Talent is often overrated and frequently misunderstood. French poet and dramatist Edouard Pailleron pointed out, “Have success and there will always be fools to say that you have talent.” When people achieve great things, others often explain their accomplishments by simply attributing everything to talent. But that is a false and misleading way of looking at success.If talent alone is enough, then why do you and I know highly talented people who are not highly successful?
Many American business leaders are obsessed with talent. Some think talent is the answer to every problem.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, notes that many companies and consultants put finding people with talent ahead of everything else. He says, “This ‘talent mind-set’ is the new orthodoxy of American management.”
Certain companies hire dozens of MBAs from top universities, promote them quickly, reward them lavishly, and never accurately assess their performance. The prime example he gives is Enron.
Its talent focus was legendary. For example, Lynda Clemmons, who started Enron’s weather derivatives business, went from trader to associate to manager to director to head of her own business unit in only seven years!
Gladwell asks, “How do you evaluate someone’s performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?”
Talent is never enough. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said, “There seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge... Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.
By themselves, they only set limits to what can be contained” If talent were enough, then the most effective and influential people would always be the most talented ones. But that is often not the case. Consider this:
More than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C-averages in college. Sixty-five percent of all U.S. senators came from the bottom half of their school classes.
Seventy-five percent of U.S presidents were in the Lower-Half Club in school. More than 50 percent of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college.
Clearly talent isn’t everything. Most leaders understand the dynamics of ownership, shared responsibility, division of labor, committee governance, and delegation.
Often leaders accomplish great tasks by dividing a job into its parts and coordinating the whole effort. Remarkable feats, such as the building of the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, were accomplished in that fashion.
However, there are some tasks that are not improved by adding more people. Brook’s Law states, “Adding people to a late software project makes it later.” More isn’t always better, and some things are best done by an individual.
A wonderful, simple illustration of the importance of talent can be seen in a sports event like the high jump. Winning the high jump requires one person who can jump seven feet, not even people who can jump one foot.
Such an example may seem obvious, yet don’t we often believe that we can accomplish more by throwing more people at a task? That isn’t always the right solution. In fact, there are many tasks that call for talent more than numbers. Like high jumping, they require the extraordinary talent of one person, not the mediocre talent of many.
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