The Talent War How Special Operations And Great Organizations Win On Talent

In our modern business landscape, the war for talent is more complex than ever. You need to attract and retain the best talent for your organization to win, but without the right strategy or mindset, you won't be able to compete. If your revenue is declining, you're losing market share to your competition, or your organizational health is deteriorating, it's time to evolve how you approach this never-ending war. After all, your PEOPLE-not your product or service-are your strongest competitive advantage. The Talent War explores how US Special Operations Forces (SOF) assess, select, and develop their world-class talent. You'll learn how to adopt a talent mindset, the single greatest weapon you can possess in the war for talent. When your organization reflects this mindset, you will hire, train, and develop the right people, and put them in the best positions to make decisions that allow you to retake the advantage and win the war.

Shaping the debate on how to save the military from itself. The first part recognizes what the military has done well in attracting and developing leadership talent. The book then examines the causes and consequences of the modern military's stifling personnel system and offers solutions for attracting and retaining top talent.

Divulging counterintuitive revelations about what it "really" takes to attract, develop, and retain top performers, this is the definitive guide to today's most urgent business dilemma.

New York Times best-selling author Dr. John C. Maxwell has a message for you, and for today's corporate culture fixated on talent above all else: TALENT IS NEVER ENOUGH. People everywhere are proving him right. Read the headlines, watch the highlights, or just step out your front door: Some talented people reach their full potential, while others self-destruct or remain trapped in mediocrity. What makes the difference? Maxwell, the go-to guru for business professionals across the globe, insists that the choices people make-not merely the skills they inherit-propel them onto greatness. Among other truths, successful people know that: Belief lifts your talent. Initiative activates your talent. Focus directs your talent. Preparation positions your talent. Practice sharpens your talent. Perseverance sustains your talent. Character protects your talent. . . . and more!! It's what you add to your talent that makes the greatest difference. With authentic examples and time-tested wisdom, Maxwell shares thirteen attributes you need to maximize your potential and live the life of your dreams. You can have talent alone and fall short of your potential. Or you can have talent plus, and really stand out.

Presenting a fascinating insider's view of U.S.A.F. special operations, this volume brings to life the critical contributions these forces have made to the exercise of air & space power. Focusing in particular on the period between the Korean War & the Indochina wars of 1950-1979, the accounts of numerous missions are profusely illustrated with photos & maps. Includes a discussion of AF operations in Europe during WWII, as well as profiles of Air Commandos who performed above & beyond the call of duty. Reflects on the need for financial & political support for restoration of the forces. Bibliography. Extensive photos & maps. Charts & tables.

What Does Top Talent Really Want? More than vision, strategy, creativity, marketing, finance, or even technology, it is ultimately people that determine organizational success. That's why virtually every organization wants more top talent. But do you know what they're looking for? It might not be what you think! Talent Magnet will show you how to attract and keep great people.

YOUR COMPANY IS KNOWN BY THE PEOPLE YOU KEEP Employee engagement and employee retention drive high performing organizations. For two decades, we have been studying the American workforce through our work with millions of employees and thousands of organizations. We found things that consistently keep people motivated at work in good times and bad. Picture the culture and leadership where you work. Is employee engagement a strategic priority? Do people look forward to going to work? Are your leaders widely trusted? Talent Keepers is about what we have learned and how you can get more people engaged, performing better and staying longer. This is a business imperative. -The authors are highly successful pros in talent management strategies. It's a superb resource for anyone managing a team or leading an engagement initiative.- - Beverly Kaye, Founder, Career Systems International and Best Selling Author -Christopher and Craig have done a very thorough job of creating a guide on how to engage and to keep talent. Follow Talent Keepers advice and you will move from good to great and great to greater.- - Lee Cockerell, Former Executive Vice President, Walt Disney World(R) Resort and Best Selling Author -Individual success and organizational performance-there are no more important topics in today's competitive world, and Talent Keepers shows how to increase both - Richard M. Vosburgh, Ph.D., Retired Chief HR Officer, KEMET Electronics Corporation

If you want your business to grow, you need to be able to rely on your ability to hire talent reliably and consistently. No talent pipeline? No growth, and no business. But your recruiting team is drowning (I asked them). They need help. Now, if you ask recruiters, they will ask for headcount. Or more technology. But more bodies and more tools won't solve the issue (though it will eat up your budget). What you need a is a better strategy. And that strategy is called employer branding.Employer branding is about understanding, distilling and communicating what your company is all about in order to attract all the talent you need. That will differentiate your company as a place where people will want to work, rather than a place they land because they didn't know better.If you've heard about employer branding in business magazines, it might seem like something only "big companies" can do. Something that requires a dedicated team, expensive platforms, or a bunch of consultants. That isn't true. If you understand where your brand comes from, and how to apply it, any company (especially yours) can hire better with it.And this book will teach you how to do all of that, and then some.In this book, you'll learn what employer branding really is, how to make a compelling argument internally to leadership that creates commitment, how to work with other teams and be creative in finding solutions. As a special bonus, we are including a handbook on how to work with recruiting teams. This hands-on workbook is chock full of examples, checklists, step-by-step instructions and even emails you can copy and paste to make things happen immediately.

Do you have what it takes to succeed in any situation? According to a retired commander who ran training for Navy SEALs, true optimal performance goes beyond just skill. It’s all about THE ATTRIBUTES. “Diviney’s incredible book explains why some people thrive—even when things get hard.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit During his twenty years as a Navy officer and SEAL, Rich Diviney was intimately involved in a specialized SEAL selection process, which whittled a group of hundreds of extraordinary candidates down to a handful of the most elite performers. Diviney was often surprised by which candidates washed out and which succeeded. Some could have all the right skills and still fail, while others he might have initially dismissed would prove to be top performers. The seemingly objective criteria weren’t telling him what he most needed to know: Who would succeed in one of the world’s toughest military assignments? It is similarly hard to predict success in the real world. It happens often enough that underdog students accomplish exceptional achievements while highly skilled, motivated employees fail to meet expectations. Dark-horse companies pull away from the pack while dream teams flush with talent and capital go under. In working with and selecting top special operators for decades, Diviney saw that beneath obvious skills are hidden drivers of performance, surprising core attributes—including cunning, adaptability, courage, even narcissism—that determine how resilient or perseverant we are, how situationally aware and how conscientious. These attributes explain how we perform as individuals and as part of a team. The same methodology that Diviney used in the military can be applied by anyone in their personal and professional lives, and understanding these attributes can allow readers and their teams to perform optimally, at any time, in any situation. Diviney defines the core attributes in fresh and practical ways and shares stories from the military, business, sports, relationships, and even parenting to show how understanding your own attributes and those of the people around you can create optimal performance in all areas of your life.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?