In How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins makes a case for why the fall of previously great companies does not negate prior research:

The principles in Good to Great were derived primarily from studying specific periods in history when the good-to-great companies showed a substantial transformation into an era of superior performance that lasted fifteen years. The research did not attempt to predict which companies would remain great after their fifteen-year run. Indeed, as this work shows, even the mightiest of companies can self-destruct.

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog @ LeadershipNow: Confusing Principles and Approaches.

This should serve as a reminder, less that leadership research and the desire to stand by principles of good practice but there are three stages in the lives of leaders.

Great leaders and great companies begin as risk takers – they will push the boundaries and challenge the status quo. When the ‘fire in the belly’ is diminished and we rest on our laurels, we be come care takers os our business. This is especially true of any business or leader whose praises are sung from the pages of books, magazines, television or even movies. Soon follows the third stage of course, the role of under taker.

The day you or your business is identified as an example of excellence – be it a quote in a book, the cover of a magazine or a TV appearance is the day you need to sit up and take notice, forge ahead, learn from the past success and change.

Most people would accept that the ability to learn, and the ease of that learning, makes a difference in life. But, is someone who is more able to learn, more easily and in many different situations, better equipped to be a better leader?

Lombardo and Eichinger call this “learning agility”, and suggest that learning-agile people exhibit common traits: They:

• think critically and examine problems carefully, making fresh connections with comparative ease.
• are very self-aware, know and leverage their strengths effectively and know how to compensate for their weaknesses.
• enjoy experimenting and are comfortable with change.

• deliver results in through team-building and personal drive.

Learning agility is manifested in several ways. For example, there’s mental agility.

Learning-agile people have and use more tools for problem-solving. They use the emotional and logical sides of their brains equally well and easily. They can prioritize the urgent and the visionary and strategic issues.

Learning-agile people have results agility.

They show personal drive and can build teams. From this team-building ability they also develop their people agility. Comfortable with themselves and with diversity, they balance intra and inter-personal skills effectively. They will tend to be open-minded, non-judgmental about ideas and other people. Able to deal with and embrace change, they know which battles to fight and establish consensus when appropriate.

Lastly, they are conflict agile,

Learning-agile people know when to collaborate and when to compete. They know when to accommodate others and when to avoid conflict altogether.

Assessing learning agility

How can you identify learning-agile performers in your organization and position them for success within your organization?

A learning-agile person can be expected to exhibit success when dealing with new or difficult situations. You can expect them to volunteer for new experiences and will likely rise to informal (or formal) leadership roles in teams.

Once identified, deliberately try and move them out of their area of apparent expertise to a new area. Observe how they perform and how they relate to new colleagues, to new leadership styles, to a customer-facing role or to the back-office. Watch carefully for how they deal with different personalities and attitudes and people of different backgrounds.

Lombardo and Eichinger use a formula of diversity, adversity, intensity and complexity of experiences, combined with a willingness to learn as a formula for success. Learning-agile people will excel at:

• Turnaround projects – problems that need fixing
• Startups – starting a program, product, system or facility from scratch.
• Cross-functional moves.
• Line-to-staff moves — learning how to influence without authority.
• Changes in scope of projects and changes in scale or size.

All of these experiences requires the person needs to acquire competencies rapidly through the experience, feedback and integration of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Seriously consider how you might identify your own learning-agile people. They have the potential to succeed exceptionally in your organization.

Why identify learning-agility?

Michaels, et al (2001) in “The War for Talent studies” found just 7% of respondents agreed their companies had enough talented managers! Just 3% agreed with the statement: “We develop people effectively.” Sessa & Campbell, (1997) found that a third to three-quarters of new top executives fail in their first appointment! A third of Fortune 500 CEO’s have been replaced in the last 10 years (Bennis & O’Toole, 2000; Charan & Colvin, 1999). Such results have many causes, but one implication is that organizations have great difficulty in spotting and nurturing talent that has staying power once in key positions.

Someone with “high potential” is a person who has an open willingness and ability to learn competencies required for first-time, challenging conditions. They deliberately choose to learn and review their outcomes and make adjustments in their behaviours and skills to improve performance.

The search for talent is ongoing. Individuals seek to develop their talents, companies seek to identify talent and retain it, succession planning requires it, politicians plan for it, and the world wants to find it. But what is it?

I was having dinner at a friend’s home and the subject came up because their 11 year old son had recently brought home his school report card which stated from his art teacher: “[His] talent is yet to be fully developed.” His mother, always one for a quick tongue responded “His only talent is making excuses for not doing his homework.”
The young boy sat at the table grimacing. He’d heard this story a few times already and whilst his mum meant it in jest, there was an element of truth in it. I said “I see a glittering future as a political spin-doctor.” The boy’s eyes lit up. This so-called talent had a purpose.

The word “talent” is bandied around for so many things and we don’t always truly understand what is meant by “talent”. So to the trusty dictionary…

Talent: innate mental or artistic aptitude (as opposed to acquired ability); less than genius.

So what is innate?

Innate: existing in one from birth; inborn; native: innate musical talent.

Now, my core business is experiential training and a behaviouralist, so if talent cannot be acquired… Better find a better definition…

Talent: natural ability to do something well.

‘That nasty word ‘natural’

Natural: based on the state of things in nature; constituted by nature: Growth is a natural process.

The Thesaurus, always illuminating, and find ‘talent’ associated with words like ‘ability’, ‘ ‘adeptness’, ‘adroitness’, ‘charisma’, ‘facility’, ‘gift’, ‘knack’, ‘wisdom’, ‘gumption’, ‘capacity’, ‘brilliance’ and ‘genius’

Is it seems that you are either born with a talent or not. No acquiring a talent, developing it certainly, but if the foundation is not there…

When companies and politicians tell us that “we want to identify the talent” exactly what do they mean?
Is it: “I want to identify your talent whatever it is“? or “I want to identify specific or particular talent“?

I suspect the latter. Companies seek ‘talent’ for succession planning, as do politicians. It is most often associated with leadership or management ‘talent’.

Companies are also hooked on retaining talent. And surely that’s right, once you have talent in your organisation, you really don’t want to lose it. Many, inspired by a Mckinnsey article in 1997 “The War for Talent” took this to extreme, indulging ‘talent’ and doing everything they could to keep them engaged, satisfied, even delighted. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, wrote an article in the New Yorker magazine in 2002 entitled “The Talent Myth”. By then the whole ‘War for talent’ was under a dark, ominous cloud called Enron. The McKinssey article had, after all, been largely based on what Enron was doing at the time and how everybody should emulate it.

The trouble is that ‘talent’ is most often ascribed to the very brightest, highly motivated individuals who are very driven. And being bright (intelligent) does not, necessarily, mean talent. Being ‘driven’ is not the only criteria for success.
I have met and worked with many talented individuals. In fact, I believe that every single person has talent. What that talent is and how it can be used by companies is another matter.

If we accept that talent is something that you are born with, surely we need to know how do we identify talent, and how do we leverage that talent?

Identifying talent

In my meetings with clients to discuss their talent identification it usually starts with an attempt to define what is the talent we are seeking to identify. Most often, this is stated as being ‘leadership talent’, those individuals who are ‘bright’, ‘motivated’, ‘good leaders’, ‘inspires others’, ‘charismatic’ and so on – words that we’ve seen in the thesaurus.

This is good, we can test these. Find out who has them and crack on.

I’ve seen this in many organisations. The brightest and best are identified as part of the talent pool – there’s some fanfare, a suite of training programs, perhaps MBAs are taken and the talent are promoted. Meanwhile, the non-talent morale has sunk, many have quit or actively seeking new positions, commitment has dropped and performance suffered. The talent, being highly driven, take this upon themselves and make up for the loss, working extra hard and many burning out. There follows a new initiative to regain the work-life balance and a big drive to retain talent.

An alternative

We can talk to the existing talent – the best leaders, managers, the best individual contributors – not just from your own organisation but others too, and uncover their foundational talents that enable them to be all that they are. It really can be quite surprising:

There are many other examples, some obvious, many not. What is common to most of the people we have interviewed is that their talent itself is not what enables them to do what they do, it is how they do the talent.
I suggest that we do something a little different. Why not find what the underlying and true individual’s talents are and then leverage them towards the leadership or management attributes you need? Or perhaps, we can identify their talent and find out where they best fit in your organisation and for some, outside it.

Leveraging Talent

Taking someone’s talent and leveraging it into the workplace requires a little creative thinking. Fortunately, creative thinking is something that we can develop. It’s part de Bono’s lateral thinking and part conceptual mapping. Some connections make absolute and logical sense, others require us to dig into the talent and how that talent is done by the individual.
Using the examples cited above, I shall briefly outline the main connections that the individual leveraged – either on their own ‘naturally’ or through coaching.

Throat singing is a rather rare and peculiar talent. For this CEO it was his party trick, something he found he was able to do when very young. Encouraged by his parents to demonstrate in front of friends and neighbours, people enjoyed his performance and found it fascinating. As a young man, he was unafraid to stand in front of an audience and give speeches. He joined the university debating society where his commanding voice quieted everyone present. “I like to entertain people, and I like to make them think” he says.

“Running was all I ever wanted to do. I’d get up early every morning and race the postman on his bike. For me, it was freedom. Now, I run with my team, we race the competition and we enjoy the freedom we gain from our bonuses and commission.”

“As a kid, I was always drawing. I loved to draw. Cartoons especially, and comics. When I was at primary school I drew my first comic which turned into a series and a long story – intricately entwined with sub-plots and different characters. By the time I went to university, I’d all but stopped drawing, taking accountancy because that’s where the jobs were. Today, I guess I’m still drawing comics in a way. I look for the sub-plots in the accounts, what’s the other story behind the main one and that’s how I teach my staff. Look for the sub-plots – it makes auditing a whole lot more fun.”

“Calculus was easy. Everyone else thought it was really difficult and stupid, but I found it easy. I’d get a thrill from finding the right answer. It’s obvious to me now, my recipes are just a form of calculus, you take ingredients A and B and turn them into X. I don’t ‘think I’ll tell my chefs that, they might think I’m a nerd and not the great artiste.”

“I first acted in a play at kindergarten. I was a tree. But I was the best tree ever. My parents adored my acting, always encouraging me, in fact they wanted me to continue through drama school and everything. I think they thought I would be a movie star. I did try for a while when I went to university but I never had any money. After uni, I joined a local drama club, met my wife and we soon had our first child. So I left the acting world and joined a local bank – great prospects, regular wages and, a subsidised mortgage. I suppose that a COO is rather like a director in a play, making sure that the right people are in the right place at the right time with the right script. Brilliant!”

“I was always the joker of the family. No matter what happened I had to make a joke out of it. My brother bore the brunt of most of my wilder practical jokes – and some of them weren’t really funny at all. Still, it was fun. It got me in a lot of trouble at school. In the end I quit school and worked on a market stall. I worked for this really sour faced bloke selling vegetables – blimey he was miserable. He hated my joking with the customers, but they loved it and kept coming back, so he didn’t ’stop me. I’m still a joker, I like a laugh and I like to keep the guys happy. I suppose being the centre of attention does something for me. That’s why I set this up (the company), being the centre of everyones’ attention and we make money. I always say, if you can’t have a laugh while your living life then life will laugh at you.”

Find your talent and find a way to use it.

Dr. John Kenworthy, “What’s better today?”,
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