This Nagging Question on Talent

Good day, Friends. Going forward I'll ensure my posts are kept brief.

It's been one month into my new role, and a nagging question on my mind is:

How do we approach Talent Consolidation, especially across the African continent?

When the subject of "talent" is brought up in the context of meeting the growing needs of the continent, it's commonly divided into two:

a. Talent training - empowering those who have little to no knowledge of an area.?

b. Talent Upskilling - ensuring training in a relevant area is optimized to maintain global competitiveness.

However, a holistic approach to the above is "Talent Consolidation" - maintaining a balance to a sustainable talent pipeline that meets both the needs of the continent as well as its demands - maintaining global competitiveness.

Two broad ideas come to mind.

1. "Community Exits and Integrations".?

Communities - no matter how small, are the backbone of learning.

Now, the main idea of "Startup Exits" is to sell a company to a bigger one for a profit. Community Exits may not imply a direct sell-off but it could imply opening up an existing community (like an API in programming) to be leveraged by a more versatile community.

The reason is simple: a lot of existing talent and learning communities have atrophied over the years due to poor community management skills and through poor strategies. What happens is an inability of these communities to act as hotspots to reach relevant talents.?

"Startup Exits" are sometimes timed as sell-offs to prevent atrophying.

2. "Increase CSR budgets and make direct engagements more frequent".

A lot of Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSRs) are approached as infrequent charity activities - a "Father Christmas approach" to a nagging need.?

We can approach this as an investment by increasing budgets in reaching out to talents across the continent and doing so, directly and frequently.?

The idea of being direct is to promote accountability. This isn't discounting the activities and impact of third party interventions, it is highlighting the need for extreme accountability as a business need, not just as a charity.

It's a business need because the direct consequences of talent inadequacy comes back to haunt us as a people, an organization or continent, and a direct involvement on our part creates commitment in driving that talent consolidation objective.

Let me know what you think.