Marc Cohn was once a backing pianist for Tracy Chapman.  If you don’t know who Marc Cohn is, I have included a link for you to take 4 minutes out of your busy work life to enjoy the pure sounds of this amazing man. We will get back to Marc Cohn a bit later…

I have been so fortunate in my career with the people I have worked with and the people for whom I have worked.  Somehow, I have been given a journey in my career where every one of the people I have worked for and every one of the people who have worked for me have taught me something.  In every case, I have found that everyone has natural talents; and in many cases I have seen that the importance placed on “skills” masking the ability to see the higher value in their true God-given “talent”.   To make this more concrete for those of us left-brainers (I include myself in this linear, literal processing group) let me give an example:

In 1996, I worked for an individual that was responsible for the turn-around of the overall business unit of Merrill Lynch Private Client.  The responsibilities included all distribution, service support and back-office operations.  My boss was an amazing visionary, had the ability to immediately connect with business owners at all levels, and was extremely influential in driving a larger plan.  However, what made this individual more successful than his excellent business skills was his innate ability to recognize and surround himself with people possessing immense talents.  Knowing that he would not be the person to put the overall turn-around strategy and operational plan in motion, he set out to assemble a group of individuals that would be able to take his high-level vision and bring it to life.  In doing so, he took one individual that was running data analytics and promoted him to his executive assistant.  He took a sales manager and made her the head of operations.  As if these positional changes were not dramatic enough, he took a finance expert and made him the head of communications.  In each one of these promotional moves, a lot of head-scratching was going on by his colleagues.  But he knew one thing; he needed to hire for talent and train them in the new skills of the positions.  While I will not go into the numerous other roles that he held after the Private Client team, his future positions were only more elevated and most of them were in the C-suite. 

“If you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong room”

Why and how did he do this?  He knew the talents that he needed in each of these roles transcended the skills that each of the positions required.  Even more importantly, which I think goes without saying, each of these individuals had superior business acumen and intellectual capacity.  Let’s drill down into each of the “talents” he needed in the positions and why he was able to be so successful with such positional paradoxes:

Change Agent – 

The individual that had been so successful at data analytics did not gain success from his ability to crunch and analyze numbers.  Much to the contrary, this individual knew that data was one of the most important catalysts in providing trending information to business owners so that they could make directional changes within their business.  Knowing that data was important to this process was analogous to a doctor knowing that an individual’s obesity would not be solved by making changes to their diet but making changes to their lifestyle. 

Tactical Expert – 

While a very successful sales manager within the Merrill Lynch Private Client group, the individual who was promoted to run operations was given this position because of her ability to create a repeatable, sustainable process.  Through tactical changes within the sales group, this individual had taken what was always seen as an “art” and modified it to be a blend of “art and science” through process improvement and repeatable tactics, increasing sales dramatically. 

Collaboration Czar – 

The concept of getting a unified budget with finite dollars is possibly one of the most difficult challenges within a large business operation.  The finance individual was extremely successful at finding collaboration through individual and group discussions, establishing prioritization metrics that were agreed upon, and communicating honestly why decisions were made within the budget process.  Analogous to a mediator during the cold war, this individual had to have the right talents to see what were the most important objectives to all sides, and negotiated to keep everyone equally “satisfied”.  These talents made this individual the right choice to head the communications team within Private Client.

For all of us business managers, we need to critically look at the talents within our area of influence.  What are the true “talents” of the individuals that you work for, work with, and work for you?  How many of these people are illuminating their talents through their current responsibilities?  How many of them are being praised, recognized for their amazing skills in the position they are in sometimes to the detriment of the greater organizational needs?

Now, back to Marc Cohn; he was once a backing pianist for Tracy Chapman.  Not a part of the band, but a backing pianist.  In 1990, a visionary at Atlantic Records discovered that Marc was not only an amazing pianist, but that his voice and piano created a melodic genius.  Marc Cohn would have had an amazing and successful career as a pianist; after all he had substantial skill.  But Marc Cohn through his immense talents reincarnated the genre of pianist/singers rivaled only by musical geniuses of Billy Joel and Elton John.  His skills as a pianist were what I suppose got him the job with Tracy Chapman; but it was his talents that made him a musical icon.