Dive Brief:
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While focus within the workplace is on talent, an opinion article from an HR expert in the Harvard Business Review believes the more important issue is an employer's social system — particularly in large organizations.
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Todd Warner, founder of Like Minds Advisory, a human performance consultancy, writes that organizations basically "domesticate people," which means they condition people to work in certain ways and, at the same time, inadvertently maintain the status quo.
- He adds that when people are labeled as "talented," it's more because they "they fit in or pretend to fit in." With this, conformity and fear drive the culture and the so-called talent problem gets worse.
Dive Insight:
Warner writes that true change requires understanding the three major downsides within today's "talent management" systems: they are tribal, they reward compliance (not creativity) and most ignore what Warner calls the "importance of context."
He explains that understanding the employer's social system and the people who thrive in it is "exponentially more valuable, particularly if you want to drive high performance," but should not be confused with the term "talent."
Finally, he warns that before dropping tens of millions of dollars on the typical talent management process, HR leaders (and other executives) must pause and understand the limitations of talent management (as it's currently defined), and "build the approaches that help people understand and shape context for different levels of performance."