Between Knowledge and Talent which is most important to Organization?

Between Knowledge and Talent which is most important to Organization?

04/02/2017

With the growing competition, advance technology, smart customer and globalization organizations are faced with so much in their environment that even a dynamic terminology is not enough to describe it, economic disturbance and fluctuation are getting more and more close than before where every fifty years there is fluctuation now its almost every five years, labour market are getting more and more diversified and scarcity in skills which make organization shifts for low labour market rate and more skills on top of that organization need to cope with the changes happen with the advance technology like e-market, cashless payment and online customers and suppliers all these changes and others are occurring today and faced by organizations which must be lead by the organization leaders and employees using their competitive advantage to continue the business and adopt these changes it heir business. But now this return us back to our question to in this environment do organization need talent or knowledge to face this environment?

First we need to identify each terminology before we answer the question, what do mean by talent and what do mean by knowledge? Talent is "a set of personal characteristics that enhance one’s ability to achieve expertise in an accelerated manner". Knowledge is ""the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association". So which one organization needs more to face today competitive and aggressive environment. Although the answer is obvious that organization need both to survive and continue the business but if we think about it which one has the most effect on organization leadership, people management, resources management and business strategy. The answer is knowledge employee, those employees who has the information, know how, expertise and tactics to lead and manage people and resources which talent is one of them. Although talented people has special and rare skills but they do not have the ability to lead and create path so people can follow their steps because their talent is built within its not something can be share or even copy, which the opposite of knowledge that its easy to share, exchange, copy and follow by others which its make it easier to find people ready and able to do the things related to knowledge and mange and lead with the same steps and even develop it with time.

Knowledge employee can update themselves according to the changes in the environment they can upgrade, learn and adopt easily with changes, which is the opposite of talented people that they need time to master and develop their talent, they cant change it according to environment and circumstances, and the organization cant make others to replace them or learn from them or develop what they were doing or creating.

With that saying does that mean talent is not important for organization and knowledge employees are the important one? The answer is defiantly no, talent is very important for organization and its competitive advantage its add value for the organization, what we trying to say is knowledge employees are more likely to be find in labour market and add value for the organization as we stated, but when it comes to talent there are so many aspects need to be considered to acquire it like what is talent for the organization since each organization has its own need and type of talent that can be fit to its business nature, how to identify and measure it, how to make it fit and work for the organization and so on all these aspects need to be addressed when considering talent which its not applied for knowledge employees.

Knowledge is power this is the phrase of today, knowledge economy is another phrase used today to describe the importance of knowledge. In today world who has knowledge he just role the world wither its business or globalization or even cyber business, by putting talent and the other organization resources, people, strategies and leadership in optimum use.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development