According to leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey, most people realise that talent provides companies a competitive advantage. And yet their talent management practices are from another era. In the age of constant change, it’s important for companies to give talent as much importance as they do finance and strategy. So how do you re-imagine and create a people-first company for this era of agility and fluidity?

The first step, according to the authors, is to forge a G3 – a group of three people consisting of the CEO, CFO and CHRO to ensure that talent is allocated wisely and in sync with capital. The second thing is to find out the critical 2 per cent talent in your company – the ones who create 98 per cent impact and understand them well. The third step is to use HR tech to identify, recruit and support talent. For these things to happen, the board needs to be aligned and the CHRO needs to have a seat at the table. The organisation also needs to be flattened and hierarchies removed to create speed – teams should be created, disbanded and regrouped in new formations to stimulate creativity and growth.

Think platforms, not structure, advise the authors. Create an internal market that governs the deployment of talent. The HR department itself needs to be radically reinvented so that it can manage the internal talent, and scale it up. Vital people must be put in key roles. And yet, however much you create and nurture internal talent, companies also should have an M&A strategy for talent – find, attract and integrate stars from outside. The book concludes with a message to CEOs on how they should allocate their time to lead better.

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