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September 15, 2007

Run That By Me Again

Recent messages from Hill & Knowlton alert that a topic of growing study about performance is on workers selecting their own career track. It goes without saying that this makes sense only if the selections turn out to be rewarding for employers. But what about the other side of the coin? You can't spend one side without spending the other too.

Much is made of the idea that, in life, and presumably here in self-selection career mode, we would transfer "lessons learned" from one arena to another. Alas,
this limitation is the case whenever the model of organizational performance can't be abstracted from the ladder of careers. Those square pegs that worked in another model won't fit neatly into the round holes provided for inserting rungs in the ladder.

The most important piece of the old system to change is the piece where employers and employees negotiate the terms of "compensation" -- terms that must include warranty (of opportunity) as well as objectivity (of measurement).

Both opportunity and warranty must be encoded in the operational "playbook". When the people in charge can show how the organizational model feeds the plays, instead of the other way around, the resourcing and subscription of the work is then much less restricted. Just as processes actually depend more on particular roles than on particular participants, participants need to be replaceable without breaking the system.

This has the fascinating effect of requiring managers to get more strategic in the organization of operations, just as the general manager of a baseball team is on even an everyday hour-to-hour basis. And, on the flip side, how many employees are willing to be "players" instead of secured workers?

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at September 15, 2007 12:41 PM

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