Driving high performance in the talent‐powered organization

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of talent management to strategic success, to identify the challenges in building talent power and to explore how to overcome those challenges. It summarizes some of the thinking from the book, The Talent Powered Organization Design/methodology/approach – The paper starts by setting the context around today's major HR issues and the importance of talent management. Talent is now the key to strategic success, but is conversely getting harder to find and easier to lose. In tackling these issues, every organization must deal with a world of change and variability. The paper drills down into how to embed and sustain talent power. It explains the importance of understanding and measuring how talent contributes to an organization's performance and goes on to examine the other capabilities and processes required to ensure that talent is not just retained, but is also actively multiplied. Findings – The paper asserts that an organization needs to put in place key processes in order to retain and actively multiply talent. They include: maintaining visible leadership that is focused on talent; encouraging and rewarding line managers for nurturing talent; and modernizing HR and training to identify, develop and deploy talent to the best effect. Practical implications – The theory is backed up by examples from different parts of the world that demonstrate practical solutions to tackling specific challenges to building a talent‐powered organization, including: Valero Energy; Yahoo!; Campbell's Soup; Unilever; and SKM. Originality/value – The paper discusses the importance of talent management to strategic success, in order to identify the challenges in building talent power and to explore how to overcome those challenges.