Doug Baillie, Chief Human Resources Officer at Unilever gave an inspiring and entirely practical talk about this at our Talent Management Summit earlier this year. A triumph of common sense with directly applicable lessons – even though most people might think that they have nothing in common with someone who’s leading the HR strategy at an 8bn dollar turnover company.

Two points in particular struck me: first, the need to focus on emerging markets, whoever you are. Economic power is shifting to the developing world.  Two billion people will enter the workforce over the next 40 years and they will mostly be in developing markets. This has massive implications for lots of companies both in terms of business opportunities and when you’re looking at future talent.

Second: ensuring that you’re an attractive place to work and marketing yourself well to the right employees; and that you’re getting the best out of your current employees and developing them properly.

Making sure that you’ve got the right talent in place to implement your strategy, and how you do that, rather than set the strategy and then play catch up trying to get your people in place was a simple and powerful message, amplified by down-to earth delivery.