Winning the Talent Wars (W.W. Norton), Released Officially
January 22, Now Available in Bookstores Everywhere
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Unemployment is still clinging to a thirty-year low of 4%. In every industry, business
leaders continue to scramble to meet their staffing needs. But the way to solve this
staffing crisis is not to offer employees whatever they want whenever they want it. The
solution is to make your organization lean, flexible, and high performing. Finish the
business revolution that began with downsizing, restructuring and reengineering. Adjust
your expectations, systems and competencies so you can thrive with a fluid workforce.
Winning the Talent Wars is a roadmap for managing people in the new economy. Not the
mythic new economy of dot coms and never-ending good news, but rather the real new
economy that is here to stay---the high-tech, high-speed, knowledge-based, superfluid
and fiercely competitive global marketplace.
In Winning the Talent Wars, Bruce argues that the end of long-term employment as we
know it is not the problem, but the solution. Managers can no longer rely on their
positions on the organization chart for power. Rather they must train, coach, negotiate,
and cajole workers at all levels in order to drive performance and get the work done every
day. And that's good. In an increasingly efficient free market for talent, there is great
pressure on managers to get the best work out of the best people on a consistent basis. At
the same time, the pressure is on employees to get lots of work done very well and very
fast. This new dynamic will continue to drive productivity to unprecedented levels and
it's going to re-ignite the economic boom.
Winning the Talent Wars is packed with first-hand stories from inside more than fifty
world-class organizations ranging from Johnson & Johnson to the CIA. Based on his
experience at the front lines of the talent wars, Bruce offers strategies from great
companies and from renegade managers, as well as six new management principles:
1-Talent is the show: One great person is worth a whole bunch of mediocre people.
2-Staff the work, not the jobs: Create a giant fluid talent pool and you can let your core
group of traditional employees shrink to a small fraction of its current size.
3-Pay for performance, and nothing else: Stop paying people long-term salaries and start
negotiating with employees the way purchasing agents do business with outside vendors.
4-Turn managers into coaches: Change the role of managers so they motivate and inspire
great performance.
5-Train for the mission, not the long haul: Get people up to speed, boot-camp style, and
fill skill and knowledge gaps as they occur.
6-Create as many career paths as you have people: The more ways you have to employ
people, the more ways you have to retain people.
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