The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age

‘What do you want to do in five years?’

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As Bill Gates wrote more than a decade ago, “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”

conversation. First, ask the employee to jot down the names of three people he admires. Then, next to each name, the employee should list the three qualities he most admires about each person (nine qualities in total). Finally, he should rank these qualities in order of importance, 1 being the most important, 9 being the least important. He now has

The central promise of a Transformational tour is that the employee will have the opportunity to transform both his career and the company.

A good mission and values statement should be specific and rigorous enough so that some competent players will feel a strong alignment, while others will understand that the company just isn’t a good fit. You may lose people who do not feel strong alignment with your company or group, but you want to lose those people—this allows you to build much