There is a big difference between having a talent – for instance, being able to balance a spoon on the end of your nose while tap dancing – and being considered “Talent”.

Marcus Powell, the head of talent management at Ash-ridge Consulting, says: “The definition [of talent] is quite contextual. A ballerina might be talented in the area of dance but put her down a coal-mine [and] she might be hopeless. One is only considered talented within a set context.

“Every organisation has its own definition. For some it is considered something that everyone has, for others talent resides in just a select few.”

Jo Causon, director of marketing at the Chartered Management Institute, says that recognising a talented few doesn’t mean abandoning the masses. “There’s a big difference between performance management and talent management. Performance management is about setting objectives and developing people in their roles to deliver against those objectives. Talent management is about identifying the high-flyers that the organisation needs to deliver its long-term strategies.”

She says it is important that companies are transparent when segmenting people and also make it clear that those not in the talent pool are still important and will still be helped to develop.

Talent management systems vary depending on companies’ people and culture. The important thing is that everyone has one. Research indicates that the top companies are those that put talent management high on the agenda. Companies that invest in succession planning – a key element of talent management – tend to fare better for shareholders; a fact that is not lost on big companies such as BT. Jenny French, a talent manager at the company, says that between 2 per cent and 3 per cent of its managers are recruited into the company-wide talent pool. Membership is reviewed annually with performance measured against published key performance and potential measures.

“The talent are the people who are our role models – we firmly believe if we put extra investment in their development that these are the people who are going to help us to deliver to our customers in future.”

Once in the BT talent pool people have to agree to invest in their own development and to help others, by mentoring for instance; in return they get additional career development and coaching. But people do drop out or leave the talent pool. This isn’t always linked to performance – sometimes people choose to, French says.

“Not everyone wants to be tomorrow’s CEO,” Causon says. “Some young talented people don’t necessarily want to be part of the system.” It is not just young people who may eschew attempts to have their talent managed. In a paper soon to be published, Powell says that so-called clever employees – creative innovative types – “can be disrespectful of hierarchy and scornful of being controlled”. Organisations need to take a flexible approach which takes into account their idiosyncracies.

But the one thing they can’t afford to do is ignore them. “In the next 20 years we are going to see a massive shortage of people. We will have a knowledge gap as the baby boomers retire and there aren’t people enough to replace them. So unless you have a strategy to get and develop the best people you are sunk,” he says.

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