“TALENT WINS: The New Playbook for Putting People First” aims to provide insights for CEOs and all organizational leaders to help transform companies’ perceptions regarding the acquisition, management and deployment of talent in a modern and technologically driven environment. 

The book is co-authored by Korn Ferry vice chairman Dennis Carey; former Harvard and Northwestern University professor and business adviser Ram Charan; and global managing partner of McKinsey & Company Dominic Barton. It provides a seven-part plan for leaders, with advice on topics including how to develop a roster of top talent in a company and understand the people behind it; how to change the definition of TSR (total shareholder return) to “talent, strategy, risk”; and how to incorporate cross-functional teams that collaborate, disband and then reform depending on the suitability of their work. 

According to Carey, the book was inspired by “a sea change in our industry, when virtually every CEO we work with is asking a daunting set of questions that reveal that talent has never been more important to the success of a corporation.”

Carey also emphasized that organizations should focus on talent nurturing and development, which “TALENT WINS” aims to imply.

The book also aims to enlighten leaders to reinvent HR, scaling individual talent and offering continuous opportunities to enhance their skills, create an M&A strategy to pull talented people into their roster, and to help CEOs and CHROs realize the changes they have to make for the success of their company. 

As part of the development of the playbook, the authors interviewed CEOs, CHROs, chief transformation officers, and CFOs from some of the world’s known companies, including Apple, Google, Haier, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo.