With Liberty and Talent for All

America has always been a land of hope. As we plunge headlong into a recession, it is becoming harder to hold on to that hope.  With the Obama inauguration tomorrow, we have an opportunity to define a public policy agenda that translates hope into action. Rather than a “New New Deal”, perhaps what we need is a “Different Deal.”

One theme could shape a broad public policy agenda: the opportunity and imperative to develop everyone’s talent more rapidly. At first glance “talent development” smacks of corporate lingo better suited for the executive suite than the assembly line. But surveys show workers of all ranks and vocations share similar worries about keeping pace with intensifying global competition.

Talent development reframes a broad range of hotly debated public policy issues. Of course, educational policy directly impacts talent development. But we need to move beyond just fixing schools or designing new retraining programs.

We need to foster work environments that create the opportunity, incentives and capabilities to discover one’s passions and to learn throughout our lives as we pursue these passions. Indeed, we need to re-conceive the work place as a “learningscape.”

We also need to harness the forces enabling Silicon Valley and Manhattan to become global talent spikes, attracting talent from around the world. Rather than confining this success to elite knowledge workers, we need public policies that provide opportunities for everyone, whether a machine tool worker in Cincinnati or a farmer in Nebraska, to get better faster and thrive in our global economy. Within this perspective, we might think twice about policies that preserve jobs but lock people and firms into increasingly obsolete skills and management practices.

This talent development lens could lead to unexpected and exciting solutions to hotly debated issues including immigration, telecommunications policy, intellectual property protection and trade policy. For example, in trade policy why not define policies that harness the benefits of free trade while at the same time developing talent more rapidly so that workers can continue to find productive roles?

Free trade policies force U.S. companies to compete with innovative products from many different parts of the world. They provide these companies with access to innovative components and suppliers as well access to diverse markets with unmet needs. As an example, companies from the U.S., Canada, Finland and Korea are all pushed to innovate more rapidly in high end mobile handsets because of the need to compete in global markets.

Providing freer access to investment funds for entrepreneurial ventures ensures that domestic talent with creative ideas can learn faster by participating in these global markets, even if larger companies may be less innovative. Providing portability in benefits programs enhances the mobility of domestic talented workers as they seek out the companies that are most effective in developing their talent.

In telecommunications consider how an ambitious broadband and open spectrum policy might transform learning-on-demand. Such an infrastructure could provide people in all jobs with access to a powerful medium to expand their social networks in unexpected directions and collaborate with other distributed participants to create and learn from each other.

On immigration, we can learn from the Silicon Valley model where talented immigrants from around the world help domestic engineers to learn faster by engaging with others who see the world quite differently. Few people outside Silicon Valley realize that about half of the entrepreneurial talent fueling the success of Silicon Valley came from outside the United States. Perhaps we should offer a green card to every non-U.S. citizen who receives an academic degree from a U.S. university. We can deepen the talent of all by working with talented individuals from elsewhere. Inclusiveness fosters the diversity that drives creativity and talent development.

Even more promising, a focus on talent development can transcend parochial or national interests. After all, if we are serious about developing the talent of our own people, we must find creative ways to access and connect with talent wherever it resides around the world. We will all develop our talent even more rapidly if provided with the opportunity to interact with other equally talented people outside our country. This is not a call for building walls and sheltering our talent from the challenges of others.

More substantively, our public diplomacy place more emphasis on assessing talent development trajectories of countries around the world. We might become much more focused on building deeper relationships with the countries that are most successful in developing the talent of their people, so that the talent of our respective countries can get better faster by working with each other. At the same, we might provide a more compelling role model for governments, and perhaps more importantly the populations, of countries that are lagging in talent development.

Accelerating talent development could help to re-conceive both domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, the theme will lack credibility and power unless applied consistently and continuously in both domains. For more details regarding what such a public policy agenda might look like, the epilogue of The Only Sustainable Edge develops this perspective more fully.

A world increasingly dominated by catchy sound bites and charismatic personalities will doubtless provide challenges to developing a narrative around helping people get better at what they do. It requires sustained effort and a respect for the texture of complex issues and diverse perspectives. But the rewards are worth the effort.

By systematically pursuing public policies helping people get better at what they do, we will move from the zero-sum mindsets dominating our current political debates to a positive sum outlook, where overall rewards increase at an accelerating rate, allowing everyone to share more fully in an expanding pie.

Now, that would be a change worth celebrating. After all, this is not really about something so sterile as talent development.  It is ultimately about creating environments where we are all much freer to achieve our true potential.

Comments

[Brian Glassman]

Interesting and thought proving post,
Thanks
Brian Glassman
Innovation Management
Commercialization

[Katherine]

In a recent blog ("It's the arts, stupid" 2-19-09), I wrote about the huge disconnect between the strategies and demands of the emerging American business community and the reality of the workforce that is currently being shaped by the K-12 education environment. In terms of talent development, if kids in the education pipeline aren't equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to think about things in new ways (creativity, the role of the arts), how on earth are they supposed to merge into the workforce ready to innovate? If our political and business leadership is looking to innovation to drive economic recovery, they better take a closer look at the investments they're making in K-12 education.

[Jacoline Loewen]

The best stimulus package out there is the half trillion dollars sitting with private equity investors looking for good businesses. Talent of management is always what gets the money. These private equity partners do not fall for the charisma but prefer the intellect behind the talk.

[john sviokla]

John, I too agree it is about the talent, and helping the USA continue to be the most competitive market not just in businesses, but in business models too.

Your commentary reminds me of the book Future Wealth in which Davis and Meyer put forth the idea that there can be a liquid market in talent, and the funding of that talent. To a certain extent, Fundable, eBay and other markets in financing and business access are the beginnings of the market to directly fund talent.

[John R. Atkins]

There was considerable, if somewhat vague, talk in the early 1990s as the erosion of America's manufacturing base began to accelerate about retraining schemes for displaced workers. That never happened on any meaningful scale, but I agree with you that the need is even greater now with whole sectors of the economy wobbling.

I have been involved in human capital planning for almost 30 years and have started to see evidence of a renewed commitment to talent development. And not just in an effort to make employees "better" at what they have always done, but to push them to rethink what they are doing in the first place, whether it is contributing any longer to the health and longevity of the company, and if perhaps they and the company might be better served if everyone stopped doing what they were doing and tried something different altogether.

Indirectly, though still forcefully, the massive business and institutional failures over the past couple of years have been a catalyst for my own employer to think more deeply and deliberately the kind of people it is going to need in the future. And that future will look quite different than the past as a substantial piece of our core business has literally evaporated over the past twelve months. I am hopeful the same sort of thing is happening in Detroit, on Wall Street, and in Washington where I live. For a lot of us it has come down to survival and that may be just the motivation we need to finally start paying real attention to what our people are actually doing.

[Jon Bischke]

Amen John. When I hear all the numbers being thrown around as to what it will cost to save Detroit or bail out Wall Street I think it's really important to think about the opportunity costs. How do we prepare America for the future rather than propping up archaic economic models that are no longer viable?

I think it comes down to exactly what you are talking about: Talent development. We have a big choice in front of us. Invest in the past (ie Detroit, Wall Street hucksterism) or invest in the future (ie education, job re-training, clean energy).

I hope (hope hope hope!) that the new Administration chooses to emphasize the latter.