The last two days in Orlando were full of unique value for all the Taleo customers that join our yearly event. It is always a good feeling to see more than 500 people so devoted to talent management congregate and exchange best practices.

Not only were many Taleo partners and Taleo experts sharing their insights, but also leading organizations such as: HP, Gap Inc., Intel, Mercer, Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase, J&J, and many others. All of them felt it was really a true privilege to be able to share talent management ideas among the best in the world!

Also it was good to see Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu rewarded by a third party jury for their incredible use of Taleo. It took the strong internal leadership of Kent Kirch to pull off their great internal mobility program worldwide.

Leadership was the topic that the conference keynotes were all about. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, was an exceptionally gifted speaker who inspired our customers to lead their organizations towards new heights.

I asked Carly: “How should HR and talent management leaders present change programs to the executive suite?” She highlighted three key criteria that she was always looking for:

1. Is it relevant for the business or is it just another HR project?
2. Do you know the people in the business intimately in order to make this call?
3. Have you thought this through in detail?

Carly also discussed the value that Taleo brings to make HR become more strategic. In fact, HP was using Taleo when she was there and helped during the merger.

Yesterday morning, Ken Blanchard, the author of many books including The One-Minute Manager, was a voice of motivation towards authentic leadership. One important concept that he brought forward was that all organizations need to have clarity on their values. But more important than that was to have your values ranked in order to enable unambiguous decisions when a value conflict may arise!

In short, Taleo WORLD was two full days of many highlights. We see a bright year ahead for the hundreds of HR professionals that will return to their organizations with many fresh ideas and take talent management to a true leadership role!