Follow the big three laws of talent

03-February-2010 | By Colin Cottell

Resourcing professionals should follow the “three big laws of talent” if they want their talent management strategy to be successful according, to the HR director of Tesco.

Therese Procter told a Recruitment Society meeting in London that recruiters who followed these laws “are likely to be winners”. However, those who failed to adhere to them wouldn’t succeed in spotting and managing the talent which their organisations or their clients’ organisations need.

Procter then outlined the three laws of talent. “Many talented people are being set up to be unsuccessful. But some talent is non-transferable and won’t succeed,” she added.

Pushing someone into a job to which they were not truly suited could shatter a person’s career. And it was harmful for the organisation too, she said as it resulted in what she called ’talent dislocation’.

This has led to recruiters having a natural tendency to associate certain organisations with certain types of people, she said. Organisations with this disorder suffered from ’talent myopia’.

This was dangerous for organisations, said Procter, because labels “often obscure the real winners”. “You need to look beyond the labels,” she added.

Many organisations suffered from having high concentrations of talented people with certain skills, but lacked talented people with the other skills it needed. This resulted in lumpy organisations that experienced ’talent clotting’.

For example, Procter said that in the past, car maker Alfa Romeo had a reputation for beautifully designed cars, but also for unreliability. Conversely, Volvo produced hugely reliable cars, but with “the aerodynamics of a brick”.

“Neither company attracted the people it needed,” said Procter, and it was only more recently that new owners had succeeded in “flattening the lumps and filling the gaps.”