Brian E. Becker - The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent Into Strategic Impact

If you read your companys HR strategy, would you be able to tell which company it was written for? Does it demonstrate a deep understanding of how talent can be deployed to drive real competitive advantage for your company? Are you focused on the war for talent or on winning the war with talent? This terrific new book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions in organizations and provides a road map for HR and operating leaders to work together in a new way to drive strategic success. It merits a place at the top of your reading list.

Lucien Alziari, Senior Vice President,
Human Resources, Avon Products

What struck me about this book was not the workforce so much, or even strategic talentwhich I really agree withbut its observations on the profound impact that line managers have on the creation of firm culture and the attraction, growth, and development of strategic talent. HR is important. But if you are going to build great organizations, you need to do it with great leaders. Great leaders attract great talent. They grow great talent and retain great talent. Clearly, we hold leadership accountable for financial material, information, and time as resources. But we must also hold them accountable for the workforces they manage. They shape culture, they shape talent. Unless they do it well, they are not the leaders we need for the future.

Jrgen Brokatzky-Geiger,
Head of Human Resources, Novartis

The Differentiated Workforceis a book for everyone to read. It provides the necessary insight and path forward to apply the principles of talent leadership in any and all types of organizations. It truly captures the essence of how strategic talent leadership can be the differentiator, and one can assume these ideas will be emphasized by positive organizational outcomes. Everyone who reads this book can only be enlightened by its importance and application. Truly a book for our time. A masterpiece in the world of human capital leadership.

Lawrence B. Costello, Managing Director, The Lawrence
Bradford Group, LLC, and former Senior Vice President,
Human Resources, American Standard Companies

The Differentiated Workforceis a must-read for human resources leaders, CEOs, CFOs, and strategic planning executives. The book provides a road map to differentiating your business through strategic human capital investment. At GE, the practice of putting the best people on the most important work started with identifying what the most important work was. This book makes the point eloquently, while providing practical insights on how to do this in your own organization.

Kate DCamp, Senior Executive Advisor,
Cisco Systems, formerly Senior Vice President,
Human Resources, Cisco

Strategy requires hard choices. Effective workforce strategy demands differentiation. Brian, Mark, and Dick make the connection.

Kenneth J. Disken, Senior Vice President,
Human Resources, Lockheed Martin Corporation

This is a rare book that is a must-read for line managers, HR professionals, educators, and academics. In fact, it is even relevant to employees, as they would definitely have more fulfilling and satisfying careers working for companies that have well-defined workforce strategies. In todays fast-moving world, firms cannot afford notto have a workforce strategy and executives cannot afford notto know the concepts that are discussed in this book. The authors present a brilliant workforce framework and a toolkit for leveraging human capital in organizations. The book combines insightful analysis, existing research, and real-life business situations. In seven chapters, it offers step-by-step instructions on how to make choices about a workforce, where to invest, and where to place job and people focus. Chapter by chapter, the authors do a wonderful job of guiding the reader on how to identify the organizations strategic capabilities and how to align its workforce to solve the strategic problems facing the organization. The power of this book is that it delivers a concrete, clear, practical, and actionable plan with ingenious recommendations about how managers should think about human resources and workforce management.