"We're all in the talent business"

Recently I heard Walt Jocketty, the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, give a luncheon presentation in St. Louis. He had just flown back to St. Louis from a game in Los Angeles the night before. He arrived in St. Louis around 6 AM. His voice was almost gone as he spoke to the audience. His opening line was, "We're in the talent business." He went on to explain how every aspect of the Cardinals is focused on putting the best possible team on the field. He explained the Cardinals approach to scouting, free agency, and following up on every lead. He has an outfielder, So Taguchi, from Japan, an infielder who played poorly for years in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, but whom blossomed with the Cardinals, another infielder he found from Dave Stewart, one of manager Tony LaRussa's former players, and an infielder from a small town in Indiana. Their best pitcher, Chris Carpenter, sat out the year before he joined the Cardinals with an injury. And they found their superstar, Albert Pujols, at a high school in Kansas City. No one else went after him.

Over the past two seasons the Cardinals have won over 200 games.

In essence, Jocketty gave the finest speech I've ever heard about finding talent. His point was that the most important job in any organization is to attract and retain talent. In clear and vivid terms, he explained how you have to look into every nook and cranny to find talent. He didn't say the player had to come from a certain geographic area or have a certain background. He said he simply looked for talent that could play together and compete for a championship.

It quickly dawned on me that every organization is in the talent business. Talent is the capacity to help your organization add more value to customers and generate significant, sustainable and profitable growth.

We live in a society obsessed with labels: men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, extraverts, introverts, tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people, number crunchers, a people person, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, atheist, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Christian, Baptist, Muslim, etc., etc. However, none of those labels mean anything relative to whether or not they are talented. I'll never forget the time another consultant wanted to work with me on a strategy project and she asked for my Myers-Briggs personality type so she could match me up with a corresponding personality type in her office. Yipes, I went running away.

I encourage you to toss out the labels and search for talent. Now some people might read that and say, "Fine, let's go back to the 1950s and just have white males make up my entire organization. Since labels don't matter, let's not bother trying to have a diverse workforce." I would say just the opposite. If you want to compete in the current world of digitization, globalization, outsourcing, insourcing, opensourcing, supply chain management, and informing that Tom Friedman talks about in "The World Is Flat," you best learn to look for talent under every imaginable label. Personally, I have worked with or observed first-hand enormously talented people whom have an endless list of labels. Thirty years ago an organization in the U.S. could thrive while not looking for talent regardless of the label. But folks the world has changed. The American Century has become the Global Century. The Information Economy gave way to The Creative Economy when Google democratized information. What you need now is an army of talented people who can figure out how to add more value to your customers. That army should not depend on any label other than the label that says talent.

Identify the characteristics you want in your employees. Here are characteristics I hear people mention frequently: technically strong, honest, acts with integrity, stays customer-focused, can collaborate with others to generate a desired outcome, willing to search for best ideas in other industries, can stay focused long enough to get the job done well, can effectively influence others, and is open to improving as an individual and as a group member.

Notice that none of those characteristics have anything to do with gender, race, height, size, geographic area, culture, sexual orientation, or spiritual orientation. The goal is to attract and retain as much talent as you possibly can. The organizations that do will continue to thrive in the years to come.

Job one: find talent!

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Back to Newsletter Page

P.O. Box 1245 Fenton, Missouri 63026
Phone 636.825.6611 Fax 636.825.9831
E-mail info@thecoughlincompany.com