After presenting my synopsis of The Rare Find by George Anders, I decided to take another look at my handout for the book The War For Talent by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, which I presented quite a few years ago.  If you are in the  “finding the best talent” game (and who isn’t?!), both of these books are worth a look.

Here is a portion of a key section from the book The War for Talent, on “the new reality”:

The Old Ethics	The New Ethics
We invest in all our people equally	Some people are more talented than others, and we invest in them accordingly
We give best performers a little more money that average performers	We give best performers a lot more money
I know Charlie’s a C player but we have to be fair to him – he’s been here fifteen years	We have to be fair to the twenty people working under Charlie
Managers don’t need pats on the back	Managers, like everyone else, need to know they are valued
Undifferentiated praise motivates the masses	Differentiation drives individual and company performance

Finding, nurturing, improving talent.  This is the name of the game.  Companies and organizations are not buildings and computer and phone systems.  They are people!  Get the people right, get the right people, get the right people doing the right things, and the company will flourish.  Get the wrong people…  well, you know where that leads.

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You can purchase my synopsis of The Rare Find, with audio + handout, at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.  (You can also purchase my synopsis for The War for Talent at our site, but, warning — the audio quality is not as good on our earlier synopses.  Please read the faqs about our audio quality history).