4.1.1. Potential, a capacity for expansion

The classical meaning of talent is the visible “beauty”, whereas intelligence is the intelligible “beauty”. Both are conceptual twins. Potential, in the Western ontological field, is a “promise” made to Being, of which the concept of autos-kratos (the all-powerful spirit on the world) is implied. Having (high) potential induces this social promise: the individual has potential (so they can do “everything”). Now, what does the reality of the company show us when the person is associated – like talent – with a status (identity): high potential (HighPot). They enter an ascending “corridor” of “skills”, whose expected plan (eidos), organized in the talent management process, is to, one day, allow them to occupy “key” functions. However, such a “plan” is often undermined on both sides. Indeed, what the plan does not foresee are fluctuations in reality. Being HighPot at 35 can seem rewarding. It can even flatter the ego (the idea that you make yourself and that you express your “power”), in effect “being of high potential”, that is, being identified (or classified) as superior to others (regardless of the frame of reference) and possessing rare and remarkable skills, amalgams a possible specific operative reality and an unavailable potential, because it is projected by others on the future of the latter. Thus comes the critical age of 42/44 years. The HighPot, having not “proved” that they could occupy a “worthy” position of their status, becomes the cause and the person responsible for this “failure”. It is indeed necessary to find a “person at fault”, that is, to find-justify the “reason” why it did not work. As soon as the “high potential” has not succeeded – where it was expected – as identified “above” and holder of “remarkable talents”, then it could have only come from “them”. In this case, we either try to “save” them through coaching, or we believe that the investment is sufficient (and therefore not profitable). The HighPot is guilty-responsible. People say: “he didn’t know how to do the right thing (didn’t know how to ‘be’, ‘do’, ‘say’). He was not able to seize the opportunities offered (poor kairologist: unable to seize the good moments). The plans changed, he was/is no longer the right profile, etc.”. What does this daily reality say, except that the company – its operators – amalgamates potential, skills, abilities, identity, status and qualities (personality)?

Now, from a “market” point of view, this HighPot becomes a potential to be “monitored” and detected. Isn’t that what the headhunter does – search and identify the person – the potential – who could be useful to the company? The person is associated with a force, an effective support (che) which is appropriate to direct to our advantage. Another possibility, the most “negative” one, related to the idea that this person “makes” themself: “I had potential, I failed, they ‘destroyed’ me, I’m worthless, etc.”. The prediction offered by the ancient allegory is confirmed: the master offered the individual “talents” but they failed to make them flourish. All they have left is “hell” and a need to “work on themself ” in order to understand what their “problem” seems to be and how to “get out” of their situation.

NOTE.– The potential is not “in/within” the person, but a capacity of expansion (shen), of active availability (although discrete/efficient) on which it is recommended to rely on, in order to allow skills to unfold, such as surfing, embracing the wave (the potential) so as to make the extent of one’s “talent” visible – observable-assessable – that is, the correlation and combinations between a person’s natural operating modes and the reality in progress: the wave surge.

It is not (therefore) intelligence or talent that should be detected first, but potential. In order to actualize the talents, it is advisable not to arouse an expectation elaborated in promise(s) (untenable), which fixed to the mind of the person, ended by (them) obstructing the potentials where their faculties-capabilities could find possible updates.

4.1.2. Talent without potential has no “chance” of actualizing itself

Chinese thinking can lead us to understand the principle that a talent without potential has little “chance” to be actualized. The scholar Wang Chong was interested in the question of fate regarding a person’s success. It is not the kind of fate that the West thinks of (referring to a road already plotted by a “higher force”), but potential (shi 時). Thus, “human nature”, otherwise called the “natural temperament” (xing 性), is what needs to be worked on and trained in order to embrace reality (fate): “xing is therefore this natural, perfectible and properly human disposition that allows people to face their destiny” [WAN 11, LXXIX]. Whoever deviates from the tendency (of fate) is condemned to fail:

“When a good person takes action in a period of growth, everything is good for them and people see that success as a clear sign of their ability; but if their action coincides with a period of decline, the setbacks accumulate and the same good souls are quick to pay them off for stupidity. Here too, there is a total ignorance of the hazards of fortune and the versatility of destiny” (Wang, Treaty 3, 3.8).

The latter specifies by saying:

“Some people cannot exercise their talents when they are intelligent and resourceful, or they can, but they exhaust themselves and get nowhere. Even if they were as wise and skillful as a Confucius, they will never know glory. […] In reality, honors and riches come from fortune and destiny, they do not depend on our own qualities. So I would say that prosperity is no more about business than talent is about a successful career” (Wang, Treaty 3, 3.6).

Thus, it is advisable to “submit” (if one wants to succeed) to Heaven’s command (ming 命), that is, the favorable order (the favorable tendency) that one must embrace and follow in order to benefit from its “protection” (yong ming, 永命) “forever”. We could “translate” through simple images: whoever goes along the coast will reach a port sooner or later (but whoever leaves on the high seas without knowledge plays with the vagaries of the ocean); whoever looks at the road does not leave (but whoever texts on their phone risks the ditch); and whoever follows the high mountain guide in their footsteps arrives safely (but whoever goes off-road is playing with their life). In the company, this would mean: whoever wants to deploy themself by actualizing potential makes a fortune (but whoever diversifies by deviating from the trend and potential risks bankruptcy). The potential (shi) implies non-acting (wuwei 無為), in other words, knowing how to do nothing more (but) so that nothing is not done, while knowing how to operate and slow down, or even “stop”, so as not to force the “situation” (and thus deviate from it), nor to anticipate it (and thus be too early). It will be necessary to preserve this notion – becoming competent – when we discuss, not the “management of talents”, but the “potential of talents”, that is, the constant availability to potentials that are necessary for the actualization of “talents”.

4.1.3. Potential, an effective support

In the West, the word potential (potentialis, 1828) refers not only to the principle of “power”, but also to the sum of forces for a system to become active (1869). At this stage, it is easy to understand why the amalgam with the “self” has taken place; indeed, “strength” and “power” amalgamate and refer to kratos, which, as we have seen, allows the mind (nous) to “create” autonomously, and all this, thanks to “intelligence”. Hence, the entirety of managerial literature, leadership, personal development, coaching evokes human capacities to develop “their potential”, the latter is thought of as an element of “personality” and a category of “aptitude”, “gift”, “intelligence(s)”. This organization is a categorical error, because the potential is neither in the “skills” category nor in the “personality” category. Reading that “we have potential” is omnipresent in the company’s routine. This “truth” is placed in the forefront of everyone’s minds, because it would not come to anyone’s mind to think that it is not “true”.

Many tools “promise” to help develop people’s potential, while potential is not intrinsic, but extrinsic, that is, it operates-unfolds “outside” the person. This is certainly the most widespread ideology in the West: “develop your potential with this, with that; you have potential! You have everything in you”. One day, a friend of mine asked if we could be a leader without potential. We asked him if Churchill could have “been” what he was without the wars and politics he went through and was around. Churchill deployed from an early age, a combination of natural operating modes, then trained them so that each of them became a sum of sharpened competencies (Intentional Operating Modes). We will come back to this. Then we talked about Mandela. Would he have been the remarkable strategic leader we know without the apartheid? Would he have been if he had not evolved in a specific geo-cultural configuration in his childhood? Would Steve Jobs be the Jobs we know without the potential from Robert Friedland or the meeting of Steve Wozniak, to name just this potential? What about the potential obtainable by Gabrielle Chanel’s scrutinizing attention, known as “Coco”, which is said to be opportunistic (kairos, discerning the right moment), in other words, not only does it include the capacity to “seize” the resource that potential offers, but also the ability to spy all deviations (dokeúein) in order to find the most efficient path for the expected result?

There is fantasy (fantasia) about “influential people” that is, there is social and conceptual imagination placed on operating modes. There are “influential people” only because the configurations (shi-wei), the potential (shi/che) and the utility favorable to their skills are united, so that the social, in this actualization, perceives the “Great”. The fate (ming 命) of a company or a person depends on the potential (shi 時). The mission of a leader (strategist) is to see to it that he or she embraces the “signs” (weak signals, trends, availabilities, etc.). We will see soon enough what these “talents” imply in terms of operating skills.

Over the past three years (2013–2016), we have evaluated nearly 700 entrepreneurs in the innovation field. More than 60% of them proposed projects related to the digital or the use of so-called virtual resources that can be dematerialized. The digital represents “potential”, in other words, the effective support (shi/che) necessary so that its development can grow. But the digital thrives because there are powerful wireless computer networks: 4G (multimedia in HD and live), Wi-Fi and other possible competitors (Li-fi, HiperLAN, etc.). Without this potential, almost all of the fortunes made through the Internet would not exist. Google, for example, only exists because there is effective support.

Twenty years ago, almost all of the projects would have had no “outlet”, simply because the digital (and what it implies as a support-carrier) did not portray the same potential. Potential (therefore) only happens because there is a physicality to actualize, that is, a reality to make available, effective and operational.

Our research on the issue of the actualization of potential, for which the study of Chinese thinking relating to the notion of “potential” finds a possible proximity with the Western definition of 1869, shows that potential cannot be associated with an “object” that a person would possess. Indeed, “Chinese” potential refers to an effective support (shi/che), forces in progress, from which an activity, a situation, can deploy – a situation potential – where the Western definition implies a sum of forces necessary for a system to become active. The term sum and not whole is important, because these forces are plural without having some equivalences in terms of proximity. Chinese writing traces sum with the character 并 (bing), thus designating the result of an operation. Hence, summing ducks and wild geese is the same thing as summing concave and convex tiles, says Liu Hui. Summing is (therefore) not adding (competency + talent ≠ performance).

There is potential because there is growth (heng) available, a force – actualizing energy – with the ability to actualize, that is, the ability to become active, or even, from which the physical can occur. Thus, potential can lead to propensity (an increase) when it is made to grow or when current forces participate in it. In a company, a person can become the “potential” of another, the announcement of not only a farewell, but also a new project, a market trend leading the company to exploit “potential” (or not), are such simple examples from which “talents” (MO.O.N. ) will be able to be activated by necessity and utility.

NOTE.– The offshore storm is fading, but its effects will reach the Breton coast in 48 hours. The incoming swell will bring joy to the surfers who, through experience, will have known how to anticipate (prodaneai, skilful at predicting changes in the weather and kairos, anticipates opportunity by knowledge) and how to conject (eikázein, conjecture, guess, gets the most accurate of ideas on the most extended perspectives) the forces whose sum will make it possible to take maximum advantage of them.

4.1.4. Actualization of potential: from latent to active

Developing/actualizing talent implies that there is favorable potential and that this potential is “perceived” by the operators of the company, so that the skills expected by the said “talents” are able to rely on them, in order to be brought to their full effect.

Let us explore an ancient Confucian story. This legend, narrated by Tchouang-Tseu, tells us that while he walked near a river with bubbling and dangerous waters coming from the falls of Lü-Leang, Confucius saw an old man swimming there. Convinced that the man was trying to commit suicide, he asked his disciples to help him. Keep in mind that the Lü-Leang Falls are about 30 toises high, about 54 meters high. The power generated by it caused swirls and bubbles of foam such that no animal or fish could live in. Yet the man came out of it quietly, then he began to walk along the bank singing. Confucius, intrigued by the latter, approached him and said: “I almost thought you were a ghost, but I notice that you were a man. What method allows you to swim like that?”. To this, the man answered: “I was born in these hills, and I felt at home there: here is the given. I grew up in the water and gradually felt at ease: this is what’s natural. I don’t know why I do what I do: that’s the necessity. I go down with the swirls and up with the whirls. I obey the movement of water, not my own will. That’s how I can swim so easily in the water”.

The old swimmer does not evoke any (formal) method, but an actualized experience, expressed by three notions: given (kou), nature-spontaneity (sing) and necessity (ming). Thus, the given refers to the configuration – the way of things – its natural disposition, the falls, the height, the river whose swirling, moving, indeterminate, “dangerous” water participates in the physicality of the place. Born here, the man adapted to it, by necessity and by continuous impregnation, influenced by the continuous cycle of the seasons, and he grew up there (in a processual way) leading to this “nature-spontaneity” (sing). Continuous training (propensity-actualization) has made necessity (ming) “natural”, not in terms of need/obligation, but as the consequence of potential (water as a dynamic force), configuration and utility of developing a specific way of moving within it. The nature-spontaneity (sing) finds proximity with the natural temperament (xing). If one refers to a gestural-situational, the other refers to an interactive-situational, that is, the way to operate in situations where there are human interactions.

Let us continue with the image of the surfer and “actualize” the process started a few pages previously, while we were evoking the following steps: latent – primer – emerging – actualization – active.

Potential is “in us” says the ontological West (Science of Being). Potential is “the expression of a universal dynamism” [JUL 92], China calligraphies in silence, and by “in silence”, we mean it is “insipid”, that is, without flavor. For without a tendency to say “rather towards this, rather towards that”, without a taste for pronouncing, one can only appreciate it (assess, ji). The insipid (dan) thinks of itself with the principle of non-acting (wuwei); it operates apart from Being, itself in search of honor and recognition: “Worse than not having talent, is not being insipid” (Shishuo in [HE 99, p. 98].

On the one hand, always from the point of view of the being, potential is (therefore) intrinsic (in itself). On the other hand, it is extrinsic (apart from/outside itself). On the one side, it is ontological-geometric, on the other side, it is circumstantial, that is, it takes advantage of the variable, however slight (wei): “When a man alone defends a narrow mountain pass that resembles the digestive tract of a sheep or the door of a doghouse, he can stand up to a thousand soldiers. We then find ourselves in the presence of a situation created by the field”, the Sun Tzu (Zhou era) whispers to us, whose treaty never praises the great general. On the contrary, unlike Clausewitz, he explains how from the nine terrains, the general identifies, from the different configurations, the “forces” at work, the clues (wei, tiny) from which he organizes his troops, who are themselves apprehended in terms of potential and not an addition of people that should be “federated-motivated”.

4.1.5. Actualizing potential, a discreet and efficient propensity

Talent is apprehended where potential begins so that the latter, for utility, can be deployed there.

Potential refers to what propensity can grow and unfold, says Popper: “I insisted that propensities should not be viewed as properties inherent in an object, a die or a coin, for example, but as properties inherent in a situation, of which the object in question is a natural part” (1990, p. 35). The natural propensity of things (dong xi), in other words, the growth-vitality, is the necessary (ming) from which the natural (sing) can unfold by maturation-transformation (dong).

Potential, in its propensity, leads to a tendency implication that the MO.O.N. embraces without deviation. On the other hand, any gap initiated between “talents”, potential and utility, will give rise to negative effects (frustration, a drop in performance, dissolution of motivation, senescence of competencies and skills, etc.). The “right” person in the “wrong” place is often a tactical error (or a willingness to “harm”). To take a position by obligation (sustaining), when the MO.O.N.s are not useful there, will lead to tiredness and, sooner or later, a form of senescence of the “talent”, in other words, the natural “decline” of skills, not by disappearing, but by the principle that the so-called active skills will diminish (methylation) to return to the “latent” stage.

This is the real story of a human resources manager. The latter accepts the potential (an “opportunity”) offered by the executive director of a large organization. The DHR takes leave of his company, and even before he starts his new “activity”, the potential dissolves when the group’s CEO “thanks” the general manager, leading his recent decision down the same path. At the latent moment of the transition operated by the DHR, the CEO had begun his decision while his general manager, then in office, was potentiating the new function of the said DHR. The dismissal of one dissolves the potential of the other. The DHR, however competent he may have been and regardless of his competencies and skills, had “no control” over the situation. His competencies and his MO.O.N. grasped “nothing” and do not answer any “utility” in this configuration. As soon as the CEO “thanked” his DG, nothing could happen anymore (happens: there is no more activity or capacity possible). The DHR then finds himself in between positions, unable to go back – his position is active – nor “force” the decision, he can only put himself on standby, that is, scout the latent and market signals indicating the beginning of a potential “elsewhere”. At the same time, he is already beginning the useful activity of being “detected” as a potential for anyone scouting the “horizon”¹.

Thus, let us get back to our first lines, as we lay the groundwork for the following question: from where begin the forces (potential, che) from which, by necessity (ming), the natural skills (cái ju 才具 for China, talento for the West) of the person are “attracted” in order to adapt, adjust and also to orientate them to his advantage in order to solve a situation, invent a solution, take advantage of a trend, “something useful” to actualize, deploy and also, perhaps, to “create”?

Let us remember the possible definition of talent, from which we can conclude this section.

REMINDER.– Talent is the observable result, the consequence of actualizing a sum of natural (and/or/er acquired) operating modes that have been mobilized and deployed in a configuration where potential, as well as utility, have proved to be beneficial.

There is only “talent” because potential makes the activation of natural er intentional modes of operation available. The principles from which it becomes possible to “develop talent”, or should we say, to actualize its full capacity, are gradually beginning to emerge. The investigation of the issue of talent, intelligence and potential, thanks to this cultural “opposite”, allows us to apprehend a resource from which it becomes possible to leave this “statutory” hollow, in which thousands of people have been “stuck” for a decade. By replacing “talent” by natural er acquired operation mode, we remove – by categorical split – any ambiguity between the “person” as a “subject-object” (reified and ontologized) and the way in which they deploy a modus operandi sum with regard to an adapted C.U.P. (Configuration, Utility, Potential). Hence, the inherent challenge in “talent development” is to start, not with the detection of talent, but with the assessment of potential: indeed, what would a surfing competition without waves look like? A sale without prospects or customers? A “digital” demonstration without the Internet? A “leader” without a “team” to follow them? A team of developers without end users?

4.2.1. Measure: an abstract symbolic system

Measurement (mathesis) is inherent to our alphasyllabary model: abstract. There is only a measure because there is something known, two points (here–there), a causal relationship (cause–effect) involving a beginning and an end (telos). There is measure because there is decisiveness and difference, just as there is measure because there is a model (eidos) to use it.

Just like intelligence, our culture has put such certainties and “rhetorical” arguments into the necessity of “measuring” talent, giftedness and intelligence that we have come to believe that it shows a “reality”, when in fact it interprets one aspect of reality by deviating our gaze from it. One does not “look” at a measure, one “sees” it through the eyes of the mind (eye of the soul, oma tês psukhê). The principle of measurement is static, local, immediate and decisive. We measure at a “T instant”, which is the problem put forward by the question of talent. It is measured if we can stop it at a moment T. And what seems to us to be the only way to do it is to associate it with something known that we can isolate from the rest, that is, potential, process, moment-position (shi-wei) and utility. In their work on the issue of psychometrics, Huteau and Lautrey write: “In a very general sense, to measure is to attribute numbers to things” (1999, p. 74). It is necessary (therefore) to have something known (to name things and to take a measurement). Negotiation is subtle here, but it must be made visible and clear that intelligence is not assessed; “interlinked” operating modes of mnemonic skills, “meshed” of meaning, are assessed. What we call “intelligence“, “talent“ or “competency“ are only concepts and not reality (physicality). The model of measuring intelligence, talents and personality implies the commanding of people: “to measure intelligence, it is necessary to justify the existence of a continuum that at least allows individuals to be instructed” (ibidem, p. 35). This is what human resources managers tend to do, in recruitment, for example, instructing candidates and employees to give them a “preference”, a status or a ranking of best or worst. This way of thinking de facto leads to the use of the difference concept, whose active principles are the subjective, judgment, identification, specification and classification. Although we will return to this in section 4.2.2, Aristotle himself specified that in the thing measured, nothing appears outside of the measurement.

Just yesterday (July 1, 2016) – at the time we were writing this book – one of our clients asked us, “how do you measure employee involvement; how do you measure sales progress against a talent training program?” Measurement, like the word “talent”, belongs to the terms used to express the will to “quantify” an “end” (eidos), itself amalgamated with a “result”, that is, what has been actualized during a process initiated upstream. The objective (objectum) is measured where the result is assessed. One is a mental projection (ob, which stops), the other is an observable reality.

Measurement – in the Humanities and Social Sciences – is still largely combined with the verbs “be”, “do” and “say”. It thus implicitly refers, as we have discussed above, to the verb “knowledge”. As soon as “I” “have” it, then “I” can “be” quantified. If “I” can “know” what “it is”, then “I” can “measure” it. The measure cuts, as one cuts a chart into parts, just like one cuts the brain into “lobes” in order to explain its principles. We realize – in the end – that the background of thinking mentioned above remains identical: rational-Cartesian (logos-logismos). This is perhaps one of the problems found in the branches of professional activities, whose desire to “rationalize” their activity into “knowledge” and “skills” have ended up losing the ability (in part) to assess (and name), through observation, the operating methods from which these professions derive. Is this, perhaps, not also the direct consequence of this Platonic coup, which by transformations of old notions such as the technê (metis/kairos) in a straight and fixed line (logos/mathesis), or the road (hodos) from which the traveler (the homo-viator: who is formed by and in the journey) learns from his experiences, thus acquiring from the method (methodos), in “method of discourse by right and fixed opinion” (the way in which one should think “things”), that this thought imposes, for the two millennia to come, an abstract “logic” of competency, talent, intelligence and potential. This thought arrogates the right to know for the person, by thus evacuating the principle of knowledge linked to human experience (self-taught). By imposing its semantics and ideas, this arrogant (arrogare) thought has woven an obstructive mental barrier between the human and the world, by arrogating, through a negotiated epistemology and an immoderate use of measure, an almost total power over Being.

The DHRs with whom we collaborate are often frustrated and powerless in front of these binders of several hundred compulsory (and useless) pages, with which they are unable to provide practical observation and assessment material to professionals in the field. The technê of antiquity, both metis et kairos, or could we now say metis er² kairos, is replaced by tables of case words whose signifiers do not mean anything (anymore).

4.2.2. Assessment: an appreciative competency of reality

“In the thing measured, nothing appears outside the measure” [ARI 02].

The assessment is incorrectly amalgamated with measurement because of this historical negotiation that would “complete” the etymological evolution of the late 19th Century (1870). If the assessment referred not only to the principle of appreciating a quality, chance (virtu), but also to fix approximately, legacy of the fugitive measure (oligókairos) of the Greek metis, it becomes, at this period, the way one determines (a quantity) by calculation. This “negotiation” opened the door to the tests that made their appearance during the 19th Century. The assessment is reliable (stocházesthtai metrou tinos), but not “perfect” like measuring. Its principle is dynamic, that is, it implies progression, adjustment, speed, position, learning, etc. When the assessment is amalgamated with the measurement, the “risk” of differentiation (sterile comparison and judgment) is convened. The useful principle of assessment is to draw the positive lessons from an observed and appreciated progress and situation.

Assessing aims to compare, not through the use of an intelligible knowledge filter, but through the ability to match (the term itself derives from comparere) by gap assessment. Matching then makes it possible to conjecture, that is, to superimpose experiential knowledge on a situation in progress, in order to appreciate its difference. The surfer assesses the dark line in the distance and can, by conjecture, apprehend where to stand in order to ride the wave before it is determined. The sedentary salesperson assesses the path taken by the prospect, the careful observation of their movements, their rhythms, the expressions on their face, the product that holds their attention, and then, by correlation, they extrapolates their intention to buy. Plants assess light in order to organize their leaves in an optimal manner (optimal phyllotaxis).

Assessment involves taking action, whereas measure can be content with observation, such as this personality test that offers 45 pages of analysis of the person concerned from a 30-minute test. The person “reads” who they “are”, their strengths and weaknesses, but they do not know how they operate or how they can be deployed. The fundamental principle of assessment is then to favor a path to action, whether effective (local, immediate) and/or efficient (process over time). The development of talent is inherent in this use of assessment, and not a use diverted by measurement in order to classify people according to often inappropriate and reductive standards. Indeed, as we have seen, as soon as a person is fully available (subject–object), it becomes possible to “quantify” what is known of the subject (analyzed), which then favors the measurement of what is known: this person is 15% an introvert, X% of the population of managers are talents, etc. It appears to us that on this slope, during this time, that Binet responded to the order of the Bourgois Commission (1904): how do you “assess” debility?

Measurement implicitly implies a standard (thus, the high probability of a Gauss curve). So many people of such origins are “talented”. Isn’t it annoying that a person ends up identifying with a number (their IQ, EQ or any other test that results in a figure, number or letter) or a sum of letters, thinking that they “are” one or the other?

Assessment is amalgamated with measurement, because it no longer trusts the forms of the viewed and the appreciation of gaps. It prefers the “view” of the “figure”, because it does not suffer from “discussion”: measurement reassures by its “order”, whereas assessment concerns by its “approximation” (and thus, perhaps, its possible “subjectivity”). However, there is as much subjectivity in measure as there might be in assessment, because it is the intention and use of the professional that makes the measure or assessment itself “subjective”. Tea in its natural state has no opinion about itself. It is necessary to have something known, then an opinion to declare it “good”, “better”, “best” or “bad”.

Talent assessment involves principles that are not measured. We would even say that measurement has little use in assessment, other than to limit it to an abstraction of thought. It is necessary to retrieve-develop the competency of what’s “viewed”, in other words, to develop and train the sum of the forms of the viewed useful for the said assessment. One of the first questions to ask when assessing “talent” is: what do we want to look at so that we can assess it? From where do we look, close, far, high? What is the reference principle, that is, what serves as a reference point, and who situates the gaze and its position? What is the intention (what tends towards by will or by intensity)? What is the expected result, in other words, what is desired in the short/medium/long term? What is the operating principle, that is, what is the sum of skills-abilities deployed in order to actualize a result?

4.2.3. Assessment of MO.O.N.s: observation and correlation of the “forms of the viewed”

The assessment of MO.O.N.s is procedural. It implies a temporality as much as a broader spatiality than a local and “spoken” (declarative) activity. It also implies, in most cases, an activity that can take place outside the direct action of the person after he or she has initiated it (non-action, do nothing, but so that nothing is not done). Hence, the assessment of talents (competencies) involves both the observation of the person involved, and that of people, when this influences the actualized result. Assessment is a matter of correlation(s), that is, this implying that or this implying a relationship with that; thus, it is appropriate to agree from where (which position(s)) talent is (are) viewed-appreciated, as well as where (moment) the form of the viewed begins.

Where does the gaze begin in order to assess this talent? Where do you start looking to recruit? On Facebook? In a lobby? In a subway? In a restaurant to observe how a future salesman, a financial manager, a manager or a human resources manager addresses the waiter? Thus, appreciating (wei) how he/she behaves, how his/her interactions indicate a favorable or unfavorable trend in “relationships”, resulting in “tightness-tension” in his/her future activities? There is a Chinese saying: “If you want to know a person, look at them when they think you are no longer looking at them”. Is this not assessment; looking at two situations in order to apprehend their consistencies without the appraised knowing it – then letting their nature unfold.

Thus, the competencies relating to the “forms of the viewed” are precise, such as the view with attention (guan) and the view in a concentrated way (ding shi), but also the safety of the glance (eustochia), which implies that the expected result is deeply anchored in the mind (agchinoia); not by the analytical mind activated by reason (logos), but the mind available to reality and the trend, led by an appreciative view of nuances (wei). It is a mind fecundated by the perceptive. It is necessary to understand perceptive by what is, on the one hand, offered in a global way to the perception of the assessor-developer-updater of talent(s), and on the other hand, their ability to apprehend in the tough – the procedural – the sum of indices to correlate, combine and detect in reality and all this, away from any subjectivity (I think, I believe, I know, I interpret). This specific skill could be imaged by the vision that we would have in place of a caracal advancing, sneaking, slipping, leaping, rolling, twisting itself on the ground and in the air while maintaining its “fixed” gaze on the prey to seize. This is perceptivity we are talking about. A perception-appreciation, whose result is “anchored” in the mind, and for which, the sum of indices and dynamics in progress is correlated so that the appreciation is “right”, not in what the word might imply in terms of morality (good, well-being, beautiful, perfect, measurable, etc.), but in what it implies in terms of precision of observation – without deviation between the reference principle and the operating principle.

This perception which assesses-analyzes (ji, li) reality without deviating from it is the one with the capacity to emulate it³ at the same time, that is, to explore its potential and virtue while adjusting its own movement in order to actualize the result. It is – at the risk of insisting – a perceptive which does not fix itself on a point, but which seizes-captures-memorizes a sum of movements and words (sounds) without stopping one of them in order to understand their meaning, which would lead to the pure and simple halt of the perceptive to enter into the intelligible – and consequently into knowledge. Perceiving without fixing or stopping the movement (dynamic-verbal) is a key aspect of assessment.

The assessment of “talents” can then be defined, in professional terms, as the intentional behavior (competencies) by which it observes-specifies a reference principle (which serves as a reference, which situates) from which it organizes-observes-analyzes (li) the sum of the acts, activities, and non-acts (wuwei) of a person or a group of people. This sum is what leads to what are known as favorable activities. These activities are organized and deployed through skills-abilities (MO.O.N.). The professional positions themself (san yuan: the types of distant) according to the configuration, the potential and the utility relative to what is assessed.

A few days ago, we assessed the “talents” of a financial director. He sat down and turned to two people behind him to ask them a question. During this fleeting movement (backward rotation), we saw his gaze turn away in less than a second from the two people, who in the same space–time had – in a synchronized manner – begun a short action (of less than 3 seconds). This person then said, “they are not available to me”, when in fact the people were already preparing on their side. If the person had carefully observed the movements of the latter (one taking her notebook, the other finishing screwing a small camera on a stand), he would have deciphered that what he interpreted at that “moment” (seen, but not observed) as a non-interest was in fact a simple adjustment on their part. When 20 minutes later, the person appealed his skills of empathy and attention to others, the gap between this moment (“seized” by our glance) and the declarative one (stated by the idea that he has of himself) allowed us to assess-appreciate the reality of his skill related to subject⁴.

When Rudy Duran, Tiger Wood’s first coach (between the ages of 4 to 10) took care of this young “prodigy”, he came with his reference models: a swing corresponds to a formula. Once you own it, you can swing. But with Tiger, he said:

“It was amazing to watch him play and I have a lot of memories on the pitch as he was hitting. He was maybe there or on the side, and he would hit the ball and it wasn’t an easy shot. And his shot was incredible and I would say, ‘Did anyone see this? It’s incredible.’ Of course, we were the only ones there. So we moved on, he could hit 10 perfect shots in a row. It was incredible to see. I’d never seen anything like it. Before working with Tiger, I thought golf was like a formula, once it was perfect, you could always hit it right. But it never happened. With Tiger, I saw how a five-year-old could play perfectly without knowing anything about swinging. It was therefore obvious that there was no intellectual formula for striking good shots. It was a natural ability. And with that natural ability, that’s what Tiger did and what I did as a coach: we tried to help him develop those natural skills.”

Tiger Woods is a careful observer, an index-based scrutineer. It has been said that “he noticed things that were not being noticed” [STR 98, p. 98].

The same is true for Eric Alard, coach of the Swiss Olympic bobsleigh team (silver medal at the Olympic Games in Sochi). The latter explains the role of observation and looking at other competitors: the “good” as well as the “bad”. Indeed, it is also important to look at why the “bad” do not succeed – in order to anticipate the same mistakes – as those who succeed – in order to apprehend their modus operandi. He tells us what he observes: their behavior when they eat, when they prepare their equipment, when they sleep, how they react to a situation, what reaction they have according to the moment (the time achieved). It highlights the observation and correlation between attitudes and not only external elements (snow, rain, wind), but also intangible elements (favorable and unfavorable morale trends depending on the weather, a descent, a personal event, etc.). Alard insists on the time taken to recognize the track (drómos) every day on foot, to apprehend the height of ice in the key turns, the observable changes of the latter (however slight). He stresses the importance of describing reality, and also how such behavior changes according to an external condition. This is why the timing of the observation is crucial: from the middle of the runway, from the edge of a bend, but also from the assignment of the observation, in other words, the skill that lets others look from where it cannot be (because they are somewhere else). In these forms of the viewed, we find some specific abilities that can be found in the metis, such as the fugitive measure (oligokairos), the safety of the glance (eustochia), the description of reality (dang), the raising of the head (yang) or the good lookout (eúskopos).

4.2.4. C.U.P. theory: principle of assessment and the actualization of potential

Study and experience have led us to theorize what we believe to be favorable conditions for observation, assessment, recruitment and the “development” of the skills and competencies of individuals and teams. C.U.P. theory allows us to understand the conditions of what we commonly call performance. The origin of the word is English. It dates from the end of the 15th Century and means “accomplishment, achievement, real results”. To avoid any ambiguity with classic “definitions”, this is not a matter of objective (which is projected by the mind and therefore limited by the latter), but of consequence (what it stems from). Hence, performance cannot be decreed as an objective to be “achieved”; it can only be observed, and an attempt can be made to try – as much as possible – to promote its favorable conditions. Performance is then part of a process of actualization and not just the addition of measurable parameters.

The (appreciative) assessment and related competencies can flow from this observation. We have seen a constant in the principle of talent actualization, but also in performance. Then, strengthened by our work in Sino-Western studies, we accumulated indicators aimed at theorizing the conditions of actualization. We call it “C.U.P. theory”. There are three conditions: configuration, utility and potential. Without configuration or potential, there is no reason for a MO.O.N. to appear, in the same way that without utility, like a cat, the MO.O.N. has no reason to initiate an operative process, and consequently to deploy. Without the space–duration pair (shi-wei, time-position), the maturation necessary for “talent” cannot unfold. Without potential (che), that is, without active forces, talent cannot be deployed either, and to this principle, no one, to our knowledge, can escape it. Lastly, utility is the attractor, or we could say, the polarizer without which the operating principle inherent in talent (the component-heart) would not activate. Let us specify that utility is not a necessity, because if the former responds to an extrinsic principle (towards “reality”), the latter responds to an intrinsic principle (towards the “self”). Utility produces a result, itself the consequence of a process of updating from latent (available, not visible) to unambiguous (available, visible).

Although we will come back to this later, C.U.P. theory is useful for what we call “talent development”, a term we prefer to “talent management”. Indeed, the term management (gestio, to make, execution) is a legal term which designates the action of managing the affairs of others, but also one’s own. We manage the immaterial and the stocks, the first principle of which is LIFO–FIFO (Last In, First Out–First In, First Out). We assume the standpoint that this model of thinking can serve neither the performance nor the strategic potential of an organization. Believing it is an illusion of the mind carried by concepts of “management” based on a quantitative and metric (forecast) principle, and whose reliability is just as assured as the weather 12 days away can be. As a matter of fact, the person using measurement in talent management should keep in mind, even print it as a poster in their office: “In the thing measured, nothing appears outside the measure” [ARI 02]. Once the measurement is made, we only see the measurement and no longer the observable reality of the person’s or team’s operating capacities. We propose several forms of questions to exploit this theory. These questions aim to grasp an ongoing reality and to move away from the often inappropriate “personality” model relating to the issue of performance, regardless of its nature:

• – Configuration: does our company have, or does it offer, a favorable configuration for the skills-abilities of the person sought? Are we in the moment to do it? Is the geographical-physical position adequate?
• – Potential: does our company have, or does it mobilize, potential (positive forces in line with strategy)? Does the manager with whom the person – whose talents are useful – is going to work with offer positive potential (allows autonomy, knows how to assess, embraces trends, remains pragmatic, deploys an empathic aptitude, etc.) or negative potential (locked into procedures, fixed to their ideas, imposture complex, etc.); is the new tactical orientation compatible with the utility of competencies and the desired MO.O.N.s?
• – Utility: does our company offer an activity whose result is considered as useful, in other words, favoring an enlarged/superior result than the existing one; which is commonly called creativity (actualization of novelties by correlation of seemingly separate universes)? In other words, has our recruitment process assessed the propensity inherent in what the so-called useful result will produce?

Our participation in several dozen recruitments, either in office, or in a company, has shown that the observed professionals remain focused on the CV, and consequently on the “declaratory”. It is rare for them to be able to (competently) assess real aptitudes (skills-abilities). We specify that we do not make a generality of these observations. Table 4.3 summarizes some key principles of this theory.

This double work (experience, theorization) leads us to propose at least five key principles involved in the assessment of talents (inherent for their actualization):

• – the zone of oblivion: this designates the position where the person (the team, the animal) being assessed forgets us and focuses on the activity, without their mind paying attention to our presence. It is a question of finding the blind spot relative to their position and glance. Once the person begins the activity, it is appropriate to leave their attention zone;
• – indifference: in other words, the ability to observe (listen, touch, perceive) without any fixed opinion, preconceived idea, expectation, intention, knowledge or willingness to understand. The mistake made by many professionals is to want to “help” the other, but “help” is an intention that determines one’s own attitude, discourse, questioning and movement. Indifference, as opposed to “difference”, is objective, factual, “cold” (neither for, nor against, nor good, nor bad, nor beautiful, nor ugly). Indifference is not neutrality, one is without opinion on the situation, the other is without issue (of the risk, of opportunity: neutral referring to the idea of not being subjected to risk, nor to opportunity);

• – the forms of the viewed-observed: from the bottom, from bias, from the ground, from the top, by turning one’s head, by following from afar, from close, by looking circularly around oneself, by opening one’s eyes wide, in a fixed way (concentrated), by scanning the index, etc. To look-observe implies a position, a displacement, an orientation, which makes it possible to sweep the configuration of the ground in detail (dromos), in order to apprehend the details, the forms, the consistencies, the arrangements, the perceptible tendencies (the forces in progress). Looking-observing favors the skill of perceiving (jian) the discreet reality from which tendencies begin;
• – the emulation of reality: it is a question of putting the person or the group in a so-called real situation. For that, it is necessary to evoke the reality in which the person evolves: you are in your boat, where do you position yourself? You are sitting in your bobsleigh ready to go down the track of La Plagne, if I am a camera filming you going down, what will I observe? During an experiment with Eric Alard, we put the video of the descent emulated by the latter, and the video of a real descent of La Plagne side by side. At the halfway point, less than a second separated the two sequences. A further question: you are facing a team of people you want to unite, how do you go about it, where do you put yourself, how do you talk to them? We arrive in your office, where do you start to get organized? Emulation implies a specific way of speaking (in the present, with details that can be translated by the person as real, etc.), as well as a way of positioning oneself in space and “occupying” time so that the person no longer knows the “difference” between reality (of another place, another temporality) and the current reality, but that they operate “as if” they were in their configuration;
• – explicitness, a specific form of questioning: it is here, a question of making visible the implications contained in a discourse, a word, a gestural sequence, a movement, a micro-movement, a word, a silence. Explicitness does not aim to understand, nor to make understandable, but to make what is deployed in relation to an expected result visible – and therefore assessable: I observe you making this specific movement (precise description), how is this useful? What is it for? How do you know this movement is appropriate? When you start this movement “from here”, what do you do? You just used the expression “linger in the wind”, what does that expression mean? What does it imply in the way it works, in the way it operates? What result does it produce? Explicitness requires several abilities-skills already addressed: the safety of the glance (eustochia), perception inherent to the situation (ágrupnos) and the description of reality (dang).

During our interventions, we ask professionals undergoing professionalization (awareness or empowerment) to explain the lessons learned during the assessment session. This principle aims to systematically translate experimentation into experience (by formalizing knowledge). Here are several lessons learned from this work.

• – It’s not just because you know that you implement it. People “know”, but they do not deploy the ability-skills.
• – The operating mode creates a gap, but not a difference. As the common ground is distinct without possible comparison (nor equal), the operating mode cannot be thought of as a “difference” (implying identical common ground). To compare a person deploying kinesthetic abilities and a person deploying logical skills would be like wanting to compare the piloting of an aircraft to that of a virtual piloting game.
• – By describing an observation, I give the other person information that they would not attain by themself. Almost all people do not have skills of their own, that is, they do not know how to describe or analyze (li) how they operate. They often use formatted, generalist semantics unrelated to the observed reality. Describing an observed process with precise and adapted semantics allows the person to appropriate a possible field of investigation by the development of their skills-abilities.
• – I don’t look at the other, but I look at the result. By focusing on the activity (with indifference) from the zone of oblivion, I optimize the favorable conditions for the assessment of natural operating modes. By looking at the activity and not at the person, we avoid mixing being and movement. A lasting trust should not be the “self”, but in their “movement”.
• – When you change your semantics, you change your habits. It is a fundamental principle; as soon as a person modifies their semantics by associating a word (signifier) with a principle of reality (signified), it leads to a profound modification of their habits.
• – The useful word is the one that makes the operating mode accessible. The word “useful” is associated with a principle of exteriority; hence, as soon as it is used to assess and question, the people observed make operating modes visible, that would otherwise remain discreet with regard to a “spoken” declaratory (for example, I’m a good listener is declarative).
• – Without any settled intention, I make myself available for observation. This may seem “obvious” (which we no longer think) and yet it is far from being the case, coming without intention implies not pre-desiring an objective. It is to remain available, unencumbered by preconceived ideas. Such a disposition allows us not only to better record “sound and image” in real time, but also to be prompt in a question, an observation that is as lively as the movement of the head, eyes and body. Whoever “thinks” as an objective makes themself blind to the movements of the other.

The resulting (flexible) rules could be as follows:

• – stem from an observation and not from an “interpretation”;
• – focus on the operating modes mobilized in a specific combination: configuration (moment-position), potential (forces in progress), utility (practical advantage, result other than the existing one, response to a practical situation, regulation of one or a set of obstructed/blocked situations, etc.), and not in what the person “believes” to know about him/herself;
• – lead to semantic precision: a word (signifier) is worth an observation (signified);
• – work on the gaps (objective/descriptive) and not on the differences (subjective/distinctive);
• – promote categorical consistency, monitor categorical errors: a competency (intentional operation mode) cannot be combined with a skill (categorical error), a competency is combined with a result, an operation mode, a utility.

To begin the conclusion in this section, it should be noted that the notion of analysis in assessment is not an interpretative-abstract process (logos-cogito-septikos), but a functional-dynamic principle (li). Thus, analysis in assessment aims to apprehend the gaps, the engaged, the observed and the possible manifestations of consequences (yi), and also what follows (ze), the trends in a device at work, the fields of influence (shi/che) leading to transformation (hua) in a person, of a group.

NOTE.– The (situational-dynamic) ability to analyze and not the skill (cognitiveintelligible) implies a flexibility-situation that the old word stocházesthai offers (aiming for the vital point thanks to the safety of the glance), by remaining focused on what unfolds in between in the following manner: favorable-unfavorable, usefuluseless, functional-abstract, positive-negative. You don’t recruit someone who deploys talent because you need it, but because potential and utility are favorable and identified by the company’s management for its use and deployment.

Developing talents implies forms of the viewed, an ability to assess reliable and a mnemonic skill favoring the memorization of a sum of useful information. This now leads us to an understanding of the forms of intelligence, what we call natural operating modes (MO.O.N.). Assessing-analyzing the “talents” of a leader, for example, is only worth the sum of abilities-skills mobilized with regard to the expected result, a specific configuration, a potential.