Talented business

I went recently to a corporate event and one of its theme was "talent management", i.e. how to find, recruit, reward, develop and retain "talent" for a business. Unfortunately, there may be no such paramount concept as "talent" as related to business. Mail me if you see it differently.

With an innate aptitude, one has "talent" to do a certain type of work at a particular level. Innate aptitude must be distinguished from acquired knowledge or skills. The former arises from individual characters not directly amendable by specific actions. It is also important to note that having talent respectively aptitude does not equate to performing at a very high level. Realized performance is influenced by many factors including knowledge, skills, aptitude, opportunities, other extrinsic factors and, yes, pure chance. You may have aptitude to masterly play the violin but you may never be a star violinist because you enjoy playing football more. Similarly, somebody who trains hard to play the violin may eclipse in performance another who simply has an aptitude for the violin as an musical instrument.

Hence, to speak of "talent management" in the narrow sense of recruiting and developing potential high performers for a business is already a misnomer by erroneously not recognizing that performance arises from many roots. However, "talent management" in the broad sense of being a more sexy synonym for human resources management works. In this sense, all potential and current employees are "talents" who need to be properly motivated and whose skills and know-how demand to be developed in light of individual interests, goals and aptitudes for the benefit of a business enterprise.