13 May, 2008
Should we manage talent in down economy?
Author: Maksim Ovsyannikov

During a recent lunch meeting I listened as two CEOs who are personal friends of mine were discussing managing talent in a down economy.  Both have previously expressed to me that finding top talent was their key objective, but at this time, both seemed relieved that finding and retaining talent would become less of an issue in a seemingly “down” economy.  “It will become easier to find top engineers,” one stated.  “Absolutely,” the other one replied.  So, I didn’t want to wait long before I disagreed with them publicly.

You see, what they didn’t appear to recognize is that in a down economy, productivity and innovation become even greater assets.  Many organizations choose to downsize—but the amount of work to be done remains the same—so it becomes even more important that companies keep the best and reconsider the rest.  Consider Jack (not his real name).  Jack is the CEO of a company, which used to be a business unit of a Fortune 500 corporation.  Jack recently raised a lot of cash and privatized the business.  He believes in two rules. The first is a well known six sigma notion that 80% of the value in an organization is driven by 20% of the people. The second is an interesting one—Jack believes that cutting costs by 30% would drive productivity up by 30%.  Now, some of you may immediately disagree.  If cutting costs is all it takes, we would just do that all day long and enjoy inevitable growth, but there is more to the story.  Jack spent a lot of time making sure that the 30% that is let go is what he refers to as a “waste” – disengaged employees who did not contribute to organizational success.

Some of us don’t immediately recognize it, but what Jack is doing, is a version of Talent Management optimized for the down economy. When it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent, it is times like these that put even more pressure on identifying the absolute best! Care to join in?

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