The Alliance: Managing Talent in a Networked Age
Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh; Harvard Business Review Press, 2014
A business without loyalty is a business without long-term thinking. A business without long-term thinking is a business that’s unable to invest in the future. And a business that isn’t investing in tomorrow’s opportunities and technologies—well, that’s a company already in the process of dying.[i]
Most leaders would agree that managing talent is an enormous challenge. Beside the costs associated with recruitment and development of staff, if they don’t recruit the right people they risk the additional cost of lost productivity and IP.
By identifying some of the generational characteristics and emerging cultural trends contemporary leaders need to be considerate of, the authors make it clear that a modern company can no longer “expect its corporate purpose to become the sole purpose of the employee.”[ii]
They argue that new strategies need to be found in order to rebuild the employer-employee relationship; and that employers need to encourage employees to develop their personal networks and act entrepreneurially without becoming mercenary job-hoppers. Employers can facilitate this by understanding the core aspirations and values of the people who work for them, and then look for where those values align with their own.[iii]
The authors have avoided the temptation to provide a set of prescriptive answers that might cause someone to overlook some of the more creative solutions available.
If you’ve discovered that some of the traditional strategies for retaining talent are not working, then the chapters on ‘Tours of Duty’ will be especially helpful. I found this to be quite an exceptional approach to establishing a compelling foundation for new recruits; a systematic process exposing them to the wide variety of opportunities they can embrace.
You might not be in the recruitment business, but as a leader you can’t afford not to be in the talent business.
What's the best tip you have for increasing employee engagement? (Leave a comment below)
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