Currie Management Consultants, Inc. is recommending HBR’s Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy, as required reading. This piece takes us through some best practices and guidelines for creating and maintaining a successful team of highly talented employees. Through the case studies presented in the article, the authors have identified the following three essential attributes of a supremely game-changing organization: Purpose Driven, Performance Oriented and Principles Led. These elements are distinctly comparable to three of the 12 Currie Success principles:
Currie Principle #3 Focus and Purpose
Currie Principle #9 Results Orientation
Currie Principle #11 Integrity
Let’s take the three attributes listed above, combined with the three Currie Principles, and apply them to your industrial equipment distribution company. To start, some examples of enterprises which epitomize outstanding leverage of talent are pulled from the article and summarized below.
Case Study 1: BlackRock
This company excels at placing the right people in the right positions. In addition to successfully creating an employee value proposition, BlackRock is led by four guiding principles, which are strictly adhered to:
- to be fiduciaries to the clients
- to be passionate about performance
- to be innovators
- to be “one BlackRock”
Case Study 2: Envision
As we learned in the last article and review (2012 Global Workforce Study), employee engagement is critical to the performance of the company. Lei Zhang, of Envision, was ahead of the curve on this, and created an employee model which greatly appealed to gifted individuals. Jerry Luo’s quote sums it up nicely: “Envision is here to help people achieve their ambitions and to help improve the world.”
Think about your equipment distribution company when you read about Envision’s “open innovation” mindset. Many of Currie’s clients have become highly innovative game-changers due to consolidations, diversification initiatives, advancing technology, and creative wealth-building strategies.
Case Study 3: Tata Group
This company embodies the concept of talent capture. As an acquisition firm, Tata Group has mastered the art of swiftly and accurately identifying the culture of the newly acquired organization. Pay close attention to the quote in this section: “why don’t you guys just tell us what to do?” How often have we seen this in our distribution companies? In response to this issue, during our Leadership Development Program, the Currie team teaches future executives about the concept of Situational Leadership. In a nutshell, Situational Leadership is the application of a specific management/leadership style (Telling, Selling, Participating or Delegating) based upon a quick analysis of all the variables of the circumstances, including the “Readiness of the Follower”. Using this methodology, on a much grander scale, has allowed Tata Group to mitigate a tremendous amount of risk.
One would be hard pressed to find a client of Currie Management Consultants who hasn’t heard the ceaseless iterating of the phrase “employer of choice”. This article aligns perfectly with the top employer concept, and is an exceptional follow-on to 2012 Global Workforce Study. Based upon the continuation of the development of talent theme, a list of questions has been established. Reflect on the six questions below, and consider the following: what are the talent management practices critical to the support of a game-changing industrial equipment distribution company?
- What is your organization’s Talent Strategy?
- What is your vision for your equipment distribution company, and how well do your employees know and understand your vision?
- What message are you sending your team through your commitment to being an employer of choice?
- Is your top executive team focused enough to stick to the plan for leveraging the talent at your company?
- Does your equipment dealership still have a lingering silo mentality?
- Do you know where to find the best people? Note the article’s interesting mention of the use of headhunters (page 4).
Please follow the link to read Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy. Comments, questions and other feedback is always welcome.
Robin P. Currie Grimoire of Scripture 
Question PS2911
The Lord will bless his people with peace, Psalm 29:11 KJV
It is interesting here that the King James Version, The Amplified Bible and The American Standard Version state this verse in future tense, while the New International Version, The Message and The New Living Translation state it in present tense: The Lord blesses his people with peace (NIV).
The popular translation of this section of Verse 11 is that God is offering us a promise. But we need to investigate further exactly who is meant by “us” and what, exactly, is peace?
“His people” – Who are “His people”? Traditionally, early Israelites were The Chosen people. There are no recorded occurrences of God speaking, either directly or indirectly, to any person, or any group of people, belonging to any other race or nationality. In fact, the Israelites, upon reaching the Promised Land after the Exodus, were sternly commanded by God not to mix with the Canaanites, or any other foreign civilization. God was interested in one particular group, and He clearly was interested in maintaining the unique purity of the group, in its original created form. This fact alone leads to the introduction of an enormous “what if” question – what if God spoke to other races of people, yet it was never recorded? What if His instructions to other nations included the command to never write down the words of God. In fact, when you really think about it, how presumptuous would be the person, or more accurately the male, who believed that he understood God well enough to record His very words, which would then become law for all mankind, forever? How audacious for a man to believe that he could actually quote the Almighty Creator in such exact detail as to proscribe such punishments as severe as executions.
“With peace” – Peace is the great gift that, according to this verse we can expect God to bestow upon all of us. In many versions, as mentioned in the opening paragraph, He has already given it to us. It can even be otherwise interpreted that we are constantly in a receptive state of peace, as if it exists in a continuous flow into and throughout our lives. For many, this is true. But we must further define peace. Thousands of inferences can be deduced from the word “peace”: quietness, stillness, silence, not at war, harmonious, friendly and the like are the first synonyms that come to mind. Given what the gift of peace could mean for us both individually and collectively, wouldn’t we rejoice and give tremendous thanks to God for this most valuable, and unearned, gift? I say unearned because all that is necessary to receive this gift, according to David’s description, is to be a people, either individually or collectively, belonging to God.
The What If
God will (or currently does) bless the people that have attained peace, or are living in a state of peace. The words “with peace” could certainly be construed as meaning “having peace”. Just think of the process of categorizing – “all people with red hair stand to the left”, or “everyone with….” Thus having peace, or being peaceful, could quite possibly be the prerequisite needed to obtain God’s blessing. In that case, we are now facing the enormous quest to define and achieve (or obtain) peace in order to receive God’s blessing. This is an overwhelming task to say the least.
Now things are starting to come together. The world is not blessed because God is waiting. He is patiently and ceaselessly waiting for us to be with peace, so He can fulfill the promise made in the verse. He is waiting for us to attain peace so He can bless us. Now it is up to us, His beloved creation, His people, to complete the work that was demonstrated by Jesus Christ, The Prince of Peace, so we can fully receive the intended manifestation of God’s love for us.
One final assumption that is that the promised blessing is available to individuals that meet the requirements of being His, and being with peace. Nowhere does it say that this is an all or nothing promise, and that all people must be His, and that all people must have peace in order for the promise to be fulfilled. Therefore, if there is one among us, or 1,000 among us, or 1Billion among us who fall into the two qualifying categories, then it is appropriate for those people to fully expect the promised blessing.