Mark Miller - Talent Magnet: How to Attract and Keep the Best People

TALENT MAGNET

Other Titles by Mark Miller:

The High-Performance Series

Chess Not Checkers

Leaders Made Here

Other Books

The Heart of Leadership

The Secret of Teams

Coauthored with Ken Blanchard

Great Leaders Grow

The Secret

Field Guides

The Heart of Leadership

The Secret of Teams

Field Guides coauthored with Randy Gravitt

The Secret

Leaders Made Here

Chess Not Checkers

THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE SERIES

HOW TO ATTRACT AND KEEP THE BEST PEOPLE

MARK MILLER

Bestselling author of Leaders Made Here and Chess Not Checkers

Talent Magnet

Copyright 2018 by Mark Miller

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Ordering information for print editions

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9495-0

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9496-7

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9497-4

2018-1

Production Management: Michael Bass Associates

Book designer: Julie Gallagher

Cover designer: Lindsay Miller

Dad, thanks for showing me how to live,
and most importantly, how to love.

Your influence will reverberate for generations!

Introduction

Because this principle is universally understood, finding and keeping the best people has become a preoccupation for many leaders. However, convincing talented people to join our organizations has only become more difficult in recent years.

Our never-ending quest for the most talented people has been made even more difficult by changing demographics, fluctuating employment statistics, increased competition, and shifting expectations. These forces have left many organizations with a critical shortfall of people. The effect: a virtual war for talent. The research, and the book you now hold were born in this context.

Given the growing need for talented people, my team wondered: What is really required to attract Top Talent?

What do you do when you have a question? You Google it. What do you do if Google doesnt know the answer? You either put your question in the too hard pile or find the answer for yourself. Thats where we found ourselves. The answers at our disposal were somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent.

Our next step was to contact global thought leaders in the area of human resourcessurely, they could tell us what attracts Top Talent. We were shocked time and time again after being told, No one has done the research to answer your question.

Finally, with no credible answers readily available, we decided to commission the work ourselves.

After a ground-breaking, quantitative study focused specifically on what attracts Top Talent, combined with hundreds of face-to-face interviews with top performers and on-the-job ethnography, the chief insight, among many:

This book will not only clarify these differences; it can serve as a mirror for you and your organization. Are you really offering what Top Talent wants? If not, why not? And, dont be surprised if, along the way, you are challenged regarding how you see your role as a leader.

The War for Talent

How could this be happening? Blake thought.

He had just walked out of a meeting with his Human Resources team. They had informed him they would not be able to staff the companys near-term plans and suggested to Blake he reduce the organizations growth goals. They could see no way to find enough qualified people to hit their targets. The shortfall was largeand growing.

His team explained the elements of a perfect storma mix of economic, demographic, and competitive pressures all coming to bear simultaneously. The result: they had been thrust into the war for talent.

Blake was not used to this type of news. Since becoming the CEO, his early decision to build a high-performance organization had paid huge dividends. All the outcome metrics had continued to climb. This new information could change everything. Blake knew people were central to their success. Suddenly, over the course of one short meeting, people had now become his greatest point of vulnerability.

Although the recommendation of his team was unexpected, if Blake was totally honest with himself, the early warning signs of an impending storm had been in the air for months. A combination of his optimism, overdelegation, and busyness had prevented him from connecting the dots sooner.

A combination of his optimism, overdelegation, and busyness had prevented him from connecting the dots sooner.