Tackling the 21st Century Talent Challenge by Roger Young

As technology continues to advance at a dizzying pace, the world will continue to shrink. Video conferencing, cloud computing, corporate and individual blogs, Twitter and several other social media venues continue to reshape how companies connect people and take advantage of the intellectual capacity of internal—and external—talent. Also, how we assemble and lead teams—including virtual teams—will be vitally important. Being truly global requires more than having offices located around the global. Being a global organization means having integrated systems and processes that manage the flow of work, ideas, products, services and talent.

Here are a couple of ways to leverage talent to help make these goals reality:

• Create a special task force charged with staying current with the latest social media trends. Charge the task force with researching and suggesting possible talent management and organizational opportunities. For example, LinkedIn is being used more and more to recruit talent, blog, and otherwise keep talent connected.
• Create real-life learning opportunities, including global ones, and build a team to fix it! People learn when they are able to interact with one another, especially people with different backgrounds, areas of expertise, experience, and points of view. Pair people up so that they can learn from each other while trying to solve a problem that benefits the organization.

To manage talent, we must consider the larger system in which that talent exists. When managed effectively, we are able to harness the collective potential of individuals, teams, and even the organization to achieve the impossible. This is the potential of people, made possible by organizations, which is made possible by effective talent management.

About the author:

Roger Young has served as a leadership and organizational development consultant, master facilitator, and executive coach for more than 15 years. During this time, he has partnered with several Fortune 500 organizations on a variety of talent management and organizational issues.