Deep Talent, Vast Distances: Realizing the full value of global knowledge workers

Company leaders are often quick to acknowledge, even revere, the importance of human capital in their organizations. "Our growth depends on people" and similar sound bites echo through many CEO speeches and litter corporate homepages like the last refrain in a many-versed ballad. Yet, catchphrases and buzzwords offer little clarity when it comes to the ins and outs of building and keeping a workforce. Fast-paced, global markets often pin growth strategies on knowledge work—from complex analytics to product design—and these aren't always easy jobs to fill. As a result, the pursuit of the almighty employee leads many organizations overseas: by 2010, offshoring knowledge work will become a $17 billion industry. After finding an abundance of available workers on another continent, however, many companies encounter performance shortcomings that seem to undermine their hopes of easing workforce shortages by going overseas. Even as talent management mantras become cliché, making knowledge work productive may represent the first great management challenge of this century, just as manual labor was to the last.