Talent Mindset

As an employer, do you have a “talent mindset”?  Is your leadership team fully engaged and proactively working to achieve the goals of the organization?

So what is the “talent mindset” anyway? 

The talent mindset, simply stated, is the passionate belief that to achieve aspirations for any business, organizations must have great talent.  Statistically speaking, companies who embrace a talent mindset and who make attracting, engaging, developing and retaining great talent a top priority have greater success in the marketplace.  

To share an example from the book THE WAR FOR TALENT by Michaels, Handfield-Jones and Axelrod, Les Wexner began his career by helping his parents in their store in a suburban Columbus, Ohio, shopping center.  In 1963, he started The Limited, so named because the store focused on clothing for younger women, unlike his parent’s general merchandise store.  Over the next twenty-five years, he built a massive organization of retail stores including The Limited Express, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath and Body Works.  By 1990, he had 3800 stores and $5 billion in sales.  In the early 1990’s, however, earnings hit a wall and the company’s stock value plunged.   Wexner was working harder than ever, but he knew something was desperately wrong. 

Wexner began to seek out leaders he respected to get counsel on how best to address the challenges he was facing.  He met with leaders in their respective industries ~ leaders like Steven Spielberg, Jack Welch (GE), Wayne Callaway (PepsiCo) to determine how they so effectively ran their businesses.  After in-depth interviews with these leaders, Wexner discovered the common theme running through all of these successful businesses was the focus on talent management…how well the companies recruited, developed and retained talented people.  It was the talent that made these organizations successful.

As a result of his findings, Wexner launched a new talent management strategy with this new “talent mindset” driving the process.  He partnered with a firm to help him create a talent strategy that would bring about substantial change.  Within three years, the company’s performance had dramatically improved and the stock price had almost doubled.  Focusing on the company’s talent was not the only thing that brought about the positive change in the financial performance of the organization, but Wexner indicated “talent was the most important thing.” 

As a leader, you do not have to allow your business to “hit the wall” before you embrace a talent mindset.  You can begin today to:

• embrace a deep conviction that great talent leads to better corporate performance
• believe and act on the reality that all managers are accountable for strengthening and developing their talent pool
• incorporate talent management strategies into the central efforts of running the business
• take bold actions to build your team.

Wexner is one example of a leader who experienced exponential success from investing in his people.  And it all started with his change to a “talent mindset.”