Later, I realised that this was also the sub-title of Ram Charan's new book, Talent Masters (co-authored with Bill Conaty, former Sr. VP at General Electric). The central premise of the book (and consequently, of the program) is that "word-class companies achieve their stellar performance... by finding and nurturing leadership talent." With increasing globalisation and competition and reducing opportunities to create product differentiation, the bet is that companies that can attract and develop talent better than others would create sustainable competitive advantage.

Most leaders and senior managers know it; yet they fail to do much about it because talent management has been (in the words of a participant) "mystified into a dark-art" with lots of jargon and mumbo-jumbo thrown at it. What is needed is to demystify it: recognise that a systematic approach can be put in place to manage talent and that with practice, leaders can get better at it.

One interesting idea (amongst many) that I picked up was that of segmenting managers. Prof. Ram Charan suggested that managers (or roles) should be categorised into different segments, e.g. P&L managers, Functional managers, Experts, Innovation managers, Country managers, etc. The methodology of segmentation ought to be customised to the context, however, such segments (not too few, not too many) should be identified. Every manager cannot perform each of these roles; each also requires different development and reward mechanisms. Future people requirements of a business would vary by segment, and therefore planning the pipeline of talent has to be done at a segment level. For instance, if your future strategy is driven by expansion into new markets, you may need a pipeline of country managers whereas a product innovation driven strategy would require availability of appropriate experts and subsequently, P&L managers.

This sounds intuitively correct to me and I do believe that each manager can perform one or two types of roles without a major overhaul of skills (usually difficult at middle to senior levels). However, business culture has glorified the role of the P&L manager, thus everyone aspires to become one. In fact, if somebody does not aspire to be CEO (or Business Head) in future, he/she is perceived to be not good enough, even for the current job. Therefore, a person who may be a great functional manager or an expert is almost forced into the path of a P&L manager, irrespective of the fit. Not only do we need to plan careers for each segment of people differently, we also need to change popular perceptions about what a successful career (path) is.

I have written in the past that the enterprise of the future is going be unlike what we know from past experiences. Leaders that can make the shift now have the opportunity to create (or remain as) world-class companies. Or be left behind.