When: March 19-21

Where: Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort, Phoenix

What: The Human Capital Institute says it is "a global think tank, educator and professional association defining the agenda and setting the pace for the new business science of human capital management. With more than 52,000 members in more than 40 countries, HCI offers a new association framework that cuts across the silos of recruitment, HR/OD, finance, sales and marketing, operations, manufacturing and IT. We provide key executives, line managers and human capital professionals with the newest education, most effective tools and best practices in talent strategy, acquisition, alignment, engagement, deployment, measurement, and retention."

• Phoenix is a hit. Conference-goers seem to like the combination of the relaxed Southwest lifestyle, warm temperatures (highs in the 80s with single-digit humidity), and the layout of the conference rooms for easy access. Only a few people have complained about how dry it is, or the allergy-related issues from the spring bloom here in the desert.

• Conference attendees seem engaged. Unlike conferences where there is more to do outside the conference (think Las Vegas or Orlando), the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort is a bit remote and removed from Phoenix proper. This keeps people focused on the conference and attendance up at all sessions—even those late in the afternoon.

• The HCI sessions seemed to get mixed reviews. I’ve heard complaints that sessions didn’t drill deep enough, as well as others who raved about how amazing the last speaker was. Like in all things in life, it is a little bit of luck as to what you get. Sometimes a session that sounds good turns out flat, while others that don’t have as sexy a title turn out great.

• The HCI National Summit is a work in progress. I’m impressed by the conference, given that this is only the second time HCI has put one on. I heard good things about last year’s inaugural event in Chicago, and this one has been good enough to make me want to come back next year. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room to improve, but rather, that I expect the conference to improve a lot more in the years to come. The biggest need? From my view, it would be getting higher-profile keynote speakers who could not only serve as a bigger draw, but would also have a little bit better message that targets the needs of the attendees. The crowd in Phoenix seems to be largely made up of HR directors and above, and I got mixed reactions to the first two keynote speakers.

Bottom line: I’d recommend this conference, since it is much more strategic than SHRM, but perhaps not quite as targeted as some Conference Board events. It is worth putting on your schedule for next year, because I believe it will continue to grow and get better. And, it’s already pretty good.

Keynote speaker, Day 2: Dr. Vijay Govindarajan is a professor of international business at Princeton’s Tuck School of Business and founding director of Tuck’s Center for Global Leadership. His keynote was based on his book 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, and got into the subject of business transformation.

It’s a tough topic to start off the day, but Dr. VG (as he likes to be called) engaged the audience by talking about the three boxes that businesses need to focus on: managing the present (Box 1), selectively abandoning the past (Box 2), and creating the future (Box 3). Most businesses, he said, over-focus on Box 1 when, really, they should focus on Boxes 2 and 3, since that’s where the real strategy takes place. Managing the present is important (particularly maximizing your current business model), but managers can’t do that exclusively and forget the strategic planning necessary for future growth and success.

Too many companies, he noted, focus on the here and now and don’t think where their business model will be in 2025 and what they need to do to ensure future success. He pointed to companies that had strong, market-dominating products (like the Encyclopedia Britannica and Xerox), but let defending their strong position blind them to real planning for the future. They eventually lost their dominant spots because they failed to feel the "tremors" of the earthquake-sized changes to come.

Dr. VG pointed out that the more a business succeeds in Box 1, the more difficult it is to be successful in Boxes 2 and 3. Core competencies become core liabilities, and as he noted with the Encyclopedia Britannica, management was so focused on current customers that they didn’t see the digital revolution and Microsoft’s Encarta CD-ROM product as a threat until it was too late.

Keynote speaker, Day 1: Clyde Prestowitz, founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute, spoke on the subject of "Three Billion New Capitalists." ECI is a Washington-based think tank that focuses on international trade and how key sectors of the U.S. and world economy adapt to change and globalization. So, Prestowitz should have a lot of good things to say.

He does, but it takes a bit for him to get rolling and really engage a conference crowd at 8:15 on a Monday morning. Prestowitz is an old-school speaker—no PowerPoint slides, no script, no written notes, no audience-grabbing vocal or visual tricks—and his gravelly voice takes a little getting used to.

But the premise of his speech—that we are at a moment of historic, dramatic change given the re-emergence of India, China, and other Asian economies on the world stage—is a timely topic. As Prestowitz notes, North America and Western Europe has been the world’s economic driver only for the past 600 years. For 5,000 to 6,000 years, Asia drove the world’s economy, and China had the largest economy in the world as recently as 1960. In his view, today’s focus on Asia just shows that the historical imbalance is just being rebalanced.

Like Tom Friedman and his book "The World Is Flat," Prestowitz talks about the new world we’re now in and the enormous growth going on in Asia that’s largely fueled by demographics and education. "All of the most successful societies have a high focus on education," he says, and this is where America falls short. The U.S. has a huge education problem—"secondary and high school education is largely a disaster"—and we need measurable national educational standards if we are going to be able to remain highly competitive in the years to come.

Prestowitz had a lot of important things to say that we ought to hear, but I’m not sure how many people were ready for such a high-level, grad school-style lecture so early in the day. Unfortunately, from what I heard from the audience afterward, I’m afraid that his lack of a real engaging style made it hard for many to follow the important message he had to give.

Talent management from the business perspective: Dr. Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, packed the room for his presentation on talent management. This is clearly a huge issue for lots of people, so they jammed in to hear what he had to say.

What he mainly had to say was that nothing today in talent management is new, and that everything that is talked about today was done before from the 1920s to the 1950s. The "corporate" career model, he said, with lifetime employment just doesn’t work anymore. The new challenge in today’s business world is "managing uncertainty," a difficult proposition because the demand for talent is not only difficult to forecast, but in addition, the supply of talent is highly mobile and won’t stay put.

One of the keys to creating value with talent, he said, is to spot it early and give talented people the opportunity to grow before they can get it somewhere else. This means pushing people into more challenging tasks, helping them learn as they go, and always looking to match development needs to available opportunities.

Cappelli gave some interesting statistics that illustrated the nature of the talent management problem today. The companies on the Fortune 500 currently employ only half as many people as the firms on the list 20 years ago did. CEO turnover, which can drive turnover throughout the ranks of a company, is up 53 percent since 1995 and is rising two times as fast in Europe and the U.K. as in the United States. In other words, talent management is also a global issue that is difficult to manage. The key, in Cappelli’s mind, is to develop talent naturally (aka internally) because it reduces upfront costs, improves employee retention and shaves overall development costs.

Keeping the talent pipeline full: An afternoon session on "Leading Your Talent Market" by Cindy Mayer, executive director of staffing for Cingular Wireless, walked through the process by which Cingular hires 6,500 to 7,000 retail sales consultants each year. Here’s how it works:

• Start with 100,000 candidates.

• Do a skill and job assessment screening. Sixty-six thousand are left after this (66 percent).

• Have recruiters phone screen the remaining group. About 49,500 are left after this (75 percent of the previous cut).

• Bring the rest of the pool in for behavior-based interviews. About 29,700 remain after this (60 percent).

• Extend job offers to 8,320 candidates (28 percent).

• Some 6,600 actually accept the position and start work (80 percent).