Be Grounded To Fly: Turning Talent Into Success

by | Aug 11, 2021

A business fueled by a constant sense of urgency to get things done is often a catalyst for high achievement. But is it lasting? And how does it impact employee talent and retention over the long term?

Before you hit the proverbial “ground” running, there are essential prerequisites that need attention to truly be successful. Essentials such as understanding the ultimate destination, gathering the necessary tools or information to get there, and conducting other guiding assessments or validations before racing off to the finish line. In some cases, you may even check things twice. In all cases, short-cuts have consequences.

Effectively identifying, developing and retaining talent are also key drivers of success for any organization. Although, the hard truth is that claiming success in talent development takes endurance and the return on investment is earned over time. Urgency has its place, but reviewing and even rethinking talent and the strategies to develop it, is a more effective use of time. Talent Edge2020 reported that 80% of senior executives and talent managers across a wide range of global industries believed their talent strategies need improvement. Additionally, 3 in 4 of the executives surveyed also forecast a talent shortage, raising the stakes even higher.

Just as a pilot would run through essentials such as a pre-flight check list, communicating with the main tower, and making critical changes before taking off, you should also proceed with similar discipline as you navigate through the challenges and rewards of managing talent.

Here are 3 solutions that will advance your talent journey, transforming talent into success.

1) (Re)Define ‘Talent’ in your organization

Talent is a very familiar word and a designation that is used across all industries, yet there is a shared struggle to define it with any precision. Many gravitate toward general definitions such as natural abilities, innate aptitude, personal super powers, inherent gifts – and so on. In other words, talent is commonly perceived as a pre-destined, overall level of remarkable proficiency, that people are born with.

If that definition is too general, it can always be further customized to include a wide array of specific capabilities such as agility, intellect, logic, and experience. The longer the list, however, the greater potential for confusion and the search for a unified understanding of talent becomes even more elusive.

Overall, the subjective and intangible nature of talent provides a lot of latitude – use it to define talent in a way that’s right for your corporate strategy, your workforce, and your culture.

Next, consider whether we are oversubscribed on divine potential and overlooking another dimension altogether. In Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth posits that an exclusive talent hub sidetracks us from equally core considerations, like effort. In fact, effort may matter more than talent. Specifically, a more thorough definition and the mere custody of talent doesn’t equate to success, but rather how you define it and what you do with it, is the true game changer. It moves the needle from simply having “it” into doing something with “it”.

Duckworth further offers two basic equations:

Talent x effort = skill

Skill x effort = achievement

“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Effort builds skill, effort makes skill productive. Effort counts twice.”

Although the hypothesis is admittedly incomplete (omitting other impactful factors and variables), it offers deeper insight into the perception of talent. Talent matters, but how you define it, along with how you apply it, leads to ultimate success.

2) Discover your organization’s way for measuring talent

Once the foundation for talent, and all it encompasses is set, it’s critical to evaluate whether your methods and strategies are working. Research from the Corporate Executive Board confirmed a staggeringly low (13%) level of confidence in rising leaders from senior executives, and further reported that almost a third of all new CEOs are externally hired.

When it comes to effectively measuring talent, perhaps too many complex algorithms, metrics and tools have overloaded common-sense thinking. Conversely, only relying on speculative diagnoses like instincts and assumptions can be dangerous. Instead, a healthy dose of each (tools & logic) may be the measurement balance that is needed when assessing talent and ensuring that it converts into success.

Tools like the 9-box talent matrix (developed by McKinsey in the late 1970s) abound, along with a variety of descendants that facilitate calibrating employees against two capabilities: performance and potential. As a manager, you are typically asked to dive right into plotting your employees on a grid despite an unclear understanding of the rating definitions or perhaps disagreement with the definitions altogether. As an employee, your 9-box rating was either never communicated or you were likely confused as to how you landed in “that” box. Although the tool itself still holds considerable value, you may want to rethink it and experiment with it to discover different ways for measuring talent and gaining success:

  • Consider additional capabilities – grit, effort, etc.
  • Reconfigure the total # of boxes – maybe 6 or 12 is optimal for your company
  • Redefine the ratings/definitions – ensure a shared understanding and alignment
  • Automate the process – end the spreadsheet culture; make real time edits and data insights easy

3) Integrate conduct risk into your organization’s talent decisions

We know that responding to regulator requests is quickly outpacing and eclipsing all of our other priorities. When financial institutions are fined $15 billion in 2020 alone, and the U.S. owns 73% of that bill, it’s going to reside at the head of the line for many. The overall management of risk is increasing in scale and complexity, moving well beyond AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) centric scrutiny. As such, the landscape of talent management has also been shifting with increasing relevance placed on conduct-related issues. Identifying emerging risks, concentrated patterns of poor behavior, and taking more proactive measures to unify and automate data is critical. Monetary fines for inadequate ethical standards and poor corporate behavior have been on a meteoric rise, and the resulting reputational damage can be a total wrecking ball.

Be proactive by completing a holistic assessment of conduct to round off the full scope of proper talent management. Before you can sufficiently declare someone is a top talent or before you can claim overall success, you must have processes and controls in place to assess the totality of actions, behaviors, and practices. Failures to do so can impact even more than just the bottom line. So, as you begin your next talent review or finalize your current one, press pause, re-evaluate and reset. I dare you to even slow down, so that you can move faster.


Meritarc enables your business to realize the full value your people can create. We are a human capital software company and provider of advisory services, specializing in financial services, fintech, and consulting firms. Our job architecture, performance management, and reward tools anchor business strategy in all people processes. Visit our website to learn more.