can hear the music that one day can emanate from his being, because a Gerstner could sense the company he could help IBM once more be, because a surgeon can sense how to make a currently 'impossible' procedure 'possible', that sense drives their relentless application and exploration. That 'sense', when based in both the belief in what they can do, and the humility to see all they have to learn in order to even be eligible to have a shot at that vision, is the animating spark of talent, perhaps even its quintessence.

THE LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITY

So, as a leader go for talent as having primacy over just an accretion of years. Look more at what someone has GAINED from the experience...not just the fact of the experience. That will be a great clue as to their talent here.

Definitely, spend more time developing the best; and allowing for new ways to deliver new championship performances...within defined boundaries of ethics and customer needs and profitability.

Absolutely, design roles to fit people, so we allow people to deliver for us while winning personally.

But remember the need for deliberate practice, even for the most talented. In fact if people aren't excited to do this, don't in some ways initiate this...they really can't BE talented. They may then be on a 'hot streak', but it won't last. They won't hang in there all the way to mastery.

Help people get absolutely clear feedback. A music note or a basketball gives instant feedback. Perhaps that's why great performances are more readily summoned in those contexts. A line of a play goes 'thud' or soars...you know it as you write it and certainly when you read it to someone. In its own way, business needs to create transparent, vivid feedback loops...but which are designed to foster improvement and further deliberate practice.

Distil models of what works and what doesn't, but not from 'the average', from the collective, cumulative, living experience of talented people working both individually and in teams. Share those models, not as absolutes, but as guidelines and benchmarks. People should innovate from understanding not ignorance.

Those who have a 'talent' for working on teams...evidenced by their desire to practise the very improvable skills that will make for team success, should also be recognized. When talent can collaborate...it multiplies and true magic occurs.

Finally, don't reward people by putting them in roles that underutilize them. Design roles that will challenge the best abilities that people have. And then demand that they devote themselves to real mastery, not just 'acceptable' competence.

Robert Frost wrote once about the twin compulsions for work, 'love and 'need'. His conclusion has to be ours in talent AND leadership.

He wrote:

'Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done,
For Heaven and the future's sakes.'

Talent is where love and need become one. We love to do what needs doing, and are willing to do what we need to in order to become the person we envision. Leadership is about creating contexts and roles and challenges and encouragement that make that likely for all those who are willing to rise to the challenge. Namely, to learn to express their best as they continue to develop it.

Talent is finally shown by the willingness to practise...to take the natural and make it a consistently demonstrated aptitude. So, indeed focus on talent...but demand the self-leadership that converts talent into a growing trajectory of real excellence and real results.

Omar Khan,
Senior Partner, Sensei International
Phone: 1 (212) 295 2191, Fax: 1 (212) 295 2121
e mail: omar@sensei-international.com

Omar Khan is a globally acknowledged leadership development innovator and success coach. He is a sought after change catalyst and a pioneer in transformational learning. He is the author of the acclaimed book SYNERGY as well as the newly released and much awaited, TIMELESS LEADERSHIP.

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