Pardon the somewhat philosophical title for this post.  But I do ask it with some earnestness.  I commented before about how “talent” is climbing up the list of important business issues that executives are paying attention to.  I also noted that CEO’s seem to have great difficulties explaining what they mean by talent.

Here’s why:  they lack data.  Hard measurements and operational data belong to the CFO and the production side of the business.  When it comes to talent, we can’t agree on what we’re talking about because we simply cannot measure it.  The truth is we can, but most people don’t know how. 

There have been experts before who claimed they knew how to measure talent, but the end result seems to be impersonal or even de-humanizing to people, a result that actually detracts from the full talent picture. 

So what we need is good data about talent, a way to measure what we’re talking about.  We also want to have results that aren’t subtracting from the full view of talent; we don’t want talent measurement to be reductionistic.  Today it IS possible to measure talent.

How do you measure talent?  Have you seen (or used) some ways that worked or that you thought were unfair or inaccurate?  Post a comment if you have.