Are you making the most of your talent and resources?

I have often written on the subject of leadership development and talent management because very few things in business can catalyze change and create sustainable growth like leaders who understand how to leverage their talent and resources. It takes more than charisma and subject matter expertise to be a leader, it also takes a strong understanding of how to create organizational influence.

One of the primary keys to building organizational leverage is for C-suite executives and entrepreneurs to know when, where, and why to deploy (or redeploy) talent and resources. It has been my experience that it is much easier to recruit talent or acquire resources than it is to deploy talent and allocate resources appropriately.

Jack Welch, the former head of GE, earned a reputation as one of the great business leaders of this era. When asked how he transformed a lackluster institutional global corporate giant into a dynamic culture focused on innovation and growth, Welch responded by saying; “My job is to put the best people in the biggest opportunities and the best allocation of dollars in the right places. That’s it. Transfer ideas and allocate resources and get out of the way.” Welch clearly didn’t just understand the concept of organizational leverage through the proper deployment of talent and resources…he mastered it.

I have heard it said that the role of a leader is to create and manage good followers. While there is an element of truth in that statement, if this is what you aspire to as a leader, it constitutes a complete underutilization of leadership responsibility. I believe that great leaders will mentor and train their subordinates in order to identify and develop other great leaders.

As an example, when I was in the military, I witnessed many of my peers feel it was their job to command by giving orders and having complete control over their subordinates. While these individuals had all the outward appearances of running a strict ship, their units often displayed an inability to execute at a high level in times of chaos or without frequent and direct communication with their leader.

Rather, I felt it was my responsibility to use my position of influence to transfer knowledge and experience in order to develop subordinates to become leaders in their own right. I wanted to make sure I developed troops that could think on their feet and take care of the worst situations, assuming I’m not available to lead them.

Ask yourself the following questions: What are your best markets? Who are your best customers? Where are your greatest opportunities? Where are your biggest challenges? What are your biggest threats? Where will you deploy your best talent? Where are you going to invest your resources? Where are you going to develop more talent? Where can you create more resources? If these answers aren’t clear in your mind, you probably aren’t making the most of your talents or resources.

It is very typical (though not very productive) to have too much talent or too much budget wasted in areas of little or no return. Any great leader will periodically challenge his assumptions to test whether, given the current environment, he has the right mix of talent and resources applied to the right areas. If you have what is perceived as a great opportunity, but seems to be stuck, stop immediately and assess your talent, resources, systems, processes, market dynamics, etc. to determine where to apply leverage to push the initiative into high gear. Conversely, if an initiative has been taken from concept to implementation and appears to be running smoothly, you should assess whether key talent and/or resources can be redeployed to other, better and more important uses.

I’ll end with one last military analogy. There’s an old saying in the military that proper pre-planning prevents poor performance. It is essential as a business leader that you have a clear vision from which to develop a definable mission that leads to a viable strategy. It is through his articulation of strategy that he will be able to tactically recruit and deploy the right talent and make the right allocation of resources at the right time for the right reasons.