Talent acquisition and management was hard enough without AI poking in, but now what is hard has become harder. At least on its face. But maybe it is a lot simpler than we are making it out. Here are a few thoughts on this for us all to consider in the real estate world…
I start with the premise that for the most critical jobs, a person of Talent is worth an almost infinite number of those without Talent. It just is the way it is. Talented people often need little direction as they instinctively know where they should be going and what they should be doing. They think like owners of the business from their first day at work. They create solutions to problems. And somehow, they get done what needs to get done.
Sometimes they are a huge pain in the neck, and amusingly, I have found an informal correlation between the level of Talent and the level of pain-in-the-neckedness, but in the end you can’t have one without the other. And the goal of management is to harness the Talent in the right direction without the pain points causing too much trouble.
So, now, how should one manage talent in the age of AI?
I start with some background thoughts about talent – things I think are true based on my observations over my 40-year career:
- Talented people want to be with other Talented people. Even if the surrounding people aren’t particularly nice, there is something about talent that draws in other talent.
- Talented people want to be recognized. Many Talented people can be wonderful team players, but just as there is not supposed to be an “I” in Team, there is a “Me.”
- Talented people want to achieve things – conquer things – to win.
- Mostly, but not all, Talented people want a purpose and not to feel empty inside. For a few, just making a lot of money is its own reward, but for most others, there has to be something deeper.
- And then, finally, there are some who would be called Talent – and can be very valuable to an organization – but other things in their lives come first. There are many contenders for this, including the health of themselves or their parents, children or other relatives, marriage, the place where they live, their commutes, and many more. These parties can provide a lot of value, but limited by their stated parameters.
And then comes AI to the scene……
I don’t need to state the trope that AI will replace job functions and jobs. We all know that is going on and, of course, businesses recognize the obvious that having an AI Robot do something saves a ton of money over a human being doing it. That will cause some wrenching societal changes, but this article is not about that.
But in terms of what I am writing about here, my prediction is that AI is going to ruthlessly wipe out the job functions of those who are not Talent, but it is going to dramatically improve the productivity and value of those with Talent.
So, with that background, what should a business do?
This article could be two hundred pages, but with the goal of being useful, I have distilled it down to some bullet points:
- Have a really good and powerful answer to the question as to why you are in business. I wrote an article, “Why Are You In Business?” on this ages ago that is still timely. That article is very powerful, if I can say that, as I just reread it. So, taking a moment to read it is going to be worth your while.
- Have a really good answer to the question of how the particular person you are hiring – or managing – is very relevant to your business purpose. Make clear your expectations for the business and the person’s role in the business, i.e. what is the heart of the job function.
- Make it very – crystal – clear to that person of Talent that if they perform, there is a path for promotion, upside, and other accoutrements of success.
- Pay a ton of money for your Talent. Don’t worry so much about what you pay the rest of the people. Pay enough that if your Talent went out to the market to see what they are worth they would find they are overpaid.
- As far as AI goes, make clear that it is a tool you expect your Talent to be using to achieve the purposes outlined above.
There is much more that could be said, but I think the foregoing hits the highlights.
And now I am going to touch a bit of a third rail, and talk about the younger generation, which, of course, is not going to stay young that much longer. We all do grow older at some point.
For young people, I keep hearing – again and again and again – that these young people:
- Just don’t want to work hard – they are lazy
- They care more about their personal lives
And my answer to that is one word:
Fiddlesticks!
What is really going on is that younger people don’t want to work as hard for work that has no particular worthy purpose, i.e. the place where they are working has no reason to the answer to the first question I outlined above; namely:
Why are you in business?
If there is a worthy purpose, I have watched young people work their hearts out. But if there is not such a purpose, of course they aren't psyched up to give away their lifeblood as in their view, why should they? It isn’t really worth it to them.
This means – quite simply – to engage and inspire those young people, you need to make it clear that their job has a purpose worth working for and, as I guess I am being redundant now, presupposes an answer to the question about why you – and they – are in business.
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To conclude this article, I acknowledge that there is a ton more to say about this subject and unless I write – yet another book – I am only scratching the surface. I do hope, though, that this article is of value nonetheless.
I wish the best to all in my beloved real estate industry.
Bruce Stachenfeld, aka The Real Estate Philosopher™