In the constant search to create and sustain a high performance organisation, how do you attract, retain and optimise really great people who can deal with any transformational challenge that the turbulent "more-for less" 21st Century business world can throw at them?

Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990) is considered to be the father of the Toyota Production System also known as Lean Manufacturing - a generic process management philosophy that is currently ‘a hot topic’ in the Financial Services Sector.

‘Lean’ - as it is now more commonly known -focuses on improving overall customer value through the reduction of Ohno’s original ‘seven wastes’: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing and defects. But it was only recently that some ‘new wastes’ were added to this list including one which we believe should be the single biggest issue on the minds of many business leaders today i.e. the waste of untapped human potential. Research from the Performance Forum shows that disengaged employees are costing financial services companies in the US $300bn per year, in the UK the equivalent is £7bn a year. Troika’s own benchmarking surveys of both the life and pensions and investment management sectors have shown that if the weakest performers could emulate that of the strongest then this could add 42% to the bottom line. With the size of some of the numbers involved it’s clear to see that even small incremental changes can produce dramatic results.

In attempting to squeeze the most juice out of their human capital many large firms are being drawn into a talent management "feeding frenzy", but is this the right response?

Many firms do a great - and similar - job of mapping their managers on to a nine-box matrix to define a future leadership cadre which is then often ring-fenced and exposed to a whole array of very worthy development opportunities from executive coaching and mentoring to shadowing senior executives. But is this narrow focus on developing only the leadership role and capabilities enough? What about the growing interest in management circles in the innovative concept of "effective followership"?

Most of us actually spend more time in followership roles than we do in leadership roles and...

Now just pause for a moment and type the words "leadership" and "followership" into your web browser. Then type them into your favourite online bookseller. The likelihood is that the ratio of hits will be in the region of 1000:1 in favour of leadership – or even higher. Why is this? Does that reflect the ratio of leaders to followers in your organisation today?

Your first email of the day comes from the Head of Talent Management and reads: "I am delighted to confirm that you have a choice of attending one of the following (a) the next iteration of our Business Leaders Development Programme or (b) the next iteration of our Effective Followership Programme" Which option are you likely to take? Followership may dominate our lives and our organisations but it does not dominate our thinking because our preoccupation with hero leadership keeps us from considering the nature and importance of the talented follower in the creation of high performance business cultures.

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