A
Thedifference between companies is people.With capital and technology in plentifulsupply,the critical resource for companies in the knowledge era will be humantalent.Companies full of of achievers will,by definition,outperformorganisations of plodders.Ergo,compete ferociously for the best people. Poachand pamper starts;ruthlessly weed out second-raters.This in essence has beenthe recruitment strategy of the ambitious company of the past decade.The“talent mindset” was given definitive form in two reports by the consultancyMcKinsey famously entitled The War for Talent.Although the intensity of the warfaresubsequently subsided along with the air in the internet bubble,it has beenwarming up again as the economy tightens: labour shortages,for example,are thereason the government has laid out the welcome mat for immigrants from the newEurope.
B
Yet whilethe diagnosis--people are important--is evident to the point of platitude,theapparently logical prescription--hire the best--like so much in management isnot only not obvious:it is in fact profoundly wrong.The first suspicions dawnedwith the crash to earth of the dotcom meteors,which showed that dump is dumbwhatever the IQ of those who perpetrate it.The point was illuminated inbrilliant relief by Enron,whose leaders,as a New Yorker article called “TheTalent Myth” entertainingly related,were so convinced of their own clevernessthat they never twigged that collective intelligence is not the sum of a lot ofindividual intelligences.In fact in a profound sense the two areopposites.Enron believed in stars,noted author Malcolm Gladwell,because they didn`tbelieve in systems.But companies don`t just create: “they execute and competeand co-ordinate the efforts of many people,and the organisations that are mostsuccessful at that task are the ones where the system is the star”.The truth isthat you can`t win the talent wars by hiring stars--only lose it.New light onwhy this should be so is thrown by an analysis of star behaviour in thismonth`s Harvard Business Review.In a study of the careers of 1,000 star-stockanalysts in the 1990s,the researchers found that when a company recruited astar performer,three things happened.
C
First,stardomdoesn`t easily transfer from one organisation to another.In many cases,performance dropped sharply when high performers switched employers and in someinstances never recovered.More of success than commonly supposed is due to theworking environment--systems,processes,leadership,accumulated embedded learningthat are absent in and can`t be transported to the new firm.Moreover,preciselybecause of their past stellar performance,stars were unwilling to learn newtricks and antagonised those (on whom they now unwittingly depended) who couldteach them.So they moved,upping their salary as they did-36 per cent moved onwithin three years,fast even for Wall Street.Second,group performance sufferedas result of tensions and resentment by rivals within the team.One respondentlikened hiring a star to an organ transplant.The new organ can damage others byhogging the blood supply,other organs can start aching or threaten to stopworking or the body can reject the transplant altogether,he said. “You shouldthink about it very carefully before you do a transplant to a healthy body.”Third,investors punished the offender by selling its stock.This ironic,sincethe motive for important stars was often a suffering share price in the firstplace.Shareholders evidently believe that the company is overpaying,the hire iscashing in on a glorious past rather than preparing for a glowing present,and aspending spree is in the offing.
D
Theresult of mass star hirings as well as individual ones seem to conform suchdoubts.Look at County NatWest and Barclays de Zoete Wedd,both of which hiredteams of stars with loud fanfare to do great things in investment banking inthe 1990s.Both failed dismally.Everyone accepts the cliche that people make theorganisation--but much more does the organisation make the people.Whenresearchers studied the performance of fund managers in the 1990s,theydiscovered that just 30 per cent of variation in fund performance was due tothe individual,compared to 70 per cent to the company-specific setting.
E
Thatwill be no surprise to those familiar wit systems thinking.W Edwards Demingused to say that there was no point in beating up on people when 90 per cent ofperformance variation was down to the system within which theyworked.Consistent improvement,he said,is a matter not of raising the level ofindividual intelligence,but of the learning of the organisation as a whole.Thestar system is glamorous--for the new.But it rarely benefits the company thatthinks it is working it.And the knock--on consequences indirectly affecteveryone else too.As one internet response to Gladwell`s New Yorker article putit:after Enron, “the rest of corporate America is stuck with overpaid,arrogant, underachieving, and relatively useless talent.”
F
Footballis another illustration of the stars vs systems strategic choice.As withinvestment banks and stockbrokers,is seems obvious that success shouldultimately by down to money.Great players are scarce and expensive.So the clubthat can afford more of them than anyone else will win.But the performance ofArsenal and Manchester United on one hand and Chelsea and Real Madrid on theother proves that it`s not as easy as that.While Chelsea and Real Madrid havethe funds to be compulsive star collectors--as with Juan Sebastian Veron--theyare less successful than Arsenal and United which,like Liverpool beforethem,have put much more emphasis on developing a setting within which stars-in-the-makingcan flourish.Significantly,Thierry Henry,Patrick Veira and Robert Pires aremuch bigger starts than when Arsenal bought them,their value (in all sense)enhanced by the Arsenal system.At Chelsea,by contrast,the only context is thestars themselves--managers with different outlooks com and go every couple ofseasons.There is no settled system for the stars to blend into.The Chelseacontext has not only no added value,it has subtracted it.The side is less thanthe sum of its exorbitantly expensive parts.Even Real Madrid`s galacticos,themost extravagantly gifted on the planet,are being outperformed by less talentedbut better-integrated Spanish sides.In football,too,stars are trumped bysystems.
G
Soif not by hiring stars,how do you compete in the war for talent?You grow youown.This worked for investment analysts,where some companies were not onlybetter at creating stars but also at retaining them.Because they had a muchmore sophisticated view of the interdependent relationship between star andsystem,they kept them longer without resorting to the exorbitant salaries thatwere so destructive to rivals.
Questions14-17
TheReading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Whichparagraph contains the following information.
Writethe correct letter A-G,in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
14 Oneexample from non-commerce/business settings that better system wins biggerstars ..............
15 Onefailed company that believes stars rather than system ..............
16 Onesuggestion that author made to acquire employees then to win the competitionnowadays ..............
17 Onemetaphor to human medical anatomy that illustrates the problems of hiringstars. ..............
Questions18-21
Do thefollowing statement agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Inboxes 18-21 on your answer sheet,write
TRUE ifthe statement agree with the information
FALSE ifthe statement contradicts the information
NOTGIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
18 McKinseywho wrote The War for Talent had not expected the huge influence made by thisbook. ..............
19 Economiccondition becomes one of the factors which decide whether or not a countrywould prefer to hire foreign employees. ..............
20 Thecollapse of Enron is caused totally by a unfortunate incident instead ofcompany`s management mistake. ..............
21 Footballclubs that focus making stars in the setting are better than simply collectingstars. ..............
Questions22-26
Summary
Completethe following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage,using NO MORETHAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.Write your answerin boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
Aninvestigation carried out on 1000 23.............. participants of a survey byHarvard Business Review found a company hire a 22.............. has negativeeffects.For instance,they behave considerably worse in a new team than in the24.............. that they used to be.They move faster than wall street andincrease their 25.............. Secondly,they faced rejections or refuse fromthose 26.............. within the team.Lastly,the one who made mistakes hadbeen punished by selling his/her stock share.
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