How much does talent actually matter? Nearly 20 years have passed since McKinsey introduced the idea of a war for talent, yet most organizations seem to struggle with their talent management practices. For example, a recent industry report by Deloitte based on over 2,500 leaders from 90 countries showed that most employers are ill-prepared to tackle key talent identification challenges.

Furthermore, scholars have recently argued for a more collectivistic approach to talent management, suggesting that individual stars are less important than previously thought, and that overpaying them could harm team performance.【G1】________________________So should companies stop focusing on talent? Is talent overrated? Not quite. Consider the following facts:

A few talented people make a huge difference. This is one of the most replicated findings in management research. In any organization or group, a few people will make a disproportionate contribution to the collective output. Around 20% of individuals are responsible for 80% of the output and vice versa.

【G2】___________________

In all these areas 20% of individuals (or less) tend to account for between 80 and 98% of performance.

Thus talented people—the vital few—are the main driver of a company’s success, and companies will see much higher returns on their investment if they devote more resources to the few people who are making a big difference, as opposed to trying to make the “trivial many” more productive.

Talent is easy to measure and predict.【G3】_____________Although most companies waste an enormous amount of time coming up with their own models of talent—a camel is a horse designed by a committee—they are overcomplicating things. They would be better off consulting the vast body of scientific evidence in this field.

For instance, meta-analytic studies show that there are consistent personality attributes associated with top performers across all fields and industries.【G4】_____________

However, the key component of ability is learnability or the capacity to learn new things—it is a function of IQ and curiosity.【G5】________________Finally, drive is the dispositional level of ambition—a person’s general desire to compete and the ability to remain dissatisfied with one’s achievements.

In short, talent matters as much or even more than people think. It is arguably more underrated than overrated. The only aspect of talent that is overrated concerns people’s evaluations of their own talents—most people are not as talented as they think, especially when they have none.

[A] The science of talent identification is at least 100 years old, and there are many reliable and legally defensible methods for identifying potential and predicting future displays of talent.

[B] In fact, many people assume that a team of stars is especially hard to manage and more likely to lack “synergy,” resulting instead in a collection of entitled and expensive prima donnas.

[C] Likability is mainly about emotional intelligence and people-skills, and these are pivotal to success no matter what field you are in.

[D] Most notably, the star organizational players tend to have higher levels of ability, likability, and drive. Ability is in part domain-specific as it involves the technical expertise and knowledge that people have acquired in a field.

[E] The most effective method is interventions focused on helping people go against their nature, replacing toxic habits with more effective ones.

[F] These studies also find that stable personality characteristics, such as neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness, account for almost 50% of the measurable variability in motivation, which means any observable difference in people’s motivation can be largely predicted from a very early age.

[G] This Pareto Effect has been found in virtually any domain of performance. As academic reviews have highlighted, a Pareto effect illustrates the distribution of scientific discoveries, publications, and citations; entrepreneurial success and innovation; and productivity rates.

The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous man-agers—prudent and boring men and wo men who can hardly get themselves noticed at cocktail parties, let alone stop the traffic in Moscow. Some of the world’s most powerful bosses are striking mainly for their blandness: Sam Palmisano at IBM, Tony Hayward at BP, Terry Leahy at Tesco, Vittorio Colao at Vodafone. These men are at the head of a vast army of even more forgettable bosses.

It is true that there are a few more women and members of ethnic minorities at the top of companies than there used to be. But physical diversity has not translated into cultural diversity or intellectual vitality.【G1】________________

The women who were profiled in a recent article in the Financial Times about the “top 50 women in world business” were every bit as adept with the cliche as their male colleagues.【G2】______________Andrea Jung, the boss of Avon, said her biggest inspiration came from “Avon’s six million sales representatives worldwide”.

【G3】____________________Some, such as Jeff Skilling of Enron, broke the law and helped inspire a dramatic tightening of government regulation. Others, such as Home Depot’s Bob Nardelli, paid themselves like superstars but delivered dismal results.

【G4】_________________Their average tenure has declined from ten years in the 1970s to six years today, and boards are becoming ever more likely to fire bosses if they get out of line, particularly in Europe. The financial crisis has also produced a wave of popular fury about over-paid executives and their unaccountable ways. In this sort of climate it is not just the paranoid, but the faceless, who survive.

Facelessness—or at least humility—is also the height of fashion among management consultants. Corporate headhunters are helping firms find “humble” bosses. Jim Collins, one of America’s most popular professional experts, argues that the best chief executives are not showy visionaries but “humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls”.【G5】_____________________

Yet there is surely a danger of taking all this too far. A low profile is no guarantee against corporate failure. In general, the corporate world needs its showy visionaries and raging self-centered bosses rather more than its humble leaders and corporate civil servants. Think of the people who have shaped the modern business landscape, and “faceless” and “humble” are not the first words that come to mind.

[A] Business journalists have taken to producing glowing profiles of self-effacing and self-denying bosses such as Mike Eskew, the former boss of UPS, who flew coach and shares an administrative assistant with three other people.

[B] The turbulent business climate is another factor that encourages today’s chief executives to keep their heads down.

[C] Almost without exception, today’s bosses speak lengthily of the same tired old management cliches— about the merits of doing well by doing right, the importance of valuing your workers, the virtues of sustainability and so forth.

[D] Indra Nooyi, the boss of PepsiCo, proclaimed that she spends her weekends “doing everything that normal people do”.

[E] Watch the parade of chief executives who appear on CNBC every day, or drop in to a high-powered conference, and you begin to wonder whether cloning is more advanced than scientists are letting on.

[F] The fashion for faceless chief executives is part of an understandable reaction against yesterday’s imperial bosses, many of whom were vivid characters but who collectively brought severe criticism and disgrace on the system that let them shine.

[G] The European Union is not the only institution that prefers faceless technocrats to people with star power.

Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners.【G1】___________

The “me” circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom.

【G2】_______________________

For instance, it is a cultural cliche that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background. Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian-Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.

【G3】________________

The brain’s dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer’s culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.

Cultural neuroscience wouldn’t be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Japanese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Japanese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements. But English speakers use language circuits.【G4】__________________“One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal,” says Ambady, but they “seem to be culture-specific.”

It’s also important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology.【G5】______________________Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight?

After all, it’s not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.

Ambady thinks cultural neuroscience does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, “attests to the strength of the overlap between self and people close to you in collectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain.” Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that “universal” notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.

[A] Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans.

[B] Scientists discover another case of experience shaping the brain: people who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

[C] To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when Americans think of their own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different.

[D] From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter “hard-wired” brain structures.

[E] It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight.

[F] For instance, it’s well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite.

[G] “Cultural neuroscience,” as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the “me/mom” circuit, support longstanding notions of cultural differences.

[A] Bring a visual reminder

[B] Eat nothing before shopping

[C] Prime yourself for healthy eating

[D] Use a half-sized cart

[E] Cut your cart

[F] Shop healthy first

[G] Make a (good) list

A recent review of 18 studies on “food nudging” finds that the placement of products and their nearness to consumers influences the likelihood we’ll choose them—for better or worse. But while retailers may use evidence-based strategies to encourage you to grab, say, a soda at the checkout counter, you, too, can use marketing and human behavior research to make healthy choices without much effort. Here are several ways to succeed:

【G1】_______________________________________________

You’ve heard that a rumbling stomach and an empty grocery cart are not good for making smart food choices, but that’s not entirely true, says David Just, a researcher at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab. In reality, an empty stomach is better than one stuffed with sweets or fatty foods. “If you eat a cookie right before you go, you’re going to buy a lot more impulsive stuff,” he explains. “You get in the mindset of eating frivolously, and it carries over as you shop.” If you snack on fruits or vegetables before your trip, however, your healthy streak will likely carry on.

【G2】______________________________________________

Before you go to the shop, do you write down every item you plan to purchase or just the necessities? Well, both methods tend to be healthier than shopping without a plan, since they minimize the chances you’ll be tempted by unhealthy displays. The more prep work you can do, the better, says Just He suggests taking stock of your kitchen before hitting the store, “If you know what you’re actually out of, you do a much better job.”

【G3】______________________________________________

If your refrigerator door is plastered with reminders of your health goals—say, to stop mindlessly eating or to reach for the fruit on the counter before opening the door—you already know the drill. Now, try applying that same technique to your grocery cart by taping a note to it that reminds you of your healthy shopping plan—even if it’s just writing the words “fruits and veggies.” Something as simple as that can prompt people to make better decisions.

【G4】______________________________________________

In research evaluating marketing tactics that could sway consumers to make healthy choices while also improving grocery stores’ bottom line, some shoppers were instructed to put all their fruits and vegetables in the front half of their grocery carts—which were divided by a strip of duct tape—and everything else in the other half. Those shoppers ended up purchasing 102 percent more fruits and vegetables than those with normal carts.

【G5】______________________________________________

In one study from the Food and Brand Lab, researchers found that people at a breakfast buffet were more likely to pile their plates with fruit when it was offered first compared to when it was last in line. Likewise, 75 percent of buffet-goers loaded up on cheesy eggs when they were presented first. while fewer than 30 percent of them did so when eggs were their last choice. Whether it’s your buffet plate or your grocery cart, loading up on healthy foods first will reduce temptation to waste money on junk food.

[A] There are a number of explanations for our boredom. This, in fact, is part of the problem—we are overstimulated. The more entertained we are, the more entertainment we need in order to feel satisfied. The more we fill our world with fast-moving, high-intensity, ever-changing stimulation, the more we get used to that and the less tolerant we become of lower levels. Thus slower-paced activities, such as reading reports, sitting in meetings, attending lectures or studying for exams, bore us because we are accustomed to faster-paced amusements.

[B] Our increasing reliance on screentime is also to blame. Although we seem to live in a varied and exciting world with a wealth of entertainment at our fingertips, this is actually the problem. Many of these amusements are obtained in remarkably similar ways—via our fingers. We spend much of our work life now tapping away at our keyboard. We then look for stimulation (watching movies, reading books, catching the news, interacting with friends) via the Internet or our phone, which means more tapping. On average we spend six to seven hours in front of our phone, tablet, computer and TV screens every day.

[C] Does any of this matter? Research suggests that chronic boredom is responsible for a profusion of negative outcomes such as overeating, gambling, truancy, antisocial behaviour, drug use, accidents, risk taking and much more. We need less, not more, stimulation and novelty. It seems paradoxical, but feeling bored in the short term will make us less bored in the long term.

[D] Our attention spans are now thought to be less than that of a goldfish (eight seconds). We are hardwired to seek novelty, which produces a hit of dopamine, that feel-good chemical, in our brains. As soon as a new stimulus is noticed, however, it is no longer new, and after a while it bores us. To get that same pleasurable dopamine hit we seek fresh sources of distraction.

[E] All these are simply becoming boring. Instead of performing varied activities that engage different neural systems (sport, knitting, painting, cooking, etc) to relieve our tedium, we fall back on the same screen-tapping schema for much of our day. The irony is that while our mobile devices should allow us to fill every moment, our means of obtaining that entertainment has become so repetitive and routine that it’s a source of boredom in itself.

[F] It amazes me when people proclaim that they are bored. Actually, it amazes me that I am ever bored, or that any of us are. With so much to occupy us these days, boredom should be a relic of a bygone age—an age devoid of the Internet, Social media, multi-channel TV, 24-hour shopping, multiplex cinemas, game consoles, texting and whatever other myriad possibilities are available these days to entertain us.

[G] Yet despite the plethora of high-intensity entertainment constantly at our disposal, we are still bored. Up to half of us are “often bored” at home or at school, while more than two thirds of us are chronically bored at work. We are bored by paperwork, by the commute and by dull meetings. TV Is boring, as is Facebook and other social media. We spend our weekends at dull parties, watching tedious films or listening to our spouses drone on about their day. Our kids are bored—bored of school, of homework and even of school holidays.

【G1】→G→【G2】→D→【G3】→【G4】→【G5】