The hunt for talent could be the biggest challenge facing consulting firms today. The ability to define, discover, develop and deploy top talent is what will separate the good firms from the great ones, says Peter Cheese, the managing partner of the Accenture Human Performance service line. In more than 25 years at Accenture, Cheese has seen his share of talent come and go. In his latest book, The Talent Powered Organization: Strategies for Globalization, Talent Management and High Performance, he lays out—along with co-authors Robert J. Thomas and Elizabeth Craig—his blueprint for putting talent at the heart of any business strategy. Cheese sat down with Consulting magazine to discuss the talent crunch in the profession. 
Consulting: So, is the fight for talent really as fierce as we keep hearing it is?
Cheese: Absolutely. The reality today is there is so much growth going on in the economy; it's unprecedented, really. It's pretty much the first time you can look at a map of the world and see almost every economy growing—double-digit GDP growth. That growth is generating a lot of demand for new skills, new capabilities and new talent. The reality of what we are seeing is there is an extraordinary confluence of changes—demographic issues in the U.S. particularly, combined with growth issues and globalization—that are affecting everybody in every industry. Look at India, there's a huge workforce of half-a-billion people, yet some of the fiercest battles for talent on the face of the Earth are happening there. We see it everywhere—every industry sector all over the world.
Consulting: And that's the launching off point for this book?
Cheese: It is. The purpose for writing the book was to: 1) put those issues I just talked about in perspective; and 2) most importantly, [figuring out] what we all do about it? There's no doubt that top executives in organizations all over the world are now really getting the point that talent is critical to their future growth.
Consulting: Well, what are we going do about it?
Cheese: We have to look at this issue more strategically. I know that's easy to say, but the reality is most of the response to talent is tactical, and what's worse than that is we just don't have basic capabilities around HR. This whole debate has to be put on a much more strategic footing. It is a critical component of executing business strategy. There is no question that the biggest constraint to future economic growth is talent; do you have the people to execute, are they engaged, are they aligned, can you keep them? You have to create a strategic approach to talent or human capital linked to business strategy. You have to look three to five years out and then build the capabilities around whatever will sustain your engine of growth around talent. And, as any true consultant would, we break that out into four areas in the book—the four Ds. You have to "define" your talent; who is it and where is it coming from. I think the next generation of outsourcing will actually be about talent, not cost reduction. The next is "discover." Where am I going to find this talent? The third D is "develop." What are you doing to develop the talent in the organization? And that's a key element to retention because the things you do to make people stay are also the very things that end up making them more marketable. And finally, the fourth D is "deploy." How are you balancing the work with the talent that you have available? In the future, the smart companies will be thinking more creatively about how they design work around where the available talent-pool may be located.
Consulting: Isn't Accenture doing some of that now with your India operation?
Cheese: Yes, we are. India is our largest geographic workforce. Out of 145,000 employees worldwide, 40,000 are in India. To get to that level from a standing start, you have to have literally world-class best practices in talent management. If you don't, you'll never be able to attract them, and you'll never be able to keep them. Most people are very familiar with the outsourcing model in India, such as outsourcing IT work, but we've actually started to build out a consulting practice in India. We're building a niche in India where we're housing very smart graduate, undergraduate and industry-experienced workers who can provide consulting support. That is a very significant and important shift for us. We are operating in a very competitive business environment, and we have to be more diverse in the way we think about talent. Now we're taking advantage of this new and diverse talent pool out there.
Consulting: When you talk about the talent crunch, is it just a numbers game or is it that the way we conduct business is changing?
Cheese: It's both. All the radical demographic changes I mentioned earlier are going on at the precise time when we are experiencing an accelerating pace of change in business. The challenge is finding the people to meet the new needs of a global business world, and all the new skills that come with it. You could look at it from a U.S. perspective and assume that the U.S. will [fulfill] its talent needs from somewhere else in the world, but those people may not necessarily have the skills that U.S. businesses are looking for.
Consulting: What about the consulting industry?
Cheese: Consulting firms are perhaps more about talent than other companies since they truly are all about the skills and talents of their own people. In the consulting industry, there will be continued demand in many business and practice areas and a lack of talent will continue to be a constraining factor to growth.
Consulting: Do you envision it getting any better?
Cheese: Actually, we're seeing some positive shift in talent pools. A few years ago, consulting firms had dropped down the list of where recent business graduates wanted to work, but in the last two or three years, consulting firms have come back up the list again. I think consulting is still seen by MBAs as a very good place to work. It's a great way to gain rapid business experience—and that's very much a value set of this generation. Aside from business school grads, I think all consulting firms are looking much more at people coming out of industry and other sources. At least they should be; we've got to tap every source of talent we can find. It also makes the firms much more diverse, actually. I mean professionally diverse, not necessarily diverse in the traditional sense of ethnic diversity.
Consulting: What do you think are the biggest challenges to attracting and retaining the next generation of consultants?
Cheese: I think the travel dimension is a key one for sure. Work/life balance seems to be a much bigger deal with this next generation. As a profession, we have to adapt to that, and there are a number of ways that we can do that. The obvious way would be encouraging leaves and sabbaticals to allow them to recharge their batteries in a much more profound way. Some of those sabbaticals can also hit another value button with this generation—charitable projects. There are a lot of different strategies that consulting firms have to put in place to allow more flexibility, more adaptability in the way in which people are able to develop their careers, or are able to work at certain points of their lives when the work/life balance issue becomes critical. I don't think anybody signs up for this type of work expecting an easy life, but at the same time we have to be much more adaptive as an industry than we have been in the past. We should be looking at work-from-home options, part-time options, flextime. I think these types of things are critical if we're going to attract new
talent and retain the talent we have.
Consulting: Speaking of the next generation, have the needed skill sets changed for consultants?
Cheese: I don't think so. The basic skills are still the ability to communicate, the ability to analyze and solve problems, the ability to come up with potential solutions, and the ability to work in teams and collaborate. What has changed over the last ten years or so, I think, is the client's expectations. Clients have become a lot more demanding, and that's not going to change anytime soon.
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