Geographical concentrations of talent can be a boon for L&D, says Ara Ohanian.

1. TALENT
HOTSPOTS
Geographical concentrations of
talent can be a boon for L&D,
says Ara Ohanian.
A
ccording to analyst firm Deloitte,
London is the world’s leading city
for employing highly skilled
individuals. It has about 1.5m
knowledge workers in its population of some
8m. And they’re not all concentrated in the
financial sector that London is so famous for.
They are spread over 22 sectors, with the
British capital apparently leading the world in
12 of these, including finance, certainly, but
also including culture, publishing and digital
media.
New York, in contrast, has 1.2m of these
highly-skilled jobs, Los Angeles far fewer at
784,000 – many in the entertainment
industry – and Boston, despite being a hub
for research and high quality education and
thinking, only 425,000. Surveys come and go,
but this one, with its detailed depiction of
cities as hubs of highly-skilled workers, got
me thinking.
UNPREDICTABLE HOTBEDS
What happens when cities and conurbations
become hotbeds of talent like this? Inevitably,
they attract more such people. Just as Los
Angeles is a hub for film and television
creatives, and San Francisco’s Silicon Valley is
for tech entrepreneurs, other locations will in
the future develop into hubs for particular
industries – and not always in predictable
ways. The British Midlands, for example, a
small area in the centre of England, is home
to 7 of the 11 teams competing across the
globe in the specialist field of Formula 1
racing. An eighth, McLaren, is less than an
hour away just south of London. That’s some
concentration of talent.
HOW DID IT ALL HAPPEN?
It all started immediately after the Second
World War. Engineers used to building light,
high-powered aircraft suddenly had no outlet
for their skills. They did have plenty of now
unused airfields, though, one of which went
on to become the UK’s home of Formula 1 –
Silverstone. The area was also close to the
British automotive industry, centred on
Coventry. That generated an environment
which demanded and supported a specialised
skills base. While the British car industry is no
longer a world leader in mass production, the
concentration of skilled design talent remains.
‘Motorsport Valley’ is home to 3,500
companies, turning over £5bn of business and
employing 40,000 people, 25,000 of which
are engineers. According to some estimates,
that’s 80% of the world’s high performance
engineers.
As national economies become increasingly
specialised and knowledge-based, such
concentrations of talent will become more
and more common. The implications for the
learning, training and talent professionals are
profound.
Developing the best
First, imagine an organisation that has a range
of employees with different talents. Among
them will be those near-unique individuals
like Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive,
responsible for the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad
and much more. Superstars like these can
make a huge difference to a company’s
performance. That sets the tone for the rest
of the business, generating a real focus on
talent. Everyone wants to be the next
Jonathan Ive. Everyone wants to have the
next Ive on their team – to recruit them, to
find them internally or – importantly – to
develop them.
In an atmosphere like this, L&D cannot simply
provide courses, it must be focused on
developing talent in intimate relation with
the business. That means working closely with
operations and sales as well as with HR and
recruiters, and that work will require L&D to
lead challenging, consultative conversations
as well as to demonstrate operational
excellence.
COMPETITION BREEDS SUCCESS
Having everyone so close together is double
edged sword. Talented individuals in the UK
can move motor sport jobs without
relocating – the competition is only down the
road. In contrast, moving to Swiss-based
Sauber-Ferrari is more of an upheaval.
December 2013 Inside Learning Technologies & Skills 173

2. TALENT HOTSPOTS
Although such churn of personnel can be
disruptive, the overall effect is both to boost
each individual company’s productivity and
to attract even more talent into the hotspot.
Once established, a thriving industry will then
naturally produce an eco-system of related
companies. People may move employer, but
they tend to stay in the industry and in the
area – think of the bustling diversity of
Silicon Valley, with large companies, start-ups
and support services all cheek-by-jowl.
For anyone involved in talent, an increasing
concentration of the people needed to run
these companies can only spell opportunity,
but of course the competition also extends to
us. Individual L&D professionals will need to
be at the top of their game to flourish.
IT’S TOUGH AT THE TOP
Not everyone can win a competition, though,
and success is not permanent. As with the
British motor industry, now restricted to a
few, premium marques, inconsistent
execution or a lack of innovation will
inevitably lead to being overtaken by
competitors. And this competitive landscape
is more brutal, and faster changing, than ever
in today’s internet-powered world.
In this environment, the demand for skills in
Learning and Development and for Talent
Optimisation will be higher than ever. That’s
good news. But to succeed L&D will need to
change in three ways.
THE CHALLENGE TO SUCCEED
Importantly, in a fast-paced world where high
quality skills are the difference between
success and failure, the old, seasonal
approach to L&D will fail. L&D must speed up
its game. This does not mean moving 10% or
20% faster, it means a qualitative change in
which L&D integrates with the talent
function to serve the business with lasersharp focus and almost immediate impact.
Secondly, and linked to this first point, there
is no way that L&D and Talent Services (by
which I mean everything from recruitment to
Human Capital Management planning) can
do this in isolation. The old world in which
training existed separately to other functions,
in its silo, is gone. L&D must not only engage
with the business, it must sit with it. It must
be in daily conversation with it, as a part of
the business itself.
And being part of the business alone will not
suffice for L&D to deliver. A highly-skilled
174 Inside Learning Technologies & Skills December 2013
environment is an ecosystem where – like in
Silicon Valley or Motorsport Valley – people
are regularly looking for their next move. In
fact, if they are good they may well be
self-employed and part of the extended
enterprise for a number of organisations.
Likely, they may have more than one role in
more than one organisation. They may be
immigrants, or about to emigrate. For the
organisations relying on their skills, Talent
issues are forced to the very top of the
agenda and retaining essential talent
becomes vital. L&D will play a vital part not
only in ensuring that key personnel are ready
to do their work, but also in making it
attractive for them to stay in place, because
they can see a clear development path for
themselves.
This new world of work, revolving around
millions of self-interested, highly-skilled
individuals, is very different from the
hierarchical organisations of the past. It is,
however, one where L&D can play an
outstanding part – if it is ready to broaden its
outlook and its responsibilities.
Ara Ohanian is a VP and GM for Infor.
www.infor.com