Simon Says: Slow Down
An article in the May 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review promises to identify “How to Keep Your Top Talent.” This is a big issue these days, since many baby boomers are slated to retire in the next five to seven years, and there is serious concern about leadership shortages. Not only that, but research performed by Martin and Conrad Schmidt at the Corporate Leadership Council suggests many “high performers” are looking for new jobs.
The authors go on to identify three critical attributes that allow one to trend current performance into future potential: ability, engagement, and aspiration. While I have no argument with the first two attributes, the third is more insidious. They dub nearly a third of high performers as “misaligned stars,” individuals who have the ability and engagement but don’t aspire to the roles at more senior levels or don’t choose to make the sacrifices require to perform those high-level jobs. The assumption is that your performance directly correlates with your desire to move up in the company.
Nor are these ideas isolated to the authors’ thinking. A friend of mine recently confided he was tired of spending so much of his time at the office instead of with his family. He could lead a large group of people and drive spectacular results, and that, as it turned out, was his downfall. When he told his boss he was happy to continue to work challenging problems, but wasn’t interested in promotion, he was informed that wasn’t an option. He was too good to let “languish” in his current position. His only choices were to continue moving up, spending even more hours in the office, or to leave all together. He chose the latter.
Ironically, on their website, the Corporate Leadership Council defines aspiration as “the extent to which an employee desires job recognition, rewards, and advancement, as well as work-life balance.” Based on my friend’s story, I can only assume they mean high performers aspire recognition and advancement at the expense of work-life balance. Maybe that explains the other finding from their study: another 30% of high performers suffer from a lack of engagement.
With these kinds of assumptions of what constitutes a high performer, I think retention efforts are bound to fail. And that’s too bad, because as I discussed in my linchpin post, we need high performers at all levels, not just senior management. Maybe what this demonstrates is we’re already experiencing a leadership shortage–performance isn’t a factory line and employee development isn’t a marathon.
Hi Jen, this is fascinating, but somehow doesn’t surprise me. Surely an aspiration to be a high performer in life – all aspects of life, including business and non-business, leads to better results all round.
This mono-dimensional view of aspiration is archaic and hopefully will be laundered out of such dis-organizational thinking in the coming years.
Speaking for myself, my work productivity and leadership aspirations sky-rocketed when I got the work-life balance sorted out. Life – work/play – has never been better.
Best to you, Robin
Robin,
I’m going through that process of getting life/work/play in balance now, and I agree that productivity goes way up.
One of the things that really grates me about corporate culture today is the idea you can’t be a leader without putting your time in. Archaic is a great way to describe it! There’s actually a great article called “Who’s Got the Monkey?” from the Harvard Business Review back in 1974. Basically, it says any manager who’s spending late nights and weekends working while their employees are at home have failed at one of the most important leadership tasks: delegation. But that’s another post.
Hey Jennifer, I love where you’re going with this!
I think there are two really dangerous traps lurking in the whole “move up the ladder” mentality — 1) that some jobs are vastly more important than others, and 2) that the only way to gain more respect is to forever keep climbing.
The first disturbs me because it so quickly devalues unglamorous positions and the people in them. Are there jobs that require more experience and training? Sure, but EVERY person in an organization deserves to be respected and valued for their contribution.
The second is troubling because it completely ignores the idea of MASTERY in our work. The Peter Principle has been around since 1969 forgoodnesssake, but we still can’t seem to figure out that the best salespeople don’t necessarily make the best sales managers?
The tricky part is actually modifying our systems/structures/culture to reward the RIGHT things, instead of what they’re doing now.
Josh,
Yes, totally agree. What makes you good in one position does not make you good in another, and you’d definitely think we’d know that by now. But it’s true even in lateral moves. I used to work as a program manager at one of the research funding agencies, and I kept telling people it wasn’t necessary to hire the top scientist in a particular field. What makes for a good scientist does not often make for a good program manager. All to no avail…
The good news is we can start our own mini-revolution. If people understand what they are good at and where they can make the most impact, they can actively resist the push to climb. The reward structure, one would hope, would follow close behind. You’re right–it’s a culture change that’s needed.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful response!
GREAT call on the lateral moves.
The issues you are describing there explain why I’m such a big proponent of talent theory. We’ve learned to evaluate position needs from a competency/skill perspective, but often overlook the fact that people have natural talents that make them better at certain things than other things. If we can line up those abilities in the right spots… wow, that’s when we REALLY start making progress!