Ed's Letter - Sep07

EVERY CEO, MD, ECD - and any other ‘D' - I meet says the exact same thing when I ask about the biggest challenge they face in their business.

You would think they would complain about rising costs of adopting new technology, the fast pace of change, the difficulties in reaching the consumer perhaps, or maybe the need to educate the public on whatever issues.

But the one thing they all state as their first and foremost challenge, and which is top of mind, is talent. Finding, training, retaining and growing good, honest, intelligent, creative and self-motivated staff.

The reasons why talent is the number one challenge faced by businesses are many, but they are all the same. There's the unreliability and tediousness of the interview process, the high cost of training and further education, the difficulty in motivating, the need to promote through the ranks and growing skills and competencies, and of course the most irritating of problems, poaching.

The advertising industry in particular is very small and bright kids don't seem to view advertising as a viable career - preferring to go into finance or starting up their own businesses - so you see the same few names hopping from agency to agency a lot.

Or, they hop into the client-side of the business or vice versa. Which is actually a good thing in the long run, if you consider how experience in both areas can benefit the industry in general.

This month, in Marketing  we take an in-depth look at the critical issue of talent. As well as the lead feature we also grabbed some time with Leo Burnett's Asia Pacific president Michelle Kristula-Green, in another one of her whirlwind trips, to quiz her on the agency's internal programmes to train staff (pg 30). We speak to Charles Chee of Agilent Technologies and Li-Wen Lo of Hertz Asia Pacific amongst others to get a good feel of how bad the talent issue actually is (pg 40) - and the conclusion is although the problem is major, strategies are being created to reverse the situation, slowly but steadily.

We hope you join us in the on-going conversation to find and retain the brightest minds in this business. If you have any comments or suggestions we'd love to hear from you.

Enjoy.