Over a period of several decades, IBM has worked to build and retain a flexible workforce to ensure that corporate goals are balanced with the employees’ personal needs. The book’s title says it all: it includes IBM’s approaches and the lessons learned from them. In today’s competitive environment, market demands are fluid and global corporations must maintain a portfolio of enduring skills and expertise, to ensure that customer needs are always properly addressed.

The book consists of nine chapters that describe IBM’s approach to career development. Chapter 1 outlines a process roadmap for attracting, retaining, and engaging employees through learning and development, which is supported by a common, enterprise-wide career framework. The authors’ key message is that the human element is central to business, and companies that can successfully retain their best and brightest employees will thrive in the coming decades.

Chapter 2, “Enabling Career Advancement,” gives an overview of IBM’s vision for managing expertise. Chapter 3, “Defining the Career Development Process,” discusses the management of expertise during the career development process. Chapter 4, “Selecting the Best Talent and Developing New Employees,” covers the actions associated with identifying the best talents and the importance of having a robust orientation program during the first year of employment.

Chapter 5, “Assessing Levels of Expertise and Taking Actions to Drive Business Success,” assesses the corporate expertise portfolio and its alignment with business strategy. The guiding principle is that a shortage of talent and skills exists not only within industry, but even closer to home, within companies. The chapter discusses in detail fundamental aspects, such as the management of change in workforce demographics and employee succession planning.

Chapters 6 and 7, “Building Employee and Organizational Capability” and “Creating Meaningful Development Plans,” explain how employees can be enabled to take ownership of their careers through the creation of effective development plans. The authors’ discussion of “the generalist versus the versatilist” is particularly enlightening in its simplicity. Chapter 8, “Linking Collaborative Learning Activities to Development Plans,” covers on-the-job training and mentoring as a way to supplement traditional learning approaches. IBM’s ability to offer such nontraditional opportunities demonstrates its belief that learning is not a one-size-fits-all process.

The final chapter, “Measuring Success,” addresses the importance of measuring whether career development processes are capable of achieving the given objectives, in order to decide what approaches are most effective. On the business side, measuring also quantifies the impact on business and the return on investment. This chapter also presents different methodologies for career development, new employee orientation, and sales training.

This book is a source of inspiration for those who want to succeed in a global marketplace. The proposed roadmap was built by IBM over a significant period of time, with considerable effort and investment; this implies that fully implementing it is not for everyone. Nevertheless, since the book’s core principles apply to both large and small organizations, it will be an interesting, useful, and enjoyable read for many people.