There is a long-standing truth in the world of organizations: talent wins! But how do you attract the best people? What do they really want? Based on his rigorous and extensive research, Mark Miller learned that top performers are looking for very different things than solid contributors. In Talent Magnet, Miller uses a clever and entertaining business fable to share these findings. He tells the parallel stories of Blake Brown, a CEO struggling with winning the war for talent, and Blake's sixteen-year-old son Clint, who is trying to get his first job so he can raise money to buy a well for a village in Africa. Blake reaches out to leaders in other industries and works with his team to solve the puzzle of making his organization a destination for exceptional performers. But he also learns from his son. Listening to Clint and his friends compare notes on the companies they've worked for that summer, ranging from the awful to the inspirational, Blake realizes they want the same three things out of a job as any top performer in a Fortune 500 company. Miller identifies these three critical aspects of a true talent magnet and explores the deeper meaning of each. He pulls back the curtain on what leaders can do to find and retain the very best people—a strategic need every leader faces.
Author
My career at Chick-fil-A began over forty years ago as an hourly team member in one of the local restaurants. Shortly thereafter, I became the sixteenth corporate employee—my first job: working in the warehouse. Since that day, I have worked all across the business from starting our Corporate Communications group and our Quality & Customer Satisfaction Team to leading in Restaurant Operations, Training & Development, Leadership Development and more! For the last twenty years, I have focused much of my time on serving leaders, helping them grow themselves, their teams, and their organizations. In addition to my role at Chick-fil-A, I’ve also had the privilege to teach and lead in not-for-profit organizations domestically and globally. Although the context is different in every organization, the problems have common roots and so do the solutions. Along the way, I have been fortunate to author (and co-author) a few books – eight and counting. Today, more than a million books are in print in 25+ languages. My approach to writing has always been to find what is true in principle and figure out how to make it applicable to the real world.
