Alex de Soto

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his book Good Business about the importance of matching high skill with high challenge to create flow for an employee. Google is a world class example of focusing on, not just the four things Kevin talks about in his article, but specifically matching people skills to work challenges.

Ross Clennett

Today’s climate calls for a new paradigm in business success. Companies must realize that the company mission must remain true, however, the energy and effort must be more directed toward becoming an ‘Employer of Choice.’ Find Great People, and leave customer acquisition to them. The companies that focus their attention on Becoming Employer of Choice will prosper with less recruiting costs, less turnover expense, and more profits, productivity, and engagement. (And oh by the way, Sales will soon follow).

Employee success doesn’t come from work experience, or degree – It comes from engagement. It comes from Job Matching, and company culture. It comes being involved in exciting ‘projects.’

Says Dr. Wheeler:

‘Employment is a relationship. Specifically, it is a relationship between an individual with changing needs, increasing experience, growing knowledge, and intellectual capital. ‘

Between and individual and whom? what?

Dr. Wheeler outlines the frame for the ‘individual’….but where is/are the other party(ies) involved.

How are they/those framed in the context of ‘employment as relationship’?

Not wanting to assume anything here, i stalled at the absence of any articulation of these important elements of the relationship.

Why? Because a host of prescriptions are given for ‘employers’ to carry out if they want to build harmony and good relationships.

But without a presentation of the other side of the relationship(s) generic to employment, they ring a bit of a reactive note.

By way of example, I was reminded of the non-transparent husband, who lavishes appeasements to a mate he is woefully underinformed about, while at the same time remaining woefully underinformed about himself.

So he continues to use rhetorical devices along with the appeasements *just so his mate won’t leave him*

The prescriptions given by Dr. Wheeler merely beg the question:

What, in the company’s DNA, is there to make these presecriptions come to life, ie have measureable objective and subjective impact in the work life of the employee, and intrinsic value within the employment culture so as to attract new talent?

For example, Dr. Wheeler writes about providing ‘skills and opportunity’ the following:

‘We are in a talent war and we need bold experiments to find the best ways to unlock the potential of our employees.’

Yes. Agreed. To those who want total victory, this is a given.

But the fact that this is hardly the trend in businesses large and small (the self-congratulatory ones notwithstanding), means that something is being conserved by the predominant absence of ‘bold’ experimentation.

A long-time advisor of mine in all things ‘investments’ says two things that apply here:

1) The trend is your friend; and,

2) Trends continue until they end.

So, the question remains….

what is it in the aggregate union of human personalities, which constitutes the nebulous ‘employer’, that conserves the status quo (‘in relationship’) and presents employees with perhaps much less than what their ‘changing needs, increasing experience, growing knowledge, and intellectual capital’ would measure, in balance, as favorable?

MOST BUSINESSES, (i have been inside many hundreds inside and out of the F-5000, over the last 30 years as a trainer and consultant, and as a trainer of the rank and file who enter corporations as a university based trainer) *FAIL* in the area of using the AFFECTIVE side of their talent to do the leadership training and development necessary to answer questions such as the one i’ve posed in this diatribe.

Three key questions are necessary for ranking leaders in any organization if they are to have NON-REACTIVE employment relationships with their employees:

1) Who are *WE*?

2) What do *WE* do?

3) Why do *WE* do what we do?

These are not the same questions as when these are implied in the skull wrenching topic of ‘MISSION’ and ‘GOALS’.

In the right circumstances, with correct facilitation, the aggregate of personalities which constitute the essence of ‘the employer’, and the affect this aggregate carries in the relationship with employees, will be better understood.

When these are better understood by the organization’s ‘players at the top and within the rank and file’, prescriptions will bring into focus the state of this ‘employment’ relationship….from bottom to top.

Would this mean that the top performers are becoming the active candidates and the B and C players the passive ones? A total revolution, isn’t it…

Great article and keep up the good and thoughtful advice and wisdom to make us all collectively better. ERE is one of my favorite and best sources of great advice, discussions and ideas. ERE keep up the fantastic job and service to make us all better recruiters.

I suspect leadership will wake up some day but it will be as the American auto industry woke up; far too late to make a real change and to this day, still marginalized by others that continue to crush us each and every year. I strongly consider that you pass on Kevin?s article to your CEO. Who knows, maybe one of them might actually read it between doing day trades.

Howard Adamsky