Hi,
Wonderful excerpt from an article by Kumar Mangalam Birla himself.
Go through it and learn many new things from the leading businessman.
HOW TO NURTURE TALENT- by Kumar Mangalam Birla
Few would argue with the statement, "It's tough being a Birla." Expectations are high, the stakes even higher. Yet over the past few years, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of India's largest business houses, has earned his kudos. He is both a chartered accountant and an MBA.
Kumar Mangalam Birla focuses on two pertinent questions:
- We are a country of over a billion people, about one-sixth of humanity. Do Indians constitute the universe of talented people in equal proportion?
- Are we doing everything we can to help people be the best they can be?
In this article, I want to share some thoughts with you on 'talent', given that it is a subject presently occupying the attention of managers the world over, given that it is in extremely short supply, and given that the need to attract it and nurture it in sufficient numbers is very real.
It is a management problem that is immediate, here and now.
A key resource
In any attempt to define our times, words and phrases such as 'accelerating pace of change', 'discontinuity' and 'complexity' figure often. Everything, however, somehow boils down to change and speed, mixed with a generous dose of confusion and chaos. Conventional truths and guideposts are now meeting their nemesis.
In such conditions, business survival and prosperity are clearly not a function of capital resources alone. Nor are they as dependent critically on scale or technology or labor, in the conventional sense of the word.
Even the newer strategic models do not give us sufficiently clear bearings on how to run our business.
The point is, that when everyone in a Grand Prix drives a Ferrari, it is clearly the driver -- and his skills, attitude, temperament, and sense of purpose -- that make the difference!
The one, single dominant force that has then emerged is talent. Management means attracting talented people, nurturing them, developing them, and giving them space.
People no longer want to just work but are equally engaged in a search for their own identity and for a holistic meaning to their life.
The sharp focus on talent today stands out clearly. Microsoft employs around 200 full-time recruiters. A recent survey by a leading international consulting firm (Amrop) revealed that 40 percent of top management's time is spent on HR or talent-related issues.
Another survey by the Harvard Business School identified the ability to spot talent and develop it as being the third most sought-after attribute for a successful CEO.
Customers, yes. Shareholders, yes. But businesses will also have to embrace this stakeholder just as well -- the employee, the talent pool, the intellectual capital, the resource that is the most fungible, the one that can easily walk out the door.
Every organization has to create a sense of ownership among people who will not be owned. A business of any worth today has to grapple with this compulsion. Talent is, in fact, central in the new paradigm. Without 'people power' even the best of operational and strategic thinking will come to naught.
What is talent?
Let's reflect a bit about what exactly 'talent' means. I believe the term has become too complex to define. Instead, let me quote from the book Excellence, written by John W Gardner, the American social reformer.
According to him, 'There are those who perform great deeds and those that make it possible for others to perform great deeds. There are pathfinders and path preservers. There are those who nurture and those who inspire. There are those whose excellence involves doing something well and those whose excellence lies in being the kind of people they are, lies in their kindness or honesty or courage.'
Going a step further, the term 'talent' has developed some broader connotations. Earlier 'talented' might have referred to a person with expertise in a given functional area or a given business, or even a person who had achieved a pre-determined objective.
Today, these 'talents' are almost taken for granted. We now take stock of a person's managerial and leadership potential, the ability to straddle different functional areas, businesses, cultures, and geographic boundaries -- all in a seamless manner. We need to assess not only intellectual skills but also softer skills such as emotional intelligence, values, creativity, the ability to work in teams, to think out of the box, entrepreneurial abilities, and also, importantly, the willingness to learn and share.
A recent study by Janice McCormack, Professor at Harvard Business School, aptly describes top-notch talent today as someone 'having the vision of an architect, the theoretical mindset of a physicist, the attention to detail of an engineer, and the financial acumen of an investment banker.
In short, the ability to not get cowed down by 'competing imperatives.'
Why now?
People have always been important, so one may legitimately ask, why all this commotion now? Let us try to answer this question.
First, there is no doubt that the supply-demand imbalance in the talent area has become acute, not only in India but also globally, and is getting more so. In India, a host of new industries -- information technology, financial services, media, and entertainment -- are vying for the best people.
A flood of multinational companies is out to attract the best brains, not just for their operations in India but for their overseas needs. The outstanding success of India's leading educational institutions, especially the IITs and IIMs, has drawn them to take a pick from our brains and capabilities. India has, in effect, become the world's scouting ground for talent.
Second, the desire to 'be one's boss' is more common. More and more talented people want to strike out on their own or work in a company that offers a significant entrepreneurial environment. So the pool of people from which to select is contracting, relative to the demand for them.
There is a third factor behind the scarcity of talent. Until recently, our preoccupation with talent was confined largely to the higher levels of an organization. Today, every level of a company's operations requires talented people. In the wake of intense competition and the consequent need for speed, the top-down approach to managing is increasingly proving ineffective.
Dispersal of decision-making is also being driven by complexity -- the sheer geographic spread of companies, the diversity of product lines, and the need to be close to the customer. Decisions need to be made at every level, and decisions need to be quick. So, we have to spot, incubate, and groom talent at every level of the organization because more people need to be making high-quality decisions.
And finally, much higher degrees of business complexity result in a much larger premium on talent. Complexity calls for an integrated approach, the ability to look at a problem from different perspectives, and a high degree of creative and non-linear thinking.
Coupled with that, there is the need for heightened cultural sensitivity as national boundaries are becoming hazy, and business is becoming truly global.
India well placed to nurture talent
I have tried to identify some of the key factors driving the demand for talent, which has now come to be the strategic resource. However, despite the scarcity, we are fortunate that India has many of the right ingredients that help to nurture talent.
We just have to look at our present times to realize the considerable advantages we possess as regards talented people. I am sure we all must have been taken aback by the surge in the globalization of Indian talent. We all knew it was there -- but today the entire world recognizes it, and how.
As the joke in Silicon Valley runs, if a person's name is Shreedhar, don't bother checking his IT skills! Across a range of areas -- engineering, computer programming, and financial services -- the Indian brain has begun to command the highest brand equity.
Indians are breaking the glass ceiling and staking their claim at the upper levels of global firms, in increasing numbers.
How did this happen? Unlikely as this may seem, India does seem to have some of the prerequisites that can be leveraged to nurture talent. We have the much sought-after facility with today's Lingua Franca, the English language, as also a relatively high degree of numerical aptitude.
And, we have an innate capacity to adapt, without which it would not have been possible for Indians to strike roots overseas and become among the more successful of the immigrant communities, in a number of countries.
Of course, competition also does much to nurture talent. And we in India work in a very competitive environment, pretty much from childhood. We even have interviews to get admitted to a nursery school!
Even leaving aside this extreme, we are constantly being graded, scored, evaluated, and ranked. The admissions-to-applicants ratio at our premier educational institutes is more demanding than that of even the most elite universities abroad. The same is true of our Civil Service.
What retards talent in India?
On the flip side, we need to recognize and deal with some of the powerful attitudes and forces that not only retard talent but also are hostile to it.
For one, there is the fear of failure. There is an almost indelible stigma attached to failure, much more than in the West. The family, the peer group, the society, the banker -- all still frown on failure -- of any sort, no matter how heroic and daring the effort that preceded it.
This attitude thwarts experimentation and stifles innovation. Better to be 'mediocrely' right than 'stunningly' wrong. The possibility of getting a second chance is rare.
It is difficult to think
From India, Delhi
Acknowledge(0)
Amend(0)
115Wonderful excerpt from an article by Kumar Mangalam Birla himself.
Go through it and learn many new things from the leading businessman.
HOW TO NURTURE TALENT- by Kumar Mangalam Birla
Few would argue with the statement, "It's tough being a Birla." Expectations are high, the stakes even higher. Yet over the past few years, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of India's largest business houses, has earned his kudos. He is both a chartered accountant and an MBA.
Kumar Mangalam Birla focuses on two pertinent questions:
- We are a country of over a billion people, about one-sixth of humanity. Do Indians constitute the universe of talented people in equal proportion?
- Are we doing everything we can to help people be the best they can be?
In this article, I want to share some thoughts with you on 'talent', given that it is a subject presently occupying the attention of managers the world over, given that it is in extremely short supply, and given that the need to attract it and nurture it in sufficient numbers is very real.
It is a management problem that is immediate, here and now.
A key resource
In any attempt to define our times, words and phrases such as 'accelerating pace of change', 'discontinuity' and 'complexity' figure often. Everything, however, somehow boils down to change and speed, mixed with a generous dose of confusion and chaos. Conventional truths and guideposts are now meeting their nemesis.
In such conditions, business survival and prosperity are clearly not a function of capital resources alone. Nor are they as dependent critically on scale or technology or labor, in the conventional sense of the word.
Even the newer strategic models do not give us sufficiently clear bearings on how to run our business.
The point is, that when everyone in a Grand Prix drives a Ferrari, it is clearly the driver -- and his skills, attitude, temperament, and sense of purpose -- that make the difference!
The one, single dominant force that has then emerged is talent. Management means attracting talented people, nurturing them, developing them, and giving them space.
People no longer want to just work but are equally engaged in a search for their own identity and for a holistic meaning to their life.
The sharp focus on talent today stands out clearly. Microsoft employs around 200 full-time recruiters. A recent survey by a leading international consulting firm (Amrop) revealed that 40 percent of top management's time is spent on HR or talent-related issues.
Another survey by the Harvard Business School identified the ability to spot talent and develop it as being the third most sought-after attribute for a successful CEO.
Customers, yes. Shareholders, yes. But businesses will also have to embrace this stakeholder just as well -- the employee, the talent pool, the intellectual capital, the resource that is the most fungible, the one that can easily walk out the door.
Every organization has to create a sense of ownership among people who will not be owned. A business of any worth today has to grapple with this compulsion. Talent is, in fact, central in the new paradigm. Without 'people power' even the best of operational and strategic thinking will come to naught.
What is talent?
Let's reflect a bit about what exactly 'talent' means. I believe the term has become too complex to define. Instead, let me quote from the book Excellence, written by John W Gardner, the American social reformer.
According to him, 'There are those who perform great deeds and those that make it possible for others to perform great deeds. There are pathfinders and path preservers. There are those who nurture and those who inspire. There are those whose excellence involves doing something well and those whose excellence lies in being the kind of people they are, lies in their kindness or honesty or courage.'
Going a step further, the term 'talent' has developed some broader connotations. Earlier 'talented' might have referred to a person with expertise in a given functional area or a given business, or even a person who had achieved a pre-determined objective.
Today, these 'talents' are almost taken for granted. We now take stock of a person's managerial and leadership potential, the ability to straddle different functional areas, businesses, cultures, and geographic boundaries -- all in a seamless manner. We need to assess not only intellectual skills but also softer skills such as emotional intelligence, values, creativity, the ability to work in teams, to think out of the box, entrepreneurial abilities, and also, importantly, the willingness to learn and share.
A recent study by Janice McCormack, Professor at Harvard Business School, aptly describes top-notch talent today as someone 'having the vision of an architect, the theoretical mindset of a physicist, the attention to detail of an engineer, and the financial acumen of an investment banker.
In short, the ability to not get cowed down by 'competing imperatives.'
Why now?
People have always been important, so one may legitimately ask, why all this commotion now? Let us try to answer this question.
First, there is no doubt that the supply-demand imbalance in the talent area has become acute, not only in India but also globally, and is getting more so. In India, a host of new industries -- information technology, financial services, media, and entertainment -- are vying for the best people.
A flood of multinational companies is out to attract the best brains, not just for their operations in India but for their overseas needs. The outstanding success of India's leading educational institutions, especially the IITs and IIMs, has drawn them to take a pick from our brains and capabilities. India has, in effect, become the world's scouting ground for talent.
Second, the desire to 'be one's boss' is more common. More and more talented people want to strike out on their own or work in a company that offers a significant entrepreneurial environment. So the pool of people from which to select is contracting, relative to the demand for them.
There is a third factor behind the scarcity of talent. Until recently, our preoccupation with talent was confined largely to the higher levels of an organization. Today, every level of a company's operations requires talented people. In the wake of intense competition and the consequent need for speed, the top-down approach to managing is increasingly proving ineffective.
Dispersal of decision-making is also being driven by complexity -- the sheer geographic spread of companies, the diversity of product lines, and the need to be close to the customer. Decisions need to be made at every level, and decisions need to be quick. So, we have to spot, incubate, and groom talent at every level of the organization because more people need to be making high-quality decisions.
And finally, much higher degrees of business complexity result in a much larger premium on talent. Complexity calls for an integrated approach, the ability to look at a problem from different perspectives, and a high degree of creative and non-linear thinking.
Coupled with that, there is the need for heightened cultural sensitivity as national boundaries are becoming hazy, and business is becoming truly global.
India well placed to nurture talent
I have tried to identify some of the key factors driving the demand for talent, which has now come to be the strategic resource. However, despite the scarcity, we are fortunate that India has many of the right ingredients that help to nurture talent.
We just have to look at our present times to realize the considerable advantages we possess as regards talented people. I am sure we all must have been taken aback by the surge in the globalization of Indian talent. We all knew it was there -- but today the entire world recognizes it, and how.
As the joke in Silicon Valley runs, if a person's name is Shreedhar, don't bother checking his IT skills! Across a range of areas -- engineering, computer programming, and financial services -- the Indian brain has begun to command the highest brand equity.
Indians are breaking the glass ceiling and staking their claim at the upper levels of global firms, in increasing numbers.
How did this happen? Unlikely as this may seem, India does seem to have some of the prerequisites that can be leveraged to nurture talent. We have the much sought-after facility with today's Lingua Franca, the English language, as also a relatively high degree of numerical aptitude.
And, we have an innate capacity to adapt, without which it would not have been possible for Indians to strike roots overseas and become among the more successful of the immigrant communities, in a number of countries.
Of course, competition also does much to nurture talent. And we in India work in a very competitive environment, pretty much from childhood. We even have interviews to get admitted to a nursery school!
Even leaving aside this extreme, we are constantly being graded, scored, evaluated, and ranked. The admissions-to-applicants ratio at our premier educational institutes is more demanding than that of even the most elite universities abroad. The same is true of our Civil Service.
What retards talent in India?
On the flip side, we need to recognize and deal with some of the powerful attitudes and forces that not only retard talent but also are hostile to it.
For one, there is the fear of failure. There is an almost indelible stigma attached to failure, much more than in the West. The family, the peer group, the society, the banker -- all still frown on failure -- of any sort, no matter how heroic and daring the effort that preceded it.
This attitude thwarts experimentation and stifles innovation. Better to be 'mediocrely' right than 'stunningly' wrong. The possibility of getting a second chance is rare.
It is difficult to think
From India, Delhi
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)CiteHR is an AI-augmented HR knowledge and collaboration platform, enabling HR professionals to solve real-world challenges, validate decisions, and stay ahead through collective intelligence and machine-enhanced guidance. Join Our Platform.
Talent Management Emerges as Top European HR Challenge.doc
ARTICLE ON TALENT MANAGEMENT.pdf