Bruce Tulgan

Winning the Talent Wars

Bold new ideas that help managers get the work done in the age of flexible staffing.

You are scrambling to recruit great people. So is everyone else. No sooner do you bring people in and train them up to speed than you have to start worrying how long they will stay. Every day it seems people are ready to cash out for a better deal and it's the best people who are the most likely to leave . . . because they can. Welcome to the talent wars.

Management expert Bruce Tulgan offers direction in a world familiar by now to every working person. Profound changes throughout the economy are affecting every aspect of business and dramatically altering the opportunities that lie ahead. At the root of these changes is a transformation of the employer-employee relationship. Long-term, pay-your-dues employment is dead. More and more people are acting like free agents, leveraging their skills for all they are worth, and moving on instead of waiting to move up.

How do you succeed in today's fast-paced workplace? Rethink the way you do business. Explode the organization chart. Capture skill and knowledge. Gain access to the most talented people—and keep them on your team. Learn to negotiate aggressively with them and drive as hard a bargain as they do. Get the results you need when you need them. Turn your work into art and inspire others to keep pace.

Winning the Talent Wars sets out new management principles for the new economy, drawing on Tulgan's own research and experience working with America's business leaders. Some of the most brilliant solutions come from smart managers who are quietly using strategies explicitly prohibited by corporate policies. These are the pathbreakers in the new economy, the people already winning battles in the talent wars.