The Talent Wave

If succession planning and talent management work:

• Why do the wrong people so often get to the top?
• And why is the diversity at the bottom of organisations not reflected at the top?

Standard approaches to succession planning and talent management are based on the mistaken assumption that relationships between employees and their employer form a simple, linear system – and are therefore relatively stable and controllable. In reality, these relationships form a complex, adaptive system, which can only be influenced, and where attempts to control often end up with the opposite results to those intended.

The Talent Wave examines the evidence for the effectiveness of HR approaches in this field and finds it almost entirely absent. It proposes instead a radical new approach, based on improving the frequency and quality of four critical kinds of dialogue. This is a seminal, thought-provoking book that every HR professional needs to read and reflect upon.