LeBronomics – Another Milestone of Talent Mobility
All the attention over LeBron’s move to Miami underscores the fact that this is an unprecedented step for top talent calling their own shots.
McKinsey’s “War for Talent” focuses on companies needing to attract, develop and deploy the best employee talent. However, many of the most-talented people, exemplified most recently by LeBron James, are free agents who are turning the tables by choosing their own projects, employers, and now even co-workers.
For example, there are many people I meet here in Colorado who love living here and have decided to work as project-based workers around the world. The Internet obviously enables this trend, and it shows in increasing temporary-worker hiring over employee hiring over the last year.
What are the implications of this trend? For starters, to gain the benefits of utilizing the highest-capability project-based workers, companies need to consider and measure the business value delivered by these workers, not just consider their hourly rate.
Some companies are also starting to evaluate the individual consultants who are working on their projects, to avoid the “Forrest Gump rule” for purchased services, as described on Spend Matters – consulting firms are a bit like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
To get the best results from top project-based talent, make sure you have a supplier marketplace that provides access to a broad array of talent, and measure and track results of individual workers providing services to your enterprise.
