Thursday, July 24, 2014

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Talent

Selecting for talent is the manager's first and most important responsibility. If he fails to find people with the talents he needs, then everything else he does to help them grow will be as wasted as sunshine on barred ground. John Wooden, the legendary coach of the UCLA Bruins, puts it more pragmatically.

"No matter how you total success in the coaching profession, it all comes down to a single factor-TALENT. There may be a hundred great coaches of whom you have never heard in basketball, football, or any sport who will probably never receive the acclaim they deserve simply because they have not been blessed with the talent. Although not every coach can win consistently with talent, no coach can win without it."

According to everything we have heard from great managers, the coach is right. But he is also a little humble. What made John Wooden so successful was not just the talents on his teams, but also his ability to create the right kind of environmental to allow those talents to flourish. After all, talent is only potential. This potential cannot be turned into performance in a vacuum. Great talents need great managers if they are to be turned into performance.

Buckingham and Coffman (1999). 
First, break all the rules. What the world's greatest managers do differently.

The challenge now is for the managers to realize this in recruiting the right person on the right seat. And also for those who strive for performance, are you performing your talent?