Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First

Rapidly changing times and the challenging work environment faced by organizations today, including cut-throat competition, paucity of talent, cheap resources, increasing customer demands and so on call for a strategic change in the mindset of present business leaders, which would lead to more focus on the human capital termed as “talent” in organizations. Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey prompt organizational leaders to lead the transition from strategy-first to people-first. This forms the basic objective of the book, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First, put together by these three renowned strategy and human resources (HR) domain experts. The book is based on a survey conducted by Deloitte and serves as a read for chief executive officers (CEOs), business leaders, HR practitioners, scholars and students interested in the area of HR and strategy. It explores how and why organizations that focus on people outperform those that do not. It also offers practical suggestions on how investing in people can fine-tune company performance and enhance the strategic value of employees. The authors interviewed top leaders from organizations such as Amgen, Aon, Apple, Blackstone, Blackrock, Google, Haier, PepsiCo, Telenor and so on, to come up with shared standard principles to deploy talent efficiently for driving growth in organizations. The book starts with a memo to the CEO entailing an easy-to-follow, seven-step process to transforming a company into a “people before strategy” organization. It reflects two major themes, namely, redefining the strategy, and rethinking and reinventing HR, that set the tone for the future of organizations.