In a world of opportunities and rapidly compressing business cycles, we find ourselves having to evolve faster than before just to keep up.

This rate of change is not helped with the invention of computers. What’s more, it has been further accelerated by the reach of Internet.

The explosion of economies resulted in a variety of professions and trades, making the traditional apprenticeship model obsolete, thus restricting it only to certain professions, generally in trades of craft.

What about Talents? The truth about Talents is – it is relative.

Everyone can be a talent, while one can be more talented than the other.

A play with words you might say, but the simple truth about Talents, and we do mean Top Talents is; they are fast!

They are fast in all aspects. Coupled with an insatiable appetite to learn and evolve, they adopt faster the others, and gain mastery in anything they do quicker than the rest.

That, we all know! However, the flip side to that is, they are restless and can’t sit still. Forever seeking more!

More to learn, more to do, and more to master. A true talent will not stop at being a master of one, their minds are hot wired to challenge norms, and push boundaries. Seeking that platform to prove their theories and show the world that they are right. They are not happy with just a sandbox, they need a stage to perform and shine.

They have no fear of mistakes, or consequences.  Charles Goodyear, the American inventor who developed a process to vulcanize rubber in 1839 was to be rich man from his early business ventures, bankrupt himself with his persistence pursuit of invention. Without his discovery, we wouldn’t have known rubber as what we see today.

This focus, arrogance and confidence can be easily found among top talents.

However, the truth and reality doesn’t always correlate. We all know what top talents look like, but we don’t always have the platform, the infrastructure, and the stage for them to flourish.

Bringing this back into context, organizations today places too much emphasis on role based performance, often overlooking the holistic impact a talent could bring to an organization.

This is the result of departmentalization. The idea behind such structure is critical to ensuring organizational efficiency.

Thus, if you want stability and have someone to stay in the role for an extended duration, just hire an average talent who has neither desire nor ambition to climb to the top.

Having said that, shouldn’t 50 percent of the organization be made up of talents with that caliber? Else, how should we enforce a standard bell curve when it comes to performance?

That is all good. The problem lies with the identification and development of top talents. If organizations is unaware of who those top talents are, or blindly subject their top talents to the “standard” developmental programs, they will lose these talents in no time.

Remember, they are fast! Fast to learn and fast to deliver. And if they can’t see what’s next for them within their roles and organization, or are being told to get in line and wait their turn for recognition and a larger portfolio, they will be fast to move!

This phenomenal is what’s happening in a lot of emerging countries right now. Talents are relative. With the emerging markets, there is an overly inflated demand for talents who knows just what to do. Not necessarily talents who are masters at what they do.

As such, everyone can be a “top talent” somewhere somehow, causing the existing talent shortage, and short stints in employment we all see today.

So, if you are not going to recognize your top talents and create an accelerated development plan for them, someone else will.

Even if they do not have a world-class developmental plan in place, they will still be able to acquire your top talents. This is because, it is easy to bring in someone into a larger portfolio, and stretch the person to do the job. If this person is indeed a “top talent”, he’ll excel.

By than, a third company will come along and acquire them for the skills that they’ve developed.

Thus, being perceived as “fair” to all have a backlash effect to an organization where you will be very successful in keeping all your average talents, but not your top talents. Since the process is “fair” to all and not “fast” to some!

Always remember, “Acquisition” is easy, “Retention” is hard, the key is “Development”!

Ultimately, having a transparent system where everyone is clear of the selection of “Top Talents” can have both a motivating effect on the rest of the workforce, as they know what they need to do to be there, and also a positive impact on retention of your “Top Talents”!