Talent is a global commodity? You must be joking.

In undergraduate class, my statistics professor used to joke that "it is statistically proven that going to bed is dangerous, because more than 90% of the people die in bed". The joke used to make the difference between correlation and causation obvious to a layman.

What follows below rests on a similar type of confusion. It is sophisticated marketing gobbledygook in dire need to be cleared up.

Last weekend, I came across a website (modestly called weknowglobaltalent.com) owned by the global search firm Heidrick & Struggles, a site that makes the preposterous claim it provides

the power to understand where talent is in the world today and where it will be in five years time.

The site provides, so the blurb goes, I quote: "reliable data on a subject (talent) often expressed in a vague and subjective way".

If we consider talent to be a global commodity, as precious as oil or water, then it should be possible to analyze it as a commodity. To predict supply and demand.

Right. talent is a commodity, just like oil, water, iron, nickel, gold, wheat, rubber, orange juice, pork belly. This assumption leads to the formulation of reliable data, which is used to compose an index whereby every country can get its own talent ranking. The index then allows the prediction of supply and demand of talent.

It does not only sound odd, strange and bizarre, it effectively is. To try make sense of this glib sophistry feels like putting the toothpaste back into the tube. It would equally sound unreal to say that Heidrick & Struggling, the firm behind this site, has its consultants working on excel sheets in order to analyze and discover surrounding talent, oh, they can also predict where it might be lurking in the future. Go figure !

There is a fundamental and serious (epistemic) problem with the basic assumption underlying the premise of weknowglobaltalent.com.

Talent, just like oil, is widespread. It can be found everywhere, it presence is not constrained by borders, nations or cultures. But here the likeliness stops. This because the nature of talent is completely different. Talent has no physical characteristics; it has no chemical composition, no weight, taste or smell. You can't touch it either. Talent derives its nature from something oil doesn't have: meaning. Indeed, we all agree that an inquiry into the meaning of oil is completely absurd. As absurd as assuming talent is like oil. Hence, such talent index is as meaningless as it is absurd.

Let me analyse this a little further. The assumption talent=commodity is hopelessly skewed, because talent can only be defined in an intersubjective manner, it is not discovered "out there", like a chemist finds or discovers a new chemical compound, using his senses and their extensions (instruments like a microscope, spectrograph, molecular design software etc...). Intersubjectivity implies that a concept derives its meaning socially, through the interaction and communication between people. Unlike oil, talent ceases to exist when no people are around.

To discover talent there is only one way. One must enter into a social relationship with someone, the minimum requirement usually a conversation or dialogue. A talent for poetry? singing? mathematics? literature? sports? sales? strategy? Heck, what kind of talent are we talking about ?

Defining an intersubjective concept such as talent in a "reliable" (read: objective) manner, compares to experiencing the music from an instrument solely as analog waves. This because only the analog waves can be analyzed (measured); while the music needs to be interpreted according to standards that are vague and subjective (classic, hip-hop, beautiful, uplifting....). Imagine then making a country music index contrived from statistical indicators relevant to music; such as the number of instruments, mp3 downloads, discotheques, ipods, subscribers in ballroom dancing classes, and so on. Then such index is supposed to present a reliable way to discover where music is today, and where it will be in 5 years. Supply and demand. Doesn't that sound rather silly and useless? You get the point.

Therefore the talent index of Heidrick is a distortion, and is a gross reduction of talent to a number, a flat surface that has not a iota of depth. In order to render talent objective, it must be stripped from its subjective contents, effectively making it meaningless, and by definition, useless.

Hence the second assumption is even more baseless: the Talent index does not give any "power" because it has use for nothing, it has absolutely no predictive value. It resembles the whether prediction "tomorrow it will rain or not", it is somehow always right, but doesn't carry any useful practical information. I won't even start about its relevance or applicability to executive search or recruiting.

There is the joke about lawyers making something simple very complicated, so they can charge you a fat fee to make it simple again. I guess Heidrick applies it fees the opposite way.

A good read  of the entry in wikipedia about, say, the country Moldova will provide far more insight into the "talent" present in that country, than the infinitesimal truth disclosed by a fictitious talent index. This emperor has no clothes. Caveat emptor!

Comments

[Catalin Acatrinei]

Excellent writing. I could not agree more. But let's face it, trying to find a common denominator, an universal panaceum to how you can value the work of a doctor and the work of a marketing director has been the dream for many individuals or companies.

Americans seem to have found it...They just use the payment level. This brought us the current crisis but...it worked, at least for a while ;-))

[Peter D'Autry]

Well, the added value of marketing in service business is not is dressing up crock as science. That's bad marketing !

[Catalin Acatrinei]

So is cheap viagra and cialis ;-)))

In the end, it all adds up to another filter in the antispam system.