TALENT ... WHO HAS GOT SOME ? WHERE DO WE FIND IT ?

Unconventional definition of talent by a great man !

Talent is an ancient word that used to be a unit of weight or money in the Greek Antiquity - It represented about 26 kg of silver, i.e. almost € 13.000...

Today the world talent refers to a particular skill or competence that an individual possesses and uses in his life to accomplish things. It is quite linked to the parable of talents in the Bible, which explains that men have received talents (gifts) from God and therefore they must use them carefully and respectfully.

In the business world, one uses the word "talent" in the sense of "superior skill", which gives an edge, or some visible leadership amongst other people around — peers, direct reports, managers, clients, suppliers, shareholders etc.

In the modern corporate world, "talent" has often replaced the word "human resources", to show that the people of the company are really the unique asset, and thus the Chief HR Officer can call himself Chief Talent Officer... Sounds much better doesn't it... a bit arrogant sometimes.

Everyone can see now that all HR directors, departments, coaches, consultants are permanently seeking innovative ways to identify, recruit, retain, develop and enhance talent ! And they talk a lot about it.

Personally,  I am convinced that skills and competencies can really be developed and improved. Leadership can also be enhanced and improved through good coaching (not training, I insist). 

However, I do not believe that talent can be manufactured, developed or increased, especially in the business world. I fundamentally think that talent is a gift, an inner differentiating factor that you inherit with your DNA, your senses, your brain, your IQ and our EQ, and partly from your childhood education. 

Like David Ogilvy said, talent is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters and rebels. This is why traditional HR approach and corporations face difficulties to breed talent. Very often, too often, the precious talents are discouraged because they can not really express their difference ; because they are not the same as all other "clone" managers ; because they behave and think in a lateral way ; because they are "out of the box". 

Sadly, corporations often let go their true talents, and then try to create - with heavy HR processes - their own "talents", which are merely clones with better performance appraisals, so called "High Potentials".

True talent is rare. I met one this week, Cédric Villani, who received the Fields Medal of Mathematics in 2010 (the equivalent of a Nobel Prize), aged 37 only, for his work in kinetic research and optimal transportation. This gentleman perfectly describes Ogilvy's definition, and comforts my belief that talent cannot be "made". Cédric Villani is definitely nonconformist, and he is pure talent — as well as very empathetic and a pleasure to work with I must say !

So now, think about it... You have some talent, definitely — as everyone has got such a gift. But what is it ? What is your talent ? Are you really using it at work, in your life ? If not... well, let's be a rebel or a dissenter then, and find a spot where all your talent will be revealed and appreciated !

Cédric Villani, pure talent, nonconformist, Fields Medal 2010

WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE...

Atelier Berluti - LVMH Journées Particulières

I had the privilege to be invited last Friday at the Avant-Première of LVMH Journées Particulières, with a visit of Berluti's Atelier Sur-Mesure in Paris, "dans les coulisses du rêve" - "Where dreams are made".

This was indeed a real moment of travel into PURE INSPIRATION and a journey into DREAMS and STORY TELLING.

This is not just because of the sheer beauty (and price) of Berluti shoes, nor because of their 120-year old process of designing and making bespoke shoes... This is more a reflection on the meaning of TRADITION and HERITAGE :

• For instance, their master shoe-maker does NOT use 3D-simulation or Hi-Tech material and devices to measure the feet of the customer... He simply draws and take notes for hours, in 2D, on an ancient type of paper, and discusses at length with his client to best understand his needs, likes, dreams, desires, motivations, fears, etc... From this pure dialogue and exchange, the whole process of CREATIVITY and tailor-made manufacturing can start !

It calls for a profound reflection on how we best execute our work, and how we can deliver the perfect product to our customers... I believe that any great product (or service) is a blend of :

• Perfect understanding of client needs
• Story-telling to "market" the product/service and make it sound totally unique
• Creativity to give a sense of tailor-made and exclusivity
• Values and heritage to give a sense of trust and timelessness
• Search of excellence in all phases of work
• Enormous experience (15.000 hours practice to become a master in any job)

One can ask the question then : Am I doing all this in my day job ? Am I treating my clients as best as possible ? Am I offering the best approach and solutions to my client desires and needs ?

All good questions for today...

Let's be inspired by the way Berluti shoe makers INSPIRE their own clients and CONNECT with them, intimately and passionately !

http://www.lesjourneesparticulieres.fr/berluti/l-atelier-sur-mesure.html

IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS ? GET AN MBA !

MBA Happiness Index published by Forbes May 2013

This is just unbelievable !

I found out tonight this fantastic index, which should more often be used when measuring or ranking MBA performance, instead of the usual post-MBA salary, ROI, payback, etc.

The only problem is that the 12 surveyed business schools did not include INSEAD. Therefore, the results are probably quite underestimated : I think the happiness index during and post MBA would be much greater if it included INSEAD. No doubt post MBA index would be double digit !

More seriously, I believe that the Happiness indicator could be well considered for other rankings throughout society.

Indeed, amid the worst turbulent economic times ever faced in 2008-2013 (think sub-primes, CDO's, Jerome Kerviel, Lehman Brothers, Iceland, ... , Italy, Greece ...) I think that HOPE and RADICAL OPTIMISM are probably the best remaining tools to beat the crisis.

A virtuous circle of improved morale and restored growth must be achieved through a winning, radically optimist, mindset and attitude, from all leaders in the political, economical, educational and business arenas.

This is why the next INSEAD ESSENTIALS in Paris will be held on September 12th with the following agenda: "How to make the world a better place / How to be radical optimists amid the worst turbulent times".

Save the date !

WANT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT MARKETING REVOLUTION ?

28 May 2013 - Digital Marketing Conference Highlights

Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Park Hyatt in Paris on DIGITAL MARKETING.

Clearly, it is too wide a theme to be able to encompass all its subtle dimensions in less than 3 hours...

And as I will have only 10-15 minutes, let me share with you the highlights of my speech, i.e. the 5 TRENDS that are re-shaping marketing as we know it, and that all marketers should rapidly embark on:

Digitize all - from consumers shopping to advertising

Re-think marketing - in particular the relationship to your consumers

Go for big data - in data we trust (a Roland Berger textbook)

Open (your) data - share your secrets so others can enrich them !

Co-create content - ask your consumers to act as a tribe, and to work for you...

And of course, one needs to remember that Marketing in the age of Digital is only about :

Inspire & Connect !

See conference detailed program on: http://www.premiercercle.com/newsletters/md2013/4/

L'ART ET LA PLUME - THE CORPORATION OF TOMORROW

I will be participating to the 2nd edition of "L'ART et la PLUME" on Sunday 14 April, to facilitate and animate a round-table of top executives, coaches, consultants and authors...

The topic of my 3-hour intervention is challenging and ambitious : "Please, draw for me the environment, the economy, and the corporation of tomorrow" !

I truly hope that many leaders and managers of Paris and surroundings will be able to show up and attend.

The panel is just fabulous, with my friend Emmanuel Faber, Vice-President of Danone as well as Hugues Franc, Founder of Réseau Entreprendre, and other inspiring speakers.

The purpose is well aligned with my intimate conviction that the role of business is to make the world a better place.

We will touch upon, in a thought-provoking way, the issues of corporate social responsibility, diversity, sustainability, common good, employee first, ... in a comprehensive, inspiring and challenging discussion.

My objective at this roundtable is to stimulate optimism, in a period where the corporate world, the economy and the overall ecosystem seem all pessimistic, depressed, which leads us to the self fulfilling prophecy of FAILURE !

So, on Sunday, let's aim for radical optimism, radical realism, and radical enthusiasm !

More content will follow after the event, I hope with videos and podcasts...

See http://www.lartetlaplume.com/jean-marc-lidunea/ and http://www.lartetlaplume.com/dimanche-14-avril-2013/

The greatest strength of a leader ? HUMILITY

Looking after Others with Great Humility - Mother Teresa, a Great Leader and Nobel Prize

Many of you have been amazed by the recent decision of Pope Benedict XVI to renounce the papal throne in Rome. Basically he is stepping down from the top ministry of the Catholic world, a community of more than a billion people.

We do not know many leaders in the corporate world who would be capable, brave or clever to do the same when feeling that time has come. On the contrary, we most often observe a tendency of corporate leaders to hang around, to keep their top role as long as possible, to renegotiate retirement age upwards with the Board etc. It is not un-common amongst leaders to "keep going"...

Well, I do believe that the most important trait of character of a leader is HUMILITY.

The word is coming from the Latin "Humus" - Earth, or soil. This clearly shows the link between humility and being down-to-earth, pragmatic, close to the field, feet on the ground. The great leader of L'Oreal, Lindsay Owen Jones, who has been CEO for 18 years, used to say that the best people of L'Oreal had to be both poets (creative, imaginative) and farmers (pragmatic, humble).

A humble leader will listen to people and act for the others, usually focused on serving rather than being served. This is not obvious and easy in today's corporate highly competitive world. The notion of common good is often forgotten, but great leaders do demonstrate, incentivize and reward corporate responsibility. Clara Gayard, CEO of GE France says that today, leadership and power resides in the sentence "I share, I can". It is difficult to share without being humble.

One of the greatest humble leadership example in history is Gandhi, who was not the most arrogant person... and with great humility, empathy, and patience managed to change the British Empire and a country, India, which is now well over a billion citizens! In the corporate world of today, one could see the early retirement of Bill Gates as a bold move of humility, quitting his top job, and abdicating his entire wealth for the benefit of a Foundation seeking to eradicate diseases from the planet, e.g. malaria which kills millions in Africa every year.

More scientifically speaking, a recent study from the University of Buffalo pointed out that humble leaders were more liked (of course) by people, but also were more effective... And this is underlined by many research studies and articles from HBR. It seems that humility is really the only way for a leader to be truly authentic: Humility shows your Humanity, which is more appealing to other human beings, whom in turn would follow more easily such leader.

But what is the recipe to humility ? Well... if you have to ask :-) bad start...
I would say that a couple of attitudes and values do prove humility, and cannot really be faked or claimed:
- A real sense of others, and a passion to serve.
- Promoting and listening to others. Showing care.
- Accepting mistakes, acknowledging them, and learning from them.
- Tempering authority and desire to dominate.
Kathryn Schulz has written an excellent book on one of these dimensions: "Being Wrong" - which actually shows that denying mistakes is a real shame, missing both on authenticity and opportunity!

In a nutshell, humble leaders do create an environment which is supportive, inducing better relationships, team work, collective performance and inspiration... all geared towards success, a success with significance, as Dean Dipak Jain of INSEAD usually tells MBA students before they enter the corporate jungle.

In fact, humility is both "inspiring and connecting" ... A great fit with this Blog !

ARE YOU ADDICTED ?



Too many uses - Too much time ?


Are we all becoming smart phone addicts?

I have myself an iPhone, an iPad and a BlackBerry - to be mobile, connected, inspired and reachable... And I spend a lot of time on those devices every day, for my job, with my family, for my social and societal activities, and of course for entertainment and news!

Is that too much? I bet you that you sometimes ask yourself the same question.

Actually, in the corporate world, a new health concern has been raised throughout scientific studies: CPA - cell phone addiction, which is a behavioral addiction as severe as certain substance addictions. CPA is pretty similar to credit card or gambling addictions...

You might have experienced it yourself on your BlackBerry, with the "red light symptom" as I call it - once the red light is flashing, you have a compelling, compulsive need to look at your email inbox! You can't help it.

A study has looked closely at this impulsiveness, within 2pools of business-school students in the USA (191 people in total). On average, each student receives 110 text messages a day, sends about 113 SMS a day, consults its smart phone 60 times and spends 7 hours using it... This is just amazing, and frightening too: And this is our future business leaders!

The big question is: Do we really need that? Are we obliged to get be so connected in the "Now World"? Well... Dr James Roberts, who led the study and published it in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, asked the B-school students that question. And their response was rather unanimous: Not being able to use the smartphone would seriously damage social life, according to the respondents. And intuitively, we would share the same feeling wouldn't we...

Now, when am I definitely considered a smart phone addict? There are 10 symptoms identified in the good article attached from Digital Trends website: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/top-10-signs-of-cell-phone-addiction/

Is it too late? Is the CPA a disease we cannot cure? Certainly not. I bet you will soon find the nearest CPAA: the Cell Phone Addicted Anonymous association to help out :-)

More seriously, as for all addictions, the best remedy is anticipation, prudence, prevention. It is our duty as parents and responsible leaders to lead by example, to limit our own smart phone consumption, and to incentivize younger ones to "calm down" on cell phone use. 

Easier said than done though, isn't it.

So one word of conclusion: Now that you have read all this and thought about it, just switch off all your mobile devices, your laptop and your television... and go talk with your colleagues, your wife, your children or your friends, whoever is the closest... DO IT NOW.

WHAT YOU MUST OFFER TO YOUR EMPLOYER




Be Number One

 A while ago some of you wondered why I blogged about "what you must demand from your employer" (see post below)... For some people it should be the other way round, as it is employers who demand stuff from employees when recruiting !

Well, I still believe that if you do not demand the Three L's (learning, leadership, love) you will be sad and depressed at work.

On the other hand, everyone has to bring something to the table, both employer and employee. So what the employee must offer to the employer is also 3-fold : Your success in the job (or your best storyline for a recruitment interview) is based on 3 words :

CREATIVITY

The world is moving fast; information flows super fast; ideas are emerging and fading rapidly; only the great ideas survive, move the lines, and shake the trees. Innovation is key in such world, and creativity is the fuel for growth. You must become and remain leading edge idea generators.

ADAPTABILITY

The world is changing on a daily basis. On September 14^th 2008, all MBA graduates fancied a job at prestigious Lehman Brothers. On September 15, none of them, Lehman was vaporized... So, more than ever, you must adapt to (instant) change, you must seek change, you must love change. Change is your best ally, when you can cope with it. Actually you must become agents of change, take command of change… Change should become your daily bread. Those who resist change will soon become out of job.

CAPABILITY

Needless to say, life is going to equip you with leadership ammunition, management toolkits, best practices etc… Everyday at work is a learning day! Your capability will become deeper and broader as you get older, the only trick is to figure out how and when to use it in your next move. And remember: in today's world pure strategy is meaningless ; only strategy with good execution, based on real capabilities, will succeed!

86 400

$ 86,400 a day - $ 31.5M a year

I often use this story to MBA students, senior executives or friends during coaching or mentoring sessions.

Imagine the following (nice) situation: Your bank is crediting your bank account every morning on 9:00am with $ 86,400. there are two rules attached.

   1) You must have invested or spent the full amount before 9:00am the following day, so that the bank will credit your account again. No single dollar can be saved until later, you MUST spend.

   2) The bank can stop the credit any day any time, unilaterally and without your consent.

Now close your eyes for a minute, and imagine what you would do with this daily amount...

***

The reality is that each of us is being granted 86,400 seconds per day, every morning no matter what. And each second is gone after 24 hours. And the account will be stopped at a very specific but unplanned moment.

So the ultimate question of life for anyone is: What do I do with this amount of seconds I get every morning, precisely 86 400 per day...

There is no magic recipe for efficiency or happiness, but I can say from experience discussing with thousands students, executives, friends, professors, spiritual leaders, athletes... that great TIME MANAGEMENT is one of the fundamental components of LIFE FULFILLMENT.

There are of course natural needs (foods, hygiene, sleep...) that consume a large part of our time, and which are unavoidable. SLEEP is actually one big differentiator between individuals. Some need more sleep, some need less. This is certainly a genetical gift (determined by the gene ABCC9), but it can also be trained, dominated, educated... Sailors or commandos give a good example of sleep management, being forced to sleep very little, and in short sequences. If you want to know more about sleep phases and needs, please see this wikipedia page, well written: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep

Beyond natural needs, it is critical to master time management whoever you are, and whatever you do in life... Otherwise time will take control of your days, your activities, your life, and ultimately your destiny.

In fact, time management has been recommended and preached for ages by our ancestors. You will even find some time management advice in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 "There is a time for everything and a season for every activity...". Worth a read.

In a nutshell, the best way to manage time is NOT to plan, to divide and to schedule... because this is doomed to fail... because you cannot predict all and anticipate uncertainty !

Rather, one should always be prepared for uncertainty, and be ready to welcome the unexpected. A good way to do this is to focus on work-life INTEGRATION : i.e. Do not split everything like work-life balance implies (33% time with family, 33% time at work, 33% time for social activities...), it does not work. Instead, our aim should always be to do everything 100% !

From today, start focusing on doing everything possible at your best, with radical optimism and full passion and enthusiasm. You will see that doing more and more everyday makes your 86,400 seconds worth and more fruitful.

A wise quote of Benjamin Franklin says: "When you want something done, ask a busy person"... There is truth in that old saying of the 18th century.

So: Let's get busy today ; Let's learn to sleep less ; Let's do more to invest our daily 86 400 seconds ; Let's take a few seconds to say thank you for this wonderful gift which is Time ; And let's do one more thing today than yesterday !

WELCOME BACK and BEST WISHES !

AFTER 60 DAYS ABSENCE

Dear readers,

It has been too long! 60 days basically since my last post here...

But 60 days filled with tons of exciting changes and events:
- We moved in a new house with the family, still in beautiful city of Saint-Cloud in France !
- I joined a new consulting firm as a Partner: Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
- I visited clients in Germany, UK, Singapore, UAE, Netherlands... in less than 8 weeks. 
- I was formally appointed as board member of christian Association Alpha in France, whose purpose is to help people explore the meaning of life - a totally "inspiring and connecting" mission.
- We concluded the year of INSEAD Alumni Association in November-December with 40+ events, including a successful and innovative Assemblee Generale... and more to come in January. 
- We held a formidable event in Paris, the very first INSEAD Essentials, a conference focused on "How to Make the World a Better Place", with fantastic emblematic speakers - CEOs, education and religious leaders - who are really changing the world and having great impact on our society

You can see a video replay of INSEAD Essentials on our YouTube channel, IAAFchannel, with 8 sequences starting here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KVahBlFb7oA

But there is no excuse - despite this rather heavy schedule - to have paused publishing on this Blog... Some of you made the comment that they missed the various posts on inspirational themes: many thanks for this support and your compelling incentive to write more often and regularly. 

I wish you all the best for an excellent and inspiring new year. May 2013 be for all full of joy, happiness, hope, success and radical optimism !!!

See you very soon again on this blog, and Welcome Back...