RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Talent Management: The ‘vital many’ rather than the ‘chosen few’

Talent has traditionally been viewed as the few at the top of the organisation, but increasingly organisations are taking a more holistic view. In this article I discussed how organisations are investing in the ‘vital many’ rather than the ‘chosen few’. Why?

Studies have demonstrated that the path to leadership is littered with many failures; be it technical experts who weren’t interested in people management or those whose personalities ‘derailed’ in high pressure environments. Some call this the Peter Principle; I call it over promotion.

It therefore stands to reason that taking big bets on a few executives is a risky strategy. A few ‘executive development’ programmes, secondments and coaching programmes will not offer you much change out of €100k. It’s a heavy price if the high potential don’t perform; or even worse, if the high performers leave the organisation.

That’s why organisations are increasingly taking little bets on a wider population. The role of the talent manager is therefore evolving from focus on the few to sewing fertile fields of talent across the organisation. The traditional actions identification, assessment and development and being replaced with a continual process of seeding, feeding, weeding and transplanting (if you’d excuse the gardening analogy).

 So, what’s your approach, the vital many or the chosen few?

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