We very much enjoyed the article Rethinking the Value of Talent by Jeffrey Joerres and Dominique Turcq in strategy+business.

The key idea that is very well explained here is how to think about “business critical” talent versus simple titles. This is leading savvy organizations to start thinking about talent in four general roles:

Those four roles are best explained by the authors. Here is a direct quote:
• “Creators devise and implement an organization’s distinguishing value proposition or business model. They include senior executives and the chief designer in a fashion house. These are scarce resources with skills that take a long time to acquire and are costly to develop and maintain.
• Ambassadors represent the organization’s public face and are responsible for customer experience. Among other positions, they are bank tellers, supermarket cashiers, nurses, and field installation technicians. In most cases, these workers are easily replaceable and their skills do not have to be particularly sophisticated, but if they don’t do their job well, the business can suffer significantly.
• Craft Masters ensure the quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of an organization — the essential ingredients for the faultless execution of a business strategy. These are the design engineers in a high-tech business, the “nose” of a perfume brand, the whiskey blender in a distillery, and the auditor in an accounting firm.
• Drivers keep the business running. They are assembly-line operators, back-office agents, and administrative assistants. Although they are neither crucial to the success of a venture nor hard to hire, in most companies they represent the largest category of human capital, and bad management of this group can lead to operational disruption or quality problems.”

Applying these four roles will lead to a refinement in all traditional talent management metrics that will give organizations more meaningful data and less meaningless averages!