Dave Ulrich, professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and co-founder of the RBL Group, boldly headlines on his website:

“HR must give value or give notice.”

Ulrich has some fun with the alphabet in his Workforce Management article: The Talent Trifecta. First he cites a 3 Cs formula:

Competence x Commitment x Contribution = Talent

Then he moves to the Bs when describing the options for investing in talent improvement:

Buying: recruiting, sourcing and securing new talent into the organization.
Building: helping people grow through training, job assignments or life experiences.
Borrowing: bringing knowledge into the organization through advisors or partners.
Bounding: promoting the right people into key jobs.
Bouncing: removing poor performers from their jobs and/or the organization.
Binding: retaining top talent.

Next, he creates an acronym—VOI2C2E—to articulate what drives employee commitment:

Vision
Opportunity
Incentives
Impact
Community
Communication
Entrepreneurship or flexibility

He writes: Hoping for talent won’t make it happen. Ultimately, talent measures should be derived to track how well individuals are developing their skills and how well the organization develops its talent bench.

There has been a lot written about the definition of “it”: talent. Besides the alliterative devices, this article is worth a read. Then explore the solutions that make “it” happen.