The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent

I stumbled across this new book while researching selection and assessment. So synchronicity was at play. It turns out that Mike Sarraille and Jocko Willink served with a good friend of mine whose triple thumbs up “Good To Go” bumped THE TALENT WAR to the top of my massive reading heap.I read it through in one day.Yes, it’s that good.BLUF: I have a long standing interest in specialized selection programs. I’ve been very fortunate over my polymathic career to work with the designers of many high level selection programs. This book is a milestone as it details for the non-military audience the specific processes that produce elite military special operators. The authors do a fantastic job in making that information accessible to the lay audience, business leaders, and human resource professionals.I was recently asked to consider ways that selection and assessment might be improved, and how a “creativity and out of the box thinking” mindset culture could be fostered within an existing body of highly experienced and combat-hardened special operators.So finding this book at this time was a stroke of great good luck. This book is an extraordinary resource for anyone examining the issues involved in attracting talent, or looking to export these hard-won, battle-tested concepts of military selection into their world whether it’s business, the arts, or any endeavor that requires high order talent.Some random takeaways:Manage your expectations and open your mind. Talent doesn’t always look like what we expect or have been taught to expect. This is a huge insight for managers/leaders — the toughest guy in an organization may be a sweet faced kindly old man with gray in his hair and lines in his face, not the uber-athlete straining at the bit to prove he’s better than everybody else.Look for character, train for skills. Start with the human and what they are like at their core, rather than what skills they bring to the table. They make an excellent point about the SOF model — no one comes into SOF selection as a SOF operator with the skill set. They learn that in training and with their unit AFTER they’ve demonstrated what KIND of human they are.A GREAT list of attributes that make up desired character:DriveResiliencyAdaptabilityHumilityIntegrityEffective IntelligenceTeam-abilityCuriosityEmotional StrengthOne challenge I see upon completing the book is that of educating leadership and key management anywhere, from existing units to business structure, on the long term cost benefit of maintaining a comprehensive selection, assessment, training and feedback structure. It’s expensive in dollars and skilled manpower hours, and is a challenge to this day even in the units that fostered and brought up the leaders who wrote this. Even more of a challenge translating it to a business structure focused on dollars and revenue.Selection is an expensive program and there’s always the challenge of what to do with the potentially valuable people who don’t make the cut. One friend described himself as a member of the “second most elite unit — DELTA selection wash-outs” — he’d been invited, got to selection, failed, went on to be a superstar elsewhere because he didn’t let the failure break him down.There really isn’t any good answer to the expense issue other than education, through seminars, books, and lots and lots of case studies tied to the metrics that matter for business: revenue and return on investment. That education should focus on reaching existing leadership to open their minds to the paradigm of finding, motivating and retaining the top talent in their field whatever that might be.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the science of enhanced human performance, as FINDING the right people is just as critical a piece as improving the performance of the people you have.

This book is a game-changer, and it will challenge you to rethink how you build and train your teams. Our world is rapidly increasing in complexity, and success requires effective leaders that cultivate winning teams in any environment. I particularly enjoyed that the author's processes and perspectives are derived from real world experiences of leading teams in the most complex environments and where the stakes are the highest - combat. This book changed the way I think about hiring and developing our team and it will help you do the same.

Authors Mike Sarraille and George Randle are military veterans and both are in high positions with EF Overwatch, an executive search and talent advisory firm. Sarraille has extensive experience in Special Operations and Joint Special Operations Command. Randle is also VP of Global Talent Acquisition. Contributing author Dr, Josh Cotton has designed scientifically valid candidate selection practices of the US Navy SEALS and is an expert in talent assessment and employee effectiveness. As a team these men have ‘the talent’ at the highest level to share about employee selection!The authors open their definitive book on assessing talent with a Note: ‘The Talent War is hard. There is no manual to follow. And there is no such thing as flawless execution in this endless fight. But with a few key principles and strategies, you can win this war and lead your organization to victory. Both of us have dedicated our lives to talent acquisition and talent management in one form or another, and we’ve humbly and often embarrassingly made every mistake along the way. We know most military and business leaders share the same sentiments and same scars. This book is drawn form the many battles we have both won and lost during this war for talent…The Special Operations community has morphed into a world-class case study in talent acquisition and talent management…’ Opening that door onto a new way of consideration makes this new book invaluable to all employers and businesses.In this revelatory book, the techniques of recognizing and capturing ‘talent’ is placed in the military context – and that works exceptionally well: we discover how the most judiciously selected Special Ops personnel are assessed and selected to those posts that require the highest level of screening and performance. The key ingredient – Talent – ‘It's the hidden asset that never shows up on the balance sheet, despite being the driver for a company's true value. And now, in this hypercompetitive business environment, the war for talent has never been more important, or more complex. Of eight hundred CEOs and six hundred C-suite executives polled in 2019, the overwhelming majority cited the ability to attract and retain top talent as their number one concern.’Enlightening information and valuable advice for all businesses, this well written book includes poignant photographs to underline the content, making for a fascinating view of how to assess, attract and secure talented people. Grady Harp, December 20

I have mixed feelings about the talent war.After being worn out, the word leadership seemed to be relegated to the shelves lately. No one wanted to work under a dictator who controlled every single aspect of an organization. The modern keyword was: teams. Collaborators working together towards a common goal. Great! But, who leads the group? More importantly, who recruits the members? From the start of the book, the authors pull us to reflect on underestimated aspects of leadership.No matter how much the world changes, talent is what moves those changes. The book is written engagingly, with numerous real-life examples. My complaint is, unfortunately, deeply set on the book's core: the military aspect. I understand that Special forces are admirable when it comes to recruiting, training, and leading a team. Still, the military references were too abundant and did not inspire me as much as other analogies would.

Very useful even if you are in a small company but want to make the selection process more robust. Would definitely recommend.

Must read if you run a team or you need to build one. For recruiters specifically: THIS. IS. THE. BOOK. Stop hiring simply on experience and hard skills. Instead, choose character and the stuff you can't teach. This book explains how.

While the book is good, there are consistent proofreading and orientation issues with the formatting. Some of the chapters could've been explained a lot more briefly.