Talent liberation - stock take

Well, what a year 2008 turned out to be for Talent Liberation. As well as the obvious initial texts and client-facing work, we launched this site in the Autumn, and almost immediately after that I was in Malawi with our African Talent Team member Christophe Horvath. Christophe joined me on our three-week talent tour, taking in client meetings, taster sessions and two keynote slots at the Institute of People Management (Malawi) or IPMM at the beginning of November. 

The highlight of the tour has to be the interest not just from the corporates but especially from the not-for-profit sector, including one institution soon to be named who want to work with us on a project "to liberate the talent of Malawi". This ambitious project will start in the corporate sector, initially with CEOs in April but then progress in partnership with NGOs etc to bring talent liberation to people in villages. Exciting stuff!

As if Malawi wasn't exciting enough, the following month (December) I was in Dubai with the directors of the Global Leadership Alliance (GLA). This influential group of people represent best-in-class learning and development consultancies from every part of the globe. They had indicated in Bangkok in May 08 that they were looking for a discipline to major in and promote for 2009. I was flattered and encouraged when they provisionally named TL as that topic.

I had to present the proposal for TL to the board of GLA in Dubai and it was accepted subject to satisfactory progress against plan by June 2009. They have also begun to nominate their members of the talent team to work with me so expect to see an international group emerge this month.

So in a nutshell, 2009 will be the big year. The new talent team will be getting up to speed to practitioner level and paving the way for a more formal accreditation process to be approved by GLA in the summer.

This means I'll be venturing into online tutorials, podcasts, webcasts and video-tutorials to support the new team.

GLA will also be sponsoring me to write a more robust text book plus practitioner guides and participant guides. They are also developing a number of supporting products to make group work more fun, participative and effective. Watch this space.

Also, dialogue with organisations and other consultancies is progressing well. I have already had recorded interviews with CIPD, ASDA, BT, Mind Gym, Bradford University, Real World Group, TATA Group and Bernados. Once the video and audio recordings are approved they'll be available to visitors to this site.

For 2009, I have interviews lined up with Google, GMG, CocaCola, KIA Cars, Deutsche Bank, SHL, Boyden, IBC, AEG, Network Rail, Cranfield University, Belbin, Tube Lines, British Library, Richer Sounds and others. If you know of others who would be interested in expressing views on Talent Management & Talent Liberation, please let me know.

So it's going to be a busy year - but amongst it all, I do promise to blog more often.

Happy 2009 to all readers, Clive.