Leading Across New Borders. Karen Cvitkovich

The demand for development and full engagement from talent in India, the Philippines, and elsewhere either leads to change or disengagement.

      The Business Case for a New Global Talent Model

      The smartest organizations understand that the key to this globalization game is talent: having the right kind of people in the right place at the right time to realize their growth goals. The right place is where the growth is happening now – and the right time is yesterday.

      For many organizations, talent is the rate-limit on global growth, and the biggest challenge they face in moving toward a successful global model. Global leadership capacity, in particular, is the key binding constraint. In a recent survey, executives reported that “just 2 percent of their top 200 employees were located in Asian emerging markets that would, in the years ahead, account for more than one-third of total sales.”13 More broadly, CEOs in Western multinational corporations (MNCs) identify the ability to hire, develop, and retain talent in fast-growth markets as the main competitive differentiation in today's market.14 Companies that get their global talent strategy right will set the course of their organization toward success and avoid becoming corporate dinosaurs.

      More than any other factor, global talent has become the definitive gauge by which companies are measured and a key indicator of whether they will succeed or fail in the global market. Thirty percent of U.S. companies admitted in a survey that they have failed to exploit their international business opportunities “because of insufficient internationally competent personnel.”15 In another study, one in four global CEOs reported that they were “unable to pursue a market opportunity or have had to cancel or delay a strategic initiative because of talent constraints.”16

      Most business leaders recognize how critical it is to have a good global talent strategy. But many, if not most, are struggling to both define what a good global talent strategy looks like and how to implement it. In an executive survey, “76 percent believe their organizations need to develop global leadership capabilities, but only 7 percent think they are currently doing so very effectively.”17 The challenges in attracting, developing, and retaining global leadership talent are myriad and include inexperienced local talent in key growth markets, radical variance in leadership models across key locations (some models are difficult to transition to global roles), scarcity of globally experienced and locally savvy leadership talent, poaching, job-hopping, and increased competition from local companies in the war for talent.