Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

On my way to Boston to participate in RecruitFest as part of the Talent Anarchy team.  Looking forward to it for a few reasons…I get to hang out with some good friends, I get to meet other folks that I have been looking forward to meeting, and I get to participate in this funky event.  RecruitFest is going to have a live audience, but there are well over a thousand people that will be watching and participating on-line.  Should make for a very interesting day.

I am probably the oddball in the line-up.  And that’s okay.  Just ask Stuart Smalley.

I am a track leader in a session that I have no business being in, and I have to think that maybe the organizers simply did not know what to do with me.  As I look at the bios of the other track leaders I see a lot of “expert, strategic, vice president, chief, founder” kind of stuff and I am just a guy walking the earth looking for adventure.

But, I do hope to make some contribution to the conversation…because I think that it is a really, really important conversation to have.

There is a big, sloppy bucket of stuff that I refer to simply as “people practices.”  This includes everything around finding, hiring, engaging, retaining, supporting, and developing people towards the success of an organization or community.  There are a lot of different groups of people with their hands in this work, for example:

• Human Resources
• Talent Management
• Recruiting
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Relations
• Communications
• Training and Development
• Organizational Development
• Diversity and Inclusion

I think that every single one of these groups is trying to do better.  I think that they are all engaged in conversations about how to have a greater impact and help the organization better deliver on its promises.  They are all a buzz about new technology and how to be innovative and strategic and so on and so forth.  But I think that most of these conversations are fundamentally flawed…because they largely about “doing better,” not “doing new.” 

And new is what we need.

The terrain has changed.  Drastically.  And we need a new map.  We cannot keep arguing about what new tools mean or do not mean in relation to the old map, we need to be about drawing a new map.  We need explorers and mapmakers.

To me, a big part of that new map involves conversations around the foundational logic and language of this work that we do.  We talk all day, every day about “social” this and “social” that…what does “social” mean?  We have big, noisy, impassioned conversations about talent without talking about what talent is.

What does talent mean?

Sometimes people think this is a silly question, because they know what talent means (from their perspective).  But I think that we are using the same word while talking about a lot of different things.  And, I think that what talent really means is evolving, because how organizations create value is evolving.

What does talent mean and what will talent mean in 10 years?

Are we willing and able to engage in that conversation? I think that we have to, or else the other conversations that we have are on very shaky ground.

How will the organization be different in 10 years?

How will the organization create value in 10 years?

To me, these are some of the questions that we have to be exploring to make the other issues valid and relevant and I hope to bring some of that to the RecruitFest conversation.

Be good to each other.