The strategic challenge of using talent as a business performance driver has flirted with market dynamics since McKinsey’s coining in 1997 of The War for Talent. Initially focused on management talent and best-and-brightest leadership, McKinsey has arrived at a more holistic destination a decade later with the cogent article: Making talent a strategic priority. Two studies revealed two key findings:

“…respondents regarded finding talented people as likely to be the single most important managerial preoccupation for the rest of this decade.”

“…nearly half of respondents expect intensifying competition for talent—and the increasingly global nature of that competition—to have a major effect on their companies over the next five years. No other global trend was considered nearly as significant.”

And a probable cause.

“…executives must blame themselves for their current talent woes.”

Good talent management programs are approved by top management and administered by HR. Great talent management programs are sponsored by top management, engineered by HR, and driven by everyone in the organization. But that requires a total talent mindset and tools to make unified recruiting and performance an everyday affair.

The prescription?

“…organizations can’t afford to neglect the contributions of other employees.”

For C-level leaders, this begs for a change in their mindset. Look at the language that leaders use for people: talent, our most important asset, human resources, human capital, and largest expense. Which name would you use?

When HR looks at people, they see people in roles contributing to the success of the organization. I doubt many CEOs consider themselves to be the largest item in the largest expense line of their companies. They most likely think of themselves as talent.

Now if they see the whole company as an aggregation of talent, they’ve taken a giant step and cleared their thinking to drive talent management success and higher business performance:

“What’s needed is a deep-rooted conviction, among business unit heads and line leaders, that people really matter…”

Top to bottom, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.