Fine Tuning Talent

Business has managed talent from the organization's point of view since McKinsey's 1997 War for Talent. Music does the opposite: it serves the individual. Bernhard Kerres draws on Yo-Yo Ma, Martin Grubinger, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Claudio Abbado's Lucerne Festival Orchestra to argue that leaders should stop recruiting talent into fixed structures and start building organizations worth working with. First published in Business Strategy Review, London Business School, 2013.

Published 2013-03-22 by Bernhard Kerres

Watch a great star on stage, whether it is Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang, or Lady Gaga, and you see talent in its purest form. Now imagine harnessing that energy, virtuosity, and presence inside your organization.

The word talent comes from Ancient Greek, where it measured precious metal, and from the Parable of the Talents. Talent is a rare gift, and it is up to its holder to put it to good use.

Business has studied talent seriously since McKinsey's 1997 book The War for Talent. But that work looks at talent from the organization's point of view. Music and entertainment do the opposite: there, talent management serves the individual, not the institution. That difference matters more than it first appears.

Three things make a talent

In music, three requirements separate a real talent from a competent player:

- Technical ability. Mastery of the instrument. It is the easiest to assess and only the entry ticket.
- Musicality. The interpretation that brings notes on paper to life and moves people emotionally. It is a differentiator, and it is subject to individual taste.
- Stage presence. The ability to communicate with an audience of hundreds or thousands.

The same three translate directly to management. Technical skills are the prerequisite. Musicality becomes the ability to apply those skills in a bigger, fast-changing context. Stage presence becomes communication, because leadership without the ability to inspire others is not possible. Managers are on stage daily, in sales meetings, task forces, and shareholder presentations.

Talent first, organization second

Here is where music breaks from business orthodoxy. For the greatest musicians, making great music sits above loyalty to any organization. Their loyalty follows only when the organization supports the work. The Berlin Philharmonic captured this with a campaign slogan: 128 stars, one orchestra.

The consequence for leaders is uncomfortable. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra, founded by Claudio Abbado in 2003, does not recruit talent into a fixed structure. It builds the structure around the talent. It is first the talent, then the organization.

This reframes the whole problem. The question is no longer how to recruit top talent and lock it inside your walls. It is how to design an organization worth working with, whether the talent sits inside it or not. As Warren Bennis wrote, every great group is an island, but an island with a bridge to the mainland. Top talent needs the bridge, not necessarily membership.

The full article covers the three musical characteristics in depth, the two stages of managing talent over a career, teaching and mentoring, and what conductors like Abbado and orchestras like Camerata Salzburg reveal about building organizations that talent actually wants to join.