Our June roundtable focused on the importance of attracting, cultivating and retaining billionaire talent - those employees in an organization who create unique value in an organization and help create breakthrough innovation. http://www.pwc.com/us/en/people-management/index.jhtml

1. PwC’s talent management roundtable – New York Metro
Retaining your billionaire talent – June 8, 2015
Summary
Our June talent roundtable focused on the importance of attracting, cultivating and retaining billionaire talent – those employees in an organization who
create unique value in an organization and help create breakthrough innovation. HR leaders across financial services, hospitality, and product industries
gathered together in a breakfast roundtable to discuss the importance of championing this new culture in their organization. John Sviokla, author of ‘The
Self- Made - Billionaire Effect’ shared stories and insights to those who can help create massive value.
Key themes
• Producers are the employees in an organization who can help create breakthrough innovation. They exhibit key habits such as emphatic imagination,
patient urgency, reversing risk equation, and producer – performer relations. Producers have a sense for where the business is going.
• Today’s organizations have more performers than producers, but they need more producers or producer type behavior to anticipate disruptive change
and execute on today’s strategic priorities. Subsequently, this has implications across the talent lifecycle from workforce planning and talent
acquisition, development through to recognition, rewards and transition.
• During talent acquisition, todays firms tend to focus on process versus personality. Hiring for producer characteristics will require significant changes
in talent sourcing, interview process and onboarding. Today’s challenges include hiring in own image or for cultural fit. The ‘secret sauce’ of producer
behavior may never be fully realized if they are “rejected” by a strong existing organization culture.
• Producer like talent has the passion and the ability to go beyond ideation. Thinking is not enough and there is a need to bundle the ideation and
execution of new ideas and seek true leaders, not mere participants. Conversations need to start with Senior leadership and the board to support
diverse ways of thinking.
• Four approaches to attract and cultivate producers were discussed: organic development, catalyst hires, partnerships, mergers & acquisitions.
Industries differ in the degree of regulatory scrutiny. There is a need to manage perceptions that events such as 2088 financial crisis were caused by too
many producers.
• Each industry is at different stages of de-maturity which influence an organizations ability to seek out new capital, profit pools and talent. Regulated
industries are conscious of creating an environment where producers and performers can work together from the get go will help sustain the shift
towards a producer-performer culture. Consider the producer-performer duo when hiring producers and look for a complementary match. Challenges
may arise when producers are forced to assimilate into the culture, instead of showcasing their uniqueness. ‘Noise’ may be inevitable but can be
rewarded.
• Inspire and motivate producers by setting stretch goals that will require new competencies and encourage diversity of thinking for not only them but
others. Rewarding and recognizing new behaviors over the implementation lifecycle of the idea will help producers feel appreciated for creating value.
Leaders can be trained to spot and recognize producer behavior and see them as catalysts for change.
• Challenges arise when the reality of capitalism set in. Organizations have a universal desire to do things cheaper and focus on what’s easy instead of
taking the time to develop talent and look at the underlying problem of the business. This can be overcome by linking the value of producer employees
with the business need, the strategic agenda and the overall value to the customer.
• Today, organizations focus on delivering “core competencies“ to meet strategic goals. We discussed the need to define the winning signature skills that
are relevant in the external and internal environment and sustainable through multiple economic cycles.

2. Retaining your billionaire talent – HR takeaways
© 2015 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the United States member firm, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further
details.
About the book
Key contacts from the presentation
Phone Email
Orla Beggs (646) 471 - 4793 orla.beggs@us.pwc.com
Jan Seele (347) 607 - 8741 jan.seele@us.pwc.com
Bhushan Sethi (917) 863 - 9369 bhushan.sethi@us.pwc.com
The leadership challenge
The book can be found on Amazon.com & barnesandnoble.com
Visit www.pwc.com/billionaire for access to related articles,
media coverage and more….
Authors:
John Sviokla
john.sviokla@us.pwc.com
617 510 3565
Mitch Cohen
mitch.cohen@us.pwc.com
646 471 1500
Identifying producers
Sample interview questions
What are the most
important trends,
and what
opportunities will
that create in
your industry?
Have you ever
Creatively
configured an
idea to get it done
faster, cheaper,
differently?
Have you ever
experienced a real
failure, and what
did you learn?
Describe an
opportunity in
your business that
you are
passionately
interested
in pursuing.
What is your track
record of bringing
ideas, people and
resources together
in a new way to
create new value?
If you were given
20% of your time
to work on an idea
what would it be?
Review &
Transition
Plan &
Execute Recruit &
Select
Develop
& Deploy
Measure &
Manage
Reward &
Recognize
Employee
Life Cycle