By Lisa Martin & Betsy Jordyn

In 1983, the movie entitled “The Right Stuff” came out. This movie told the incredible story of the original U.S. Mercury 7 astronauts and their can-do approach to the space program. From the first scene when Chuck Yeager pushes his X-1 airplane to break the sound barrier, viewers were gripped and inspired by these men.

What was it about these pioneers that captured our imagination? Why do we say that they had the right stuff? Certainly their technical ability is part of the reason; but it is so much more. We say they had the right stuff because of their can-do attitude. This attitude enabled them to take risks with such eager confidence. Time and time again, they enthusiastically climbed on board primitive capsules powered by rockets that could have exploded at any moment.

It wasn’t just the astronauts that enabled the United States to fulfill the astounding goal set by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1962, when he said, “We will put a man on the moon by the end the decade.” It was an entire space program with the top talent who had the right stuff that created the conditions to meet and exceed a seemingly impossible goal.

You are a business leader. You know that talent matters. But do you know how much it matters? Do you believe that achieving exceptional organizational results is dependent on having the best talent? Are you ready to create an organization that can beat the impossible odds like the early space program did? If so, then you are ready to discover the power of the Top Talent Mesh.

Why Talent Matters

When we talk talent with the right stuff, we are referring to Rising Stars, who are the best of the best. They are individuals who possess amazing talent and tremendous promise for reasons that go far beyond their technical abilities. They possess the right stuff, that can-do attitude and character that enables them to rise above their peers and make their performance and their organization’s results shine.

Rising Star performance at an individual level matters for a variety of reasons:

1. Rising Stars inspire. In 2009, a woman took the stage on the reality TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” She was dowdy, but when Susan Boyle began to sing “I Dreamed a Dream,” a star was born. You Tube lit up with hits from millions of people wanting to experience the gift of her talent. This level of performance gives us a taste of a world beyond what we usually see and moves us almost into another dimension.
2. Rising Stars deliver. Lucille Ball once said, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.” If you are the coach of the Orlando Magic basketball team in a critical playoff game, you make sure that Dwight Howard has the ball a lot. That’s because rising stars get it done. Period.
3. Rising Stars innovate. When Johnny Depp was asked to play Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the role was not conceptualized as a drunken, Keith Richards-type individual. However, Depp reinvented the role, and the result of his innovation was that all three pirate movies are now on the list of the top-grossing movies of all time.

When Rising Stars are brought together, cultures of top performance are born. This All-Star performance matters as well:

1. All-Star Performing Organizations create powerful brands. A brand is a promise made and consistently delivered upon. A brand is also about the ways in which collective strengths are leveraged and brought to bear in the marketplace. Apple, Inc. is a great example of how the innovative products developed by an all-star team enable an organization to create not just brand lovers but brand evangelists and consistently outperform the competition.
2. All-Star Performing Organizations beat impossible odds. “Apollo 13” is another movie about the space program that captures our imagination because it shows how a team of top talent came together to solve impossible problems. Similarly, the company Zappos was able to take an organization on the brink of bankruptcy and turn it into company with $1 billion in sales in under 10 years, as a result of their extraordinary talent and culture.
3. All-Star Performing Organizations create sustainable results. The Walt Disney Company has a culture (almost a cult) of continuous improvement. The company is rigorous about protecting its brand, but at the same time looks for ways to consistently reinvent itself. This trait is the result of its employees, who are never satisfied and are always looking for the next challenge.

All-Star performing organizations deliver results in the marketplace. The stronger your capabilities and competitive position, you will be enabled to dramatically improve:

• Market penetration and market share
• Customer acquisition and retention
• Per customer spending
• Positive word-of-mouth
• Brand equity
• Innovation in products, service or price
• Reduction of unnecessary costs and expenses
• Maximized use of existing assets
• Improved process flow
• Enhanced employee retention and investment of discretionary effort

Increasing your Rising Star performance through the Top Talent Mesh

The Top Talent Mesh is the space where your top talent needs and the needs of your top talent meet. You should master the Top Talent Mesh because leveraging extraordinary talent gets results.

Strengthening the space where individual and organizational talent needs intersect accelerates the level of performance you will get at the individual and corporate level. By focusing on the Top Talent Mesh, you synergize your efforts to better identify the “best” talent to support you to reach your organizational goals and build a culture that will attract the “best” people to you. Having the best of the best means you outperform the competition and achieve long-term, sustainable growth and profitability.

If you want to achieve ordinary results, then it is perfectly acceptable to put minimal effort into the Top Talent Mesh. However, if you want to have an organization that beats impossible odds, inspires your customers and employees alike and consistently delivers stellar results, then you have no choice but to maximize your Top Talent Mesh. In other words, you will need to make attracting Rising Stars and creating the conditions in which they will greatly enhance your most essential strategic business priority.

How to Maximize the Top Talent Mesh

Leaders committed to having their organizations be the best of the best consistently maximize their Top Talent Mesh by:

1. Knowing what Rising Star performance looks like at all organizational levels.

In order to develop a culture of top performance, you have to know what your top performance looks like at all levels. There are three primary levels in any organization:

At each level, there are performance distinctions between Rising Stars and ordinary performers that need to be paid attention to for both selection and development decisions.

Rising Stars are always growing and progressively making more valuable contributions. That is not meant to imply that they are consistently moving upward; but it does mean they are consistently delivering results at their level of choice.

Rising Stars In All Positions: Rising Stars are distinct from other employees in the following ways:

Rising Managers: Rising Managers are distinct from other managers in the following ways:

Rising Executives: Executives are not just managers with greater spans of controls. Rising Executives distinct from other leaders and managers in the following ways:

2. Being committed to increasing the percentage of Rising Stars, Rising Managers and Rising Executives who can lead high performance organizations.

It is not realistic to believe that 100 per cent of your people will be Rising Stars, but it is realistic to be in the process of continuing to grow the percentage of these highly talented individuals. To do so, you must be rigorous in all of your people decisions. You must also be very careful about who you hire and promote. And you have to be rigorous in dealing with difficult performance issues.

3. Creating Talent Gravity for Rising Stars to Shine.

It should not surprise you to learn that Rising Stars thrive in conditions under which other employees would not. This means you need to provide an environment that draws in rising stars. We call these conditions “Talent Gravity.”

At the end of the day, successful people become more successful by virtue of associating with other successful people. You need to point your Rising Stars in the right direction (core scores), give them what they need (communication, capital resources and cultivate their strengths), and get out of their way so they can figure out how to get there. And when (not if) they exceed your expectations, you will keep and motivate this type of talent by rewarding them for their unique contributions, not merely for their time (compensate for results).

4. Integrating the Top Talent Mesh into their entire organizational system.

If you want to make your Top Talent Mesh an integral part of everything you do, you need to realign your entire organizational system to ensure that your organization and people strategies support and enable your ability to attract, retain and motivate top talent as you have defined it. At the organization strategy level, you may need to make modifications to your organizational structure, leadership spans of control and processes, and culture to ensure that your people and processes are positioned appropriately. At the people strategy level, you may need to make major changes to your recruiting, training, communication and compensation and rewards systems.

5. Don’t settle for less.

There are several reasons why it is easier to settle for less:

1. It is a hard truth to accept that not everyone is a Rising Star. We want to believe that everyone has it in them to be the best, but experience tells us that is simply not true, which can be hard to understand and accept.
2. No good leader looks forward to confronting underperformers. It is not easy to tell people that they don’t have it. Look at the pain most of the “American Idol” judges experience when they tell contestants they don’t have what it takes to succeed. It is sometimes hard to understand that this type of truth telling can be a gift that enables people to see themselves more clearly.
3. It takes a lot more work to build a high-performance organization, because it’s easier to settle and make do with what exists than to invest effort in evolving to the next level.

But easier is obviously not better. When you put the required effort and discipline into mastering the Top Talent Mesh, you will find that the results are more than rewarding.

What You Need to Lead your Organization Toward Maximizing its Top Talent Mesh

It’s the quality of the leadership at the top that makes a significant difference between organizations that do what it takes to be the best and those that do not.

To lead a successful Top Talent Mesh maximization effort, you need two things: vision and absolute commitment. You need to see the picture of your organization’s better future and you absolutely must be committed to seeing this vision turn into reality. The extent of your vision and the quality of your commitment determines the degree to which you will be successful.

You must look inside to determine whether you are a leader with the right stuff and have the can-do attitude and focus to embark on making your organization the absolute best it can be. It was not an accident that the space program had a culture of the right stuff; its leadership personified that culture. Kennedy didn’t merely put forth a vision of man landing on the moon; he backed his vision with absolute commitment in terms of political clout and financial resources.

If you have a vision to which you are committed, not even the ”sky is the limit” to what you can do! The Top Line Organizations, like everything in nature, are either growing or dying. There is no stasis. You can choose the path you want to take:

1. Ignore your top talent mesh and let your organization die a slow death.
2. Approach your top talent mesh with a few ideas here and there and experience hit-or-miss and uneven growth.
3. Systematically and with passion seek to maximize your Top Talent Mesh and experience stellar results consistently over time.

It’s your choice: Reach for the stars, reach for the clouds or reach for the comfort of your backyard. Are you a rising leader? Do you have the right stuff? Do you want to create an organization that captures the imaginations of current and future generations? If so, let’s do what Commander Alan Shepherd suggested at T minus 2 before launch, and “Light this candle!”

© Copyright 2011. Lisa Martin and Betsy Jordyn. All rights reserved.