Just a few days ago I got the wonderful news that my proposal to help create a talent philosophy at a Dutch multinational has been accepted. When we were talking about the scope of my assignment the VP HR came up with this lovely description: a talent philosophy. One of my deliverables will be to describe two scenarios for an integrated talent approach to talent management: one for the near term and a future scenario. In the future I foresee a far more data-driven talent approach. A prime enabler will be the integration of Enterprise Resource Planning systems, like SAP, with Learning Management Systems, such as SuccesFactors.

When an ERP system and an LMS become integrated, I see talent surrounded by a cloud of data.

Experiences gained and jobs, assignments, projects, programs undertaken. Lessons learned and courses followed. Skills sharpened and competencies gained. Performance achieved and potential shown. All these data-items and more will form a mesmerising and living cloud of big data on both learning and performing. Its intended use is to accurately match and map talent to opportunity, both in terms of jobs and roles in projects, programs and short term assignments.

Ideal right? I agree. In a multinational this will be the only way to glimpse the talent landscape across countries, regions and divisions. It will free talent, or at least its data, from the limits of local oversight and the potential this holds for strategic talent management is simply huge.

But is does this pretty picture paint the entire landscape? Of that I’m not so sure. We at ROI on Talent are driven by the belief that more than 60% of talents in organisations remain latent, undiscovered, untapped and therefore under-utilised. However powerful an integrated HR system may be: if we don’t solve this puzzle, we’ll end up wasting talent, opportunity and, in the end, money.

What we do know however from our own experience, is that leaders, managers and colleagues are able tap into this untapped ‘talent pool’ by eveloping their capacity to spot and flourish their own talents and those of their team-mates. When we augment the digital talent landscape by strengthening this organisation-wide capacity to spot and flourish people, we’ll have pained a truly wonderful vista. This is something we aspire to: do you?