Back in 1997, “The Talent War” became a thing when McKinsey & Co made it so.
Their idea being, if you can attract enough good people to your cause, you can climb any mountain, win any battle, kill any dragon, do whatever you want.
In other words, with talent, anything is possible.
The trouble, of course, is that your competition wants and needs that talent just as much as you do, and will fight fiercely to get it, hence the so-called war.
The interesting thing from our perspective is that the secret to recruiting talent is having a culture that would attract said talent. Get the culture right, and the talent follows. Get it wrong, and your best talent will leave you like rats leaving a sinking ship.
This means, if you think about it, the real war really isn’t for talent. The real war is for culture. THAT is where the real fight is.
Welcome to The Culture War.
[BONUS LINK: Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman On How To Get Company Culture Right]
