Most major corporations realised long ago that implementing a successful business strategy requires an equally strong talent strategy. The legal industry, which has long understood the value of business strategy, is learning from the corporate world and recognising that the two strategies must be intertwined. After all, we're in the talent business, so a law firm without a talent strategy is like an asset manager without an investment plan.

What's the difference between a business strategy and a talent strategy? A business strategy lays out organisational goals in business performance terms; a well-designed talent strategy finds and develops the right people who can do that work and actually achieve those goals within an organisational structure.

While it might seem like a burdensome task to design and implement an integrated talent strategy, there are six key tenets that can pave the path to having the right people in the right place at the right time.

By thinking through each of these tenets and acting on them in a considered and specific way, an organisation can create a sturdy ecosystem, built on business goals and fundamental values, to attract, retain and nurture the right talent.

1. Have a Clear Business Model – and Make Sure Everyone Understands It

It all starts with clarity on the business model – this is critical and not to be taken for granted. Any successful talent strategy has to be based on everyone fully understanding how the business works.

At New York Life, for example, a branded version of The Game of Life board game was created specifically as a training tool. The Game of New York Life was used to teach the life insurance business model in a way that engaged people and that they could internalise.

Once the business model is clear, there can be honest conversations about what kind of talent is needed to make that model generate revenue. In the legal industry, a firm that does corporate work for multinational financial institutions is going to have different talent needs at all levels than one that works with Hollywood studios on media distribution deals. And when the firm's leadership has detailed clarity on the model, it's suddenly more straightforward to identify the necessary talent.

2. Identify Your Core Values and Principles

Most large businesses have a strong set of core values that are central to their identities and how they operate. But everyone has to be sure that they know what those values are, how to articulate them, and how to communicate them consistently.

When people come to your organisation to have a career, they need to connect to your core values and principles – and they can't do that if you don't spell out those principles plainly and clearly. Who you attract, how you develop your people, how you retain them, how you promote them – all of that is an expression of core values and principles.

Law firms are in an especially good position on this tenet because in a partnership-led enterprise, values are naturally connected to the philosophy of the leadership, and there's an inherent desire to stay true to that philosophy. Successful law firms are able to convey this throughout the full arc of a lawyer's career, using values-driven professional development rather than just communicating these ideals during recruitment and onboarding.

For global firms, this tenet can be a particularly strong advantage. A global employment brand will help protect the firm from drifting away from its core values and principles, and talent will respond positively to a working environment driven by clear, consistent values.

3. Articulate Your Value Proposition

What is the employment experience like at your organisation? What is your promise? Sometimes an organisation's value proposition is the same as the business model, but often the external brand is different from the organisational and employment brand. A good talent strategy needs to articulate those differences and what it means for people in the organisation.

Many global corporations offer distinct employment value propositions by providing individuals with a variety of career paths within the organisational structure. They understand that talented people are their best assets – once they attract talent, they don't want to let them go, so they see tremendous value in helping them find new roles with the company. A person may start in IT and end up in marketing, and that's a deliberate dimension of the value proposition.

Law firms need to have a similar approach to retaining talent. With the prospect of reaching the senior ranks in many firms slim, though, and with many lawyers choosing to take their skills to other industries, the value offered to law students and lateral hires must be something else that's relevant to them, which is a combination of career management and career development.

Lawyers who are given the opportunity to develop career management skills can be less driven by milestones and titles, because they're thinking about their long-term goals and their overall careers along the way. Through the experiences they have at the firm, through the training and mentoring they receive, and by leveraging the firm's platform and resources, they can find opportunities, within or outside the firm, that align with their goals and how they see themselves as lawyers – and as people.

If the value proposition makes clear that there are different paths available, organisations can attract talented people who want to do great work because they see benefits for themselves and their careers in doing so.

This tenet is also a critical component of a talent strategy for law firms with offices in multiple countries. A global value proposition sets the stage for differentiating the firm from a broad range of local or domestic law firms that they compete with for talent, and the opportunity for global experience and exposure to projects in multiple cultures is often a strong point of differentiation.

4. Develop Success Profiles

An effective talent strategy has to include clarity around what success looks like. The corporate world does this exceptionally well – they have it down to a science. For any given position, they know how productive an individual should be, what the quality of work should be, and what skills are needed.

This is a success profile, and that kind of clarity allows companies to build a framework around talent to help ensure they achieve their potential in the roles.

For example, at New York Life, success profiles are used to detail what an actuary's capabilities look like at every stage of the career path. They use this benchmark to foster a clear set of expectations for actuarial students and to inform training and promotion processes.

At a law firm, having defined success profiles translates to an ability to assess the potential of a prospective law student, and to know very specifically what success means at different stages in the firm's talent ecosystem and advancement cycle. This doesn't have to feel like a cookie-cutter approach to talent management when used in a developmental context and not only in an evaluative context. When an organisation can combine those profiles with data about the people who do and don't meet expectations, they can start evaluating talent based on evolving qualities like learning agility, EQ and even ambition.

Developing success profiles backed up with data is absolutely core to a talent strategy and the related recruiting or development infrastructure.

5. Build a Development Infrastructure

Once  an organisation has attracted the right talent, a carefully built infrastructure is needed to manage their development throughout the full lifecycle of their employment experience. That infrastructure is composed of four main blocks:

On-the-job scaffolding: The onboarding process and initial training create a scaffolding around talent that helps them thrive and do their best work. It's both general things like understanding the firm's dos and don'ts, and more specific preparation to get new hires ready to start working.

Formal training: Most industries have specific requirements and therefore train new people on the things they need to be successful from the start. Law firms generally do this very well in the form of skill-building training. At Cleary, for instance, an intensive miniMBA course trains new associates on core business skills that they'll use immediately on client matters.

Mentoring: This is the less-formal side of training – learning the unspoken rules of an organisation, helping to read between the lines, and having someone act as an on-the-job instructor. More senior people need to understand how important it is to decode the life and work of the firm for junior colleagues.

Feedback: A strong talent strategy understands feedback as a two-way process. New team members need feedback that is constructive, timely and delivered in a supportive environment; senior team members and leadership need to get unvarnished upward feedback that allows them to course-correct quickly and effectively.

This tenet can create challenges for firms with a global footprint. The more global the firm, the more challenging (and costly) it becomes to execute on some of these elements, due to the need for professional staff in more locations. But strong development infrastructure is a way for those same global firms to limit the systemic effects of unconscious bias on talent assessment and promotion decisions.

6. Construct Solid Talent Processes

Process is where all of the tenets of a talent strategy come together. How are interviews conducted? Are they in a group or one on one, and are standardised questions used or is it a free-flowing conversation? Is the feedback in annual reviews clear and actionable? And is having an annual process maybe not enough? Does the review directly tie into compensation? And if so, is it clear how?

Don't underestimate any aspect of the design of these processes – every member of the firm at every level of seniority will feel the effects of good and bad processes. Well-structured processes will both express the culture of your firm and lead to results that make the firm in general and each individual lawyer successful.

Law firms, along with sectors like finance and high tech, are in an industry-wide war for talent. If firms aren't lining up a talent strategy, they're already losing the war, and the best recruits will be hired, developed, and deployed by their competitors. Luckily, most firms already have a combination of intellectual firepower, rich experience and technical knowhow that can be used to build and execute a coherent and successful talent strategy.

Hy Pomerance leads all aspects of Cleary Gottlieb's global legal and professional talent and human resources function, including diversity and inclusion, recruiting, and professional development. Before joining the firm as chief talent officer in 2018, Hy held c-suite talent management positions at several Fortune 500 companies, including New York Life, UBS Financial Services, and QBE Insurance Ltd.