More about the talent problem

I’d like to add some further interpretations to my previous two posts (here and here) on McKinsey’s latest talent management article.

To me, a major reason for the short-term focus in talent management is that organisations are approaching this as a HRM rather than HCM strategy.

As the slide attempts to show, the difference is that HRM is about implementation. It reacts to short-term business priorities, emphasises the management of a business resource, and assumes that people can be managed and monitored through facts and metrics.

HCM is about new opportunities. It puts people and their human capital front and central, looks at accumulating this human capital over the longer-term, replaces business language with the language of people, and focuses on enabling rather than monitoring their performance.

In my opinion, it is by using this perspective that talent management will have the sort of impact that McKinsey believes it needs.