For leaders, getting the right talent is only half the job. The real advantage comes from first identifying people who can genuinely deliver the work, and then creating an environment in which they can use their knowledge, skills and thinking to contribute fully.

One of the most important requirements of any leader today is the ability to get the right talent to work with them. Whether you are running a small team, a large organisation, a charitable organisation, a country, or simply bringing together a group of people to deliver a project, your ability to achieve your objective will ultimately depend upon the people involved. If you have the right talent, you improve your ability to deliver what you set out to achieve. If you do not have the right talent, ambition alone cannot compensate for that gap.

The difficulty begins with the expression “right talent”. We use the word talent very freely. We describe people as talented, we design talent programmes and we speak about attracting talent. But from a leadership point of view, the definition needs to be far more practical. For me, the right talent is the person who can actually deliver the work that needs to be done.

That definition immediately removes several convenient substitutes for talent. The right talent is not necessarily somebody who is loyal. It is not necessarily somebody who comes through a reference. It is not somebody merely because the organisation can conveniently afford the person. It is certainly not somebody simply because the individual is a friend. The right talent may, in fact, be somebody you cannot comfortably afford and for whom you have to stretch your budget. The person may not be your friend. The person may not even have the etiquette you would ideally prefer. None of these points answers the first and most important question, can this individual do the work you need to get done?

This may sound like an obvious definition, but it has significant implications for how leaders identify and engage people. We often allow several secondary considerations to enter the talent conversation before establishing whether the person possesses the skills and knowledge needed for the task. In doing so, we can end up selecting people we are comfortable with rather than people who can actually deliver.

Start With Capability, Not Comfort

The first requirement in identifying the right talent is to understand exactly what is required for the job. If Job A requires a particular set of skills and knowledge, the first talent decision should be a direct mapping of those requirements against what the individual can demonstrate. I describe this as a skill to skill and requirement to requirement mapping. Before we discuss anything else, we should know whether the individual can actually do what we need the individual to do.

Suppose I need somebody to work extensively on Microsoft Excel. The first question is not whether I like the person or whether the person fits comfortably into the organisation. The first question is whether the individual possesses the expertise and knowledge required to work in Microsoft Excel. If that capability is central to the job, it must be demonstrated.

Once that fundamental requirement has been established, the organisation can look at cultural fit and the other considerations it believes are relevant. But those are secondary. The skill and knowledge required to perform the role come first.

This distinction is particularly important because leaders sometimes confuse the person they find easiest to work with and the person who is best equipped to do the work. They are not necessarily the same person. The right talent may challenge our comfort. The right talent may command a price beyond our original expectation. The right talent may come from somewhere we had not expected. But if the person has the capability required to deliver the objective, that is where the talent discussion should begin.

The importance of getting this right is visible far beyond individual organisations. Throughout history, and even around us today, organisations, groups, countries and entities of different sizes have succeeded or failed because of the people they engaged. Countries have made deliberate attempts to attract the talent they needed because they understood that the right people could contribute to changing their fortunes. I referred in my discussion to Singapore after independence and its effort to attract talented people who could contribute.

The same principle is visible in immigration programmes run by developed countries. What are these programmes ultimately trying to attract? Talent. More particularly, they are trying to attract the type of talent they need. That is also why we have the expression “brain drain”.

Brain drain is not relevant only to countries. Organisations experience something similar. An organisation identifies the right talent, brings that person in, nurtures the talent, develops capability and then finds that somebody else wants to take the person away. Why talent leaves is a separate discussion. The immediate point is that those organisations understood the value of the talent in the first place.

For an organisation that wants to succeed, therefore, the first requirement is the ability to attract the right talent. But identifying and attracting the person is only the beginning.

In the Knowledge Economy, Hiring the Brain Is Not Enough

The second half of the talent equation becomes clearer when we consider the environment in which organisations operate today. For the last couple of decades, we have increasingly operated in what is described as the knowledge economy. From an employer’s point of view, the knowledge economy means that work increasingly depends upon the knowledge and brain power of people rather than only their physical muscle power.

There was a time when an organisation could essentially say, I know what needs to be done, I know how it needs to be done, and I just need hands to do it. The requirement was execution. The thinking had already been done elsewhere. The person was being engaged primarily to carry out the defined work.

That is not enough in the knowledge economy

Today, organisations increasingly expect people to be creative. They expect out of box thinking. They expect individuals to put their minds into what they are doing. They expect accountability. They expect people not merely to execute instructions, but to contribute intellectual capability to the work.

In other words, what we want from talent has changed. We are no longer saying, “I only need hands.” We are saying, “I need what is in your head.”

Practically speaking, that is what the organisation is buying when it engages talent in a knowledge economy. It is buying the opportunity to use the knowledge, thinking and intellectual capability of the individual towards its objectives.

But this creates another leadership responsibility. You cannot hire somebody’s brain and assume that everything inside that brain will automatically become available to the organisation. A person may possess enormous knowledge and exceptional capability, but the organisation still needs to provide an environment in which that person can contribute. The employee must believe that there is an opportunity to use knowledge, apply judgement, think, create and contribute.

That is what I mean by an enabling environment.

The organisation has to create an environment in which the person can say, in effect, “I am going to contribute with my brain and give the knowledge I have to this organisation.” This is an important distinction for leaders. Recruiting a capable person does not guarantee contribution. Talent brings capability into the organisation. The enabling environment converts capability into contribution.

If you get the talent decision right but the environment wrong, you may still fail to receive what you hired the person for. The knowledge may exist. The skills may exist. The individual may have the ability. But if the environment does not enable the person to use that ability, the organisation gains far less from the talent than it could have.

That is why recruiting talent and enabling talent cannot be separated.

The Two Abilities That Define Successful Leadership

When I reduce this entire discussion to its simplest form, I believe a leader needs two abilities.

The first is the ability to identify the right talent for the role or task.

The second is the ability to create the most appropriate enabling environment in which that talent can contribute everything it is capable of contributing.

These two abilities apply irrespective of scale. They apply if you lead a small group. They apply if you run a small organisation. They apply if you lead a large organisation. They apply if you run a charitable organisation. They apply if you lead a country. They even apply if you have simply brought together a few people to complete a project.

The first question is always, who is the right talent for what I am trying to achieve? That requires clarity about the task, the skills and the knowledge required. It requires the discipline to separate capability from friendship, references, affordability and other factors that can distract us from the fundamental requirement.

The second question is equally important, once I have that person, what environment am I providing so that whatever exists in that individual’s head can genuinely contribute towards my goal? This is what makes the enabling environment so important in a knowledge economy.

Leaders need people who think. Leaders need people who create. Leaders need people who use knowledge. Leaders need people who take accountability. If we expect these things, we must create the opportunity for them to happen. This is also why success increasingly has to be viewed as a team outcome. We succeed as a team and we fail as a team. Individuals do not rise in isolation unless they have the right talent and the right enabling environment around them. For leaders, I would therefore keep the talent conversation remarkably focused.

Do not begin with whether somebody looks like a cultural fit and only later discover whether the individual can perform the work. Begin with capability. Understand the skills and knowledge the role requires and identify people who can genuinely provide them. Then do not assume that hiring has completed the job. Create the environment that allows those people to use their knowledge and capabilities. Give them the opportunity to think and contribute. If you engaged them because of what they know, make sure the organisation can actually benefit from what they know.

That, to me, is the real leadership equation. Right talent + enabling environment.

Get the right people involved in the work you are trying to do. Then create the environment in which they can bring their full capability to that work. If you can get these two things right, you have created the foundation required to accomplish the goals you are pursuing. Because success is not simply about having people. It is about having people who can deliver, and it is not simply about having talented people. It is about enabling those talented people to contribute.

That is how teams succeed, and that is how leaders get their goals delivered.