Editorial: Leadership and Talent Management

Editorial by Alberto Gabbai
President and Chairman of the Board of Cézanne Software

If you are a leader in an organization, an essential part of your job is about talent management.
If it is true that performance is achieved through the coordinated efforts of your people, then making sure that you have the right people, with the right competencies, in the right position, at the right time is critically important to your organization’s performance.
The value that your people can generate for your organization can vary dramatically, by a factor of one to ten or even more, based on reasons that are not easy to identify and control, and that generally reflect your ability to attract, motivate and retain the best and most appropriate talent.
Some organizations succeed in deriving high value from their employees, much higher than the value gained by other, often apparently similar, organizations. When companies succeed in drawing “strategic value” from people, it is because the leaders are able to ensure that behavior aligns with the organization’s strategy, are aware of what competencies are required, and have built an organization capable of developing, deploying and redeploying such competencies dynamically,
In times when competition remains fierce, and cost control dominates financial decisions, a flexible organization made up of integrated and dynamic people who have the right talent and who understand what is required of them is the only way to consistently achieve great results.
Recently I was in Washington to attend the Global Leadership Forum of the Harvard Business School. Many of the things I heard pointed again and again to talent management as a central tenet of leadership.
As well as other speeches, I had the privilege of listening to Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, one of the most successful big corporations in the world, who gave a very brilliant presentation where he dwelt on the development and management of people as one of the key success factors, along with a lean cost structure and a very clear strategy for market sector dominance.
Listening to this presentation, I had the clear impression that I was listening to the leader of an organization with an exceptional ability to draw strategic value from its people.