2
STRATEGIC TALENT MANAGEMENT

The dramatic changes that are taking place in the world are transforming work and organizations so significantly that traditional approaches to talent management are, at best, obsolescent. In many cases they are obsolete. They were designed for an era of stability, predictability, bureaucratic management, traditional financial accountability, little information technology, and slow change. Today we are in a world of rapid change, diversity, the high strategic importance of human capital, globalization, triple-bottom-line accountability, and radical advances in technology. In most corporations, all of these aspects are present today; and many of them are dominant themes.

Talent management needs to change in ways that respond to how organizations, work, and workers have changed and will continue to change. Doing this requires using the six talent management principles that will be reviewed in this chapter as a guide. They need to be the basis of all talent management practices and systems that an organization uses.