Talent management

Six questions to ask before you fill the role.

Relying on "sink-or-swim" approaches is expensive - and irresponsible.

Dilbert is right. Managers are incompetent, worse even than the managers themselves realize. That was the conclusion of a well-known study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999, long before The Office premiered. “Not only do incompetent people reach incompetent conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them […]

The best candidates think more like engineers, architects, and scientists.

Five new paradigms for leaders—and employees

How one company redesigned its headquarters during the pandemic to meet its employees' evolving needs.

It's the single most important skill a leader needs.

What do the career prospects of female scientists, the general chaos of the mid-career managers’ life, the failure to adequately develop new cadres of leaders internally, and escalating CEO compensation have in common? Let me suggest that these are interrelated phenomena whose connections with one another may be poorly understood. Let’s start with female scientists. […]

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the challenges of talented young people frustrated with life inside big organizations–game-changers who spend much of their time questioning authority . In this post, I’d like to turn the tables and address talented young people who find themselves exercising authority: leading a project team, running […]

It’s time to formalize a “deceleration” career phase — one that lets us ease up and step down, without the angst that comes from doing something outside the norm. I know the concerns: What about the loss of prestige? Can we really reduce people’s salaries? How will it affect pensions? All important issues — and […]

Sambian Partners has prided itself on being a great place to work, but now talented employees are leaving. What’s going on?

When Alex Ferguson took over as manager of the English football team Manchester United, the club was in dire straits: It hadn't won a league title in...

How to get them to explore new possibilities instead of exploiting the tried-and-true.

“Talent tech” can change how firms hire, evaluate, and develop employees.

Shared parenting requires the workplace flexibility to take daddy hours, too.

Don't just go back to the old command-and-control approach.

The professors of doom are pitching their tents once again on the pegs of a “leadership crisis.” This is nothing new. In fact, each time the world heads into an economic downturn we see soul-searching begin on the quality of leadership. These drums have begun to sound in the past weeks, louder in the US […]

It's easy to describe, but takes hard work to create.

To retain high-potential employees, the conventional wisdom is deceptively simple: Identify, develop, and nurture them. By paying special attention to the very best people, they will stay with the firm and eventually emerge as key leaders. But translating this into action is much more difficult. As the former head of executive development at GE used […]

I spoke with a company recently that had offered a “deceleration” option to older employees – with no takers. Hmm . . . I’ve argued for several years now that one of the keys to retaining Boomers post-“retirement” age is to create career paths that allow people to step back, to do less. Very few […]