Talent Plus?

I am starting to worry that I am using up all my peak experiences in my 40’s and I won’t have any left over to carry me through my remaining years.  Today I went to a very special place, where people truly care about human potential and personal development.  That place can be found at Talent Plus based in Lincoln Nebraska with an additional office in Singapore.  With a legacy dating back to the 1960’s Talent Plus has been the industry standard in the science of Talent Selection.  While I had long heard of the near flawless power of their predictive assessments concerning talent and job fit, it wasn’t until I began to write The New Gold Standard that I began to fully appreciate the breadth and depth of Talent Plus offerings.  Put simply Talent Plus helped the Ritz-Carlton find the uniquely gifted staff that produce transformational service at Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s worldwide and that inspired me to write my book about the Ritz-Carlton’s legendary service. Beyond selection, Talent Plus has also partnered in leadership training, staff development and succession planning services.  Having toured their facility in Lincoln, experienced their hospitality, watched their passion for development of their corporate culture, spoken for their staff, personally experienced their product, and conferred with staff at all levels of their organization, I was delighted to see that science and humanism are far from mutually exclusive.  The visionaries at Talent plus fundamentally understand that every person has talent, and that employers can empirically and compassionately select and develop talent both for the enhancement of the company and the purposefulness of the individual.

In these difficult economic times, I too often see business leaders who talk about the importance of human capital management making fairly nearsighted decisions with regard to the people who work for them.  Rather than investing in talent selection or leadership development for the long term good of organizations they instead cut deeply into the programs that build sustainable talent based cultures.  Fortunately, Talent Plus has not seen an appreciable decline in business.  While I suspect their strength is a reflection of the personalized service and verifiable value they offer the businesses who utilize them, I am concerned about businesses that do retreat from selection and development programs.  Now more than ever, having the right people in the right jobs at the right times will help a business differentiate itself in a direction other than price.  If you haven’t gathered by now, I am fan of Talent Plus – not only for their acumen in selection and development but for their values driven commitment to people, success, positivity and relationships.

Whether it is Talent Plus or through the use of other approaches, I hope you are maximizing your commitment to find, develop and keep your best employees?  While some of suggested that this talent focus is less important in times of greater unemployment when the streams of talent are full, I wonder if isn’t the best time to invest in tools to assure that you fish out the best talent for not only your present needs but your long term objectives as well.  It’s been said that winning in the stock market is easy simply buy low and sell high.  Unfortunately a herd mentality causes a lot people to miss time the market and act completely opposite of the winning adage.

For me, winning the talent war involves investing in people when the herd is retreating from that investment?   I’d love to hear how you are approaching talent selection and staff development in this most dynamic business environment.  Please feel free to direct message me on twitter at josephmichelli or post a comment.  Here’s to companies who understand that business is all about a disciplined focus on serving people through people.