I received an invitation from our Armed Forces (FAS) to give a session on "management of talent" in the General Staff Course, which is taught at CESEDEN (Centro Superior de programs of study de la Defensa), a place where officers from the three armies, the Civil Guard and other allied countries are trained, who in the future will be the generals and admirals who will lead this institution.

The course is one year long and teaches subjects related to national defense, leadership and communication, geopolitics and geostrategy, political science, international security, planning and joint operations.

Within the planning subject there is a part dedicated to "human resources planning" in which, among other subjects, the "management of talent" is studied, an issue that has to do with the way in which our armed forces want and intend to train their cadres to meet the objectives set out in the document "Operational Environment 2035", which is nothing more than the institution's vision of what the environment of work of the military will be like at that time: complex, highly technological, joint, ambiguous ... what NATO military doctrine has been calling for some years now, VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment.

Point 259 of the document, graduate , on "improving the management of talent" already warns that this complex environment will require military professionals to be determined and proactive, agile, flexible, creative and adaptable. It ends the point with a warning to take care in attracting and retaining the best.

Our SAFs are facing the same thing that any organization, from knowledge or not, has on their hands and we are concerned about it. They are no different in this. It is aggravated by the strong preparation that these cadres have in technology, team management, international experience, and why not say it, in environments of a tension (life or death) that civilian life does not normally require, and that the market is beginning to discover and capture for their staffs. It is no longer just pilots for airlines, but infantry officers who are project managers at Amazon Spain.

The work session with the students, after they had already received their "theory" on the topic, took the form of a class of doubts that I tried to solve.

We commented on the importance of the management of talent, defining it as "intelligence and capacity", so from the beginning we are not talking about managing a technique, but people. And they know a lot about this. It was very important for them to see the development of talent, if it is something innate or not, but it was clear to us that being intelligence and capacity, this second quality is completely developable, both technically and competentially. We talked about the "attitude" to be more "apt". These are old recipes that we all know, we have put them in internship with our teams and why not to say it, with ourselves.

There was a message that I wanted to get across to the students, future military leaders, and that is that the best management of talent is not what the institution does, but what we can do in our teams. Organizations of this size have big policies, but because of that immensity, and sometimes that remoteness from the higher command, a fighter squadron commander in the Canary Islands, a commander on a ship in the Indian Ocean or a lieutenant colonel battalion commander in Lebanon have in their hands to develop and therefore retain the best. And not only by the example of command, but also by taking care of and caring for their people. We are talking about the informal coaching that can be done with people who have to develop certain indispensable competencies to acquire those skills that are already necessary today.

A last point, not Exempt of a certain caution, was the question of how to "think differently", and more being in the conference room some higher commands. As can be seen in the military they have the same fears as in civilian organizations, and that we find so hard to do, implement and develop. As always the answers come better if they are not from guide: "provoking it" in the teams. We have all had these experiences that, unfortunately, when we changed the managers who demanded it, it did not become a habit. In other cases yes, and certainly in this the character has a lot to say. It is possible to "think differently", but we have to provoke it in our teams. Otherwise, it doesn't work.

It was a very interesting experience from which I myself also learned. The interrelation between the military and the civilian world should be encouraged more. They are citizens like us who have a lot to contribute to civil society and are very grateful to know what is going on outside the units.

Ignacio Cristobal Urbicain