Talent Talk

‘We must be more innovative!’

It’s a familiar cry in companies, and often comes from the CEO. But the sorry fact is that innovation is something many companies do not do particularly well.

This may come as a surprise to the casual observer, since many of these companies spend tens of millions of dollars in targeted recruitment every year - but fast forward to the year end, and the situation remains stubbornly the same. A lack of innovation.

The Big Deal about Innovation

‘Too much intelligence and energy is being devoted to scraping the crumbs off the table of capitalism instead of preparing the meal.’

If there ever was an epithet that sums up the failings of capitalism, Warren Buffett’s comes pretty close.

In previous Talks we’ve looked at the make-up of entrepreneurs and the impact of ‘The System’ on one’s individual talent. In this Talk we combine the two themes and ask whether the way the economic system is run rewards the right values. Does the economic system encourage creation, a ‘preparing of the meal’, or does it lend itself to incrementalism, a ’scraping the crumbs off the table’?

I have just finished reading Michael Masterson’s Ready, Fire, Aim, which takes the reader through the exciting and sometimes perilous stages of business growth.

It’s a great read for anyone with a small, medium or large business (he covers all the stages of growth), and I’d also strongly recommend it to anyone in a managerial position faced with the kind of challenges that all businesses face from time to time.

This Talk is not about business, however. Instead I’m interested in the kind of qualities and skills that Masterson has highlighted which, he says, are essential for success as an entrepreneur.

‘To be nobody but yourself when the world is trying its best night and day to make you somebody else is to fight the hardest battle any human will fight.’

So wrote the poet EE Cummings.

The quest for authenticity is high on the agenda among social philosophers today. Positive psychology has been in the ascendant for at least two decades now (and rightly so, in my view), while the search for ‘Happiness’ has been making headlines and selling books at an unprecedented rate.

But what exactly did Cummings mean when he wrote that ‘the world’ was trying night and day to make us ’somebody else’?

Is my job helping me fulfil my potential? Do I have the opportunity to use my talents every day? Is my work engaging my strengths?

These are the questions that we ask ourselves from time to time and are central to our experience in the world of work. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review picks up on these questions, with some advice on how to reach our potential.

Writing in the latest issue, Robert Kaplan shares his view that it’s important not only to identify our strengths, but also to become aware of our weaknesses.

A previous article here on Talent Talk (Drucker: Focus on Strengths) stressed the importance of strengths and how few people are aware of their own strengths, let alone their weaknesses.

Robert Kaplan gives some useful tips on how to do this: through asking your team members in a structured way. You could almost call this approach ‘an informal 360° feedback session’.

An unholy row is rumbling through the corridors of football’s major powers.

It now involves Manchester United and Real Madrid, two of football’s most successful teams; FIFA, the governing body; and one man, a prodigious talent by the name of Cristiano Ronaldo.

Let’s start with Ronaldo. Two years ago, few people had heard of him. Manchester United picked him up from Sporting Lisbon for just over £12m. Many people, arch talent-spotter Arsene Wenger himself included, thought that a tad expensive for a kid with untried ability.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am guilty.

Not, you may be relieved to know, of any crime or misdemeanour, but of spending big chunks of my working life doing what I love doing, as opposed to working with money as the prime motivator, and being paid for it.

This week I rediscovered how fortunate I have been to do so. Called on to write and submit a witness statement, along with a raft of supporting documents for the court, I emphatically re-learnt something I have known, pretty much all my life, that one’s talents are very specific.