The Talent Masters- Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers

Abstract

The book, written by Bill Conaty, former Senior Vice-President of HR at GE and Ram Charan, the redoubtable consultant and coach to companies, boards and CEOs, appeared on the shelves of book stalls towards the end of 2010. It is an exposition of the companies that put people before anything including financial performance. Such companies believe that developing people and enabling them to be successful will bring in business performance as such. The authors narrate a number of examples to underscore their arguments in support of this paradigm. Through these examples they also emphasize the equal or greater importance of reviewing the performance of people as rigorously as that of business. Another theme they articulate is the importance of institutionalizing the process of creating and nurturing talents across the organization. According to the authors, there are seven principles forming the framework within which talent masters operate and these are the pre-requisites· for any organization to be good at talent mastery.