"Your job is meant to support your life. Issue #01 | April 2026 |
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This Week's Hook He Was Literally Royalty. Yet, You Would Have Put Him Through a Phone Screen.
Coming to America (1988). © Paramount Pictures. Used for editorial and educational purposes. Prince Akeem Joffer arrived in Queens with one goal: to find a woman who loved him for who he was, not what he represented. So he took a job mopping floors at McDowell's. He showed up on time. He worked hard. He treated people with dignity. He asked good questions. He listened more than he talked. He built relationships with everyone around him. He led without a title and solved problems without being asked. And almost nobody in that building had any idea who they were actually standing next to. I want you to sit with that for a second. Because that scene plays out in your organization every single day. Maybe not with actual royalty. But with people who are far more capable, far more ready, and far more valuable than the role you put them in would ever suggest. The question is not whether that talent exists in your building. It does. The question is whether you have built the kind of organization that would actually see it. "Talent without opportunity is not a pipeline problem. It is a leadership problem." The Real Talk We Screen for Credentials and Miss the Person.Here is the uncomfortable truth about how most organizations identify talent. They look at the resume first. Then the school. Then the title. Then the company name. And somewhere in that process, before the person has said a single word, a decision has already been made about their ceiling. We call it a structured process. We call it objective criteria. We call it standardized evaluation. And then we wonder why we keep hiring the same profile and getting the same results. Akeem had leadership instincts that most MBA programs spend two years trying to teach. He had emotional intelligence. He had perspective that came from operating at the highest levels of an organization. He had the ability to walk into a new environment, read the culture, and adapt without losing himself. He was mopping floors. Not because he lacked ability. Because nobody in that building was asking the right questions. Nobody looked past the mop to see what was holding it. Your organization does this too. You just call it something different. You call it qualifications. You call it culture fit. You call it not quite ready yet. "We built processes to find talent. Then we built biases into the processes. Now we wonder why the talent keeps leaving." The Hot Take Potential on a Shelf Has an Expiration Date.There is a version of this story where Akeem never gets seen. Where he mops floors long enough that he stops offering ideas. Stops raising his hand. Stops showing up as the full version of himself because experience taught him it was not worth it. You have watched that happen. Maybe you have felt it yourself. It is the moment a high-potential employee stops volunteering for stretch assignments because the last three went to someone with a louder voice and a more familiar background. It is the internal candidate who interviewed for the promotion, did not get it, and started updating their resume that same afternoon. It is the person on your team who has the answer to the problem you have been trying to solve for six months and has never been asked. The organizations bleeding talent right now are not losing people to better salaries. They are losing people to better audiences. To leaders who ask better questions. To cultures where showing up fully is not a risk. Straight-Talk Insight Start Seeing What Is Already in the Room.This is not a sourcing problem. You do not need a new LinkedIn Recruiter seat or a fancier ATS. You need leaders who are trained to look differently at what is already in front of them. Here is where to start: 1. Audit your internal mobility data. How many open roles in the last 12 months were posted externally before anyone checked internally? How many internal candidates applied and were screened out? What was the reason? If you cannot answer those questions, you do not actually have a talent strategy. You have a recruiting habit. 2. Separate potential from performance. These are not the same thing. Someone can be a strong performer in their current role and have significant untapped potential for a future one. Most organizations only see the former. The ones winning develop for both. 3. Ask the question nobody is asking. In your next one-on-one, ask your people this: "Is there something you are capable of that this organization has not given you a chance to do yet?" Then stop talking. The answer will tell you more than six months of performance data. 4. Challenge your definition of ready. Ready is one of the most dangerous words in talent management. It is often code for familiar. Comfortable. Looks like the last person who had this job. Get specific about what ready actually requires and then check your assumptions against the evidence in front of you. 5. Fix the room before you blame the pipeline. If your underrepresented talent keeps leaving before they reach senior levels, the problem is not the pipeline. The problem is what happens to people once they get in the building. Inclusion is not a recruiting strategy. It is a retention one. |
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MY FRIEND IN HR "Your job is meant to support your life. Your life isn't meant to support your job." |