Talent Doesn’t Harness Business Anymore, Business Harnesses Talent

In the past, the smart and talented wanted to be hired by businesses to build their reputations and resumes. Now, businesses are looking for talent with reputations and resumes they can hire to build the company further. It’s a subtle power shift, but it’s an important one.

The question to ask is who is harnessing who? Is the business harnessing individuals to execute a brilliant idea, or is the individual hired by the business for their brilliant ideas? Now more than ever the emphasis is on the latter, and that means we take responsibility for developing and marketing our own talent stack.

The most valuable thing we can do is to figure out what we’re good at and how to do more of those things. The next most valuable thing is to figure out what others are good at and how they can do more of their own things to help – us and themselves. The best modern businesses figure out how to collect and direct their talent.

The anti-goal is conflicting values with redundant skills.

The real goal is shared values with complementary skills.

The right talent harnessed… it’s hard to stop.