I am a big baseball fan. This time of year is my Nirvana – everything is fresh and new and every team has a chance (except the Pirates and Royals, who were both mathematically eliminated in 1997).

My favorite part of baseball is watching new guys come in and become stars. I never thought I’d get over the retirement of George Brett. He was MY GUY! But just as he left, a guy like Mark Grace came along and all was well again. Then Grace retired and along comes a kid named Albert Pujols! It’s a constant stream of great players. Where do they come from?

Now look at it from the aspect of our business. Where does the talent come from? Seeking out and hiring people is not easy.

Think about how you got your current job. What did it take for you to get where you are today? Honestly, with so many good people out there, and the hoops you have to jump through to actually hire people these days, I’m amazed that any of us have jobs – let alone become the Derek Jeter of the Channel.

There are a lot of people looking for work these days, but there are also a lot of companies trying to hire more workers. In fact, some can’t hire fast enough. So what’s the problem? Why are the people looking not finding the people hiring?

A few weeks ago, we had a great opportunity to participate in a working session with the channel chief of one of the largest IT suppliers in the world. He spent a significant amount of time talking about the challenges his company had with not just being able to add employees, but with onboarding. This was especially interesting to us because it’s not only one of the things we do best, but we see this same issue crippling many of our current clients.

Many of these companies are emerging from the recession with a bright outlook for the immediate and not-too-distant future. They want to grow their footprint, but many suffer from being afraid to expand their coverage. It’s almost exclusively a capital problem – a HUMAN capital problem.

I don’t view the term human capital as the traditionally negative overtone of a homogenous and interchangeable asset that performs labor to produce economic growth. I view it as how Deloitte views human capital:

• Talent (strategies, solutions and analytics)
• Leadership (diagnostics, strategies and programs)
• World-Class HR (service delivery models, processes, technologies and programs)
• People Issues in the Business (strategic change, organization design, technology adoption, merger integration and operational culture)

The recession has exposed a lot of workforce-related problems that have been bubbling under the surface, but are just now REALLY starting to cause companies hiring fits. Technological changes in the way you do business, an aging workforce that is slow to adapt to changes and a fundamentally inexperienced crop of new workers (and how these two groups mesh into one cohesive unit), the realities of globalization (both in a literal sense and in expanding to markets/verticals), heavy-handed regulatory concerns, and competition so thick you can barely see the finish line you are all supposedly running towards. All these things compound this human capital problem, and many companies may not be equipped to handle the changes. What’s the answer?

Let’s get back to baseball.

I’ve always been fond of the model presented by baseball when it comes to creating and replacing talent. The farm system is essentially a way to create a perpetual funnel of new talent and new stars. Think about it. The minor leaguers help eliminate the risk of throwing inexperienced players out on the big stage, and it costs less to do it. There is always a learning curve from Triple-A to the majors, but more often than not, the farm system weeds out those who can’t and nurtures those who can.

That’s what we need in business, a farm system (and, no, I am not talking about internships).