Talent 01: What is talent?
Welcome!
What is talent?
Every industry, every part of the economy, is downstream from talent. Talent is the first input, and it is the only constant input that exists for every organization.
What is talent? A humble, visual suggestion:
In words, talent is the human element that transforms inputs into outputs. A more talented person, in general terms, is someone who can produce more/better outputs given the same external inputs.
Talent has many (arguably infinite) dimensions. One person may be better at transforming input A into output A, but bad at transforming inputs B and C into their respective outputs.
Some people may be more talented at transforming combinatorial inputs: Person 1 can be worse than Person 2 at working with just input A, but is better at working with inputs A, B, C, and D simultaneously than Person 2 is.
Some people can also be more talented at different combinations of outputs. Person 1 can be great at delivering on output X given a set of inputs; but Person 2 is better at leveraging those same inputs into outputs X, Y, and Z, even if when comparing output X to output X in isolation, Person 1 is stronger.
Etc.
We’ll dive into specifics later.
The overarching hypothesis
Humans consume lots of energy—energy that has to not only be produced, but also converted into useful form. These conversions range from very efficient (i.e. hydro-electric turbine generation) to wildly inefficient (i.e. incandescent light bulbs) and we can measure its percent efficiency.
I believe talent can be thought of in a similar way. Given the talent that exists innately in all people, how well are we converting that latent talent into productivity, innovation, and flourishing, both individually and societally?
My overarching hypothesis about the talent space is that, taken as a whole, the talent conversion efficiency rate is currently <1%.
This isn’t for lack of trying, or necessarily lack of investment. Everything around education, investing, recruiting, and coaching, is part of this ecosystem, for example. Rather, I think there are fundamental problems with how we frame the problem that create this lack of efficiency—among other factors.
Why/what is this newsletter?
At this point I want this newsletter to be a flag in the ground. It’s a concretization of my interest in this space, and a playground to explore and build.
I’d love for people interested in these topics to engage—ask questions, chat with me, challenge my ideas, and offer suggestions.
In terms of the immediate “what”, here are a few areas that I’ve been drawn to recently, which I’m planning on writing about early on:
The impact and business models of career coaching
The problem of value capture in talent development
The problem of talent acquisition and HR as low-prestige
Dynamics around talent signal to noise ratios
Some larger scale research projects that I’d like to take on as time goes on—if you’re interested in collaborating or just chatting about these topics, please reach out!
The history of the the HR/People Ops department
The future of the resume and professional profiles
Personal agency as the fundamental primitive of talent—and finding points of leverage for this parameter
Modeling inter- and intra- organization talent interactions as a complex system
No promises to not break character
I expect most posts to be around talent.
However, I want to also lean into my personal idiosyncrasies from time to time, and write about any number of other topics that pique my interest. Some potential side quests that I might go on:
Ancient Chinese history
My conversion process to Judaism
NYC architecture
Classical music
Cheers!
Next up
Talent 02: There are only 2 talent problems