Something interesting for those who are still following this site. I leave it to readers to decide how relevant the material is for your own situation, environment , and profession.
HOW TO MANAGE THE MOST TALENTED: HBR MARCH 2007
TALENT MANAGEMENT:
There’s no hotter topic in HBR’s portfolio, for the obvious, overwhelming reason that in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century, talent will always be the scarcest of scarce resources. Above all others, it is what companies compete for, depend on, and succeed because of. And, while managing run-of-the-mill, B+ employees may be relatively easy, managing the most talented people is a tough job. They’re restless and easily bored; they’d rather solve interesting problems than please their bosses; they don’t want to jump through bureaucratic hoops; and other companies are always pursuing them. The articles in this HBR Spotlight – “Leading Clever People,” by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, and “Crisis at the Summit,” by George D. Parsons and Richard T. Pascale–consider talent management from two distinct points of view. The first article looks at how executives can best manage their most talented direct reports. The second is more about self-management: It looks at what overachievers can do to anticipate and prevent their own rough patches. Despite the name we’ve given this section, Goffee and Jones would argue that you should cut way back on managing the most gifted people in your company. “Clever people” – brilliant scientists, researchers, and software developers, for example – respond better to a benevolent guardian than to a traditional boss. They need you to protect them, defer to their expertise, recognize their worth, keep them from bureaucratic nonsense, and give them interesting people to talk to. They’ll respect you if you have your own impressive credentials – if you, too, are best in class at something – and if you grant them an extraordinary degree of freedom. Don’t kowtow. Do keep them on a very long and flexible lead. Like Goffee and Jones’s clever people, extremely talented executives get bored easily. Parsons and Pascale observe that boredom is so common in high achievement settings like investment banking, and so pernicious, that it deserves a name of its own: the summit syndrome. Once overachievers have mastered the demands of a new position, they’re vulnerable. They tend to go off the rails a bit–losing focus at work, looking elsewhere for thrills, and messing up their personal lives. Generally, their problem doesn’t become apparent until very late in the game. (These are people, after all, whose coasting looks a lot like others’ high productivity.) Thus it’s up to the affected individuals to diagnose the syndrome in themselves and figure out how to get back on track. Managing top talent isn’t easy – but it’s the most important job the majority of HBR readers have to do. And it can be done well.
