Funky Business and Taming
Talent
What
is your company’s greatest asset? Most managers
would answer “our people.” Nothing could be
more wrong—and I’m not thinking about the
“Dilbert” cartoon where people came in ninth,
right behind paper clips. My argument is that human
capital must be regarded as a liability. Otherwise,
companies are practicing intellectual slavery. To succeed
in a world where power increasingly belongs to competent
people, firms must instead build processes securing a
continuous transfusion and transformation of talent. You
must become a “humanager.”
Marxist Markets
The balance sheet is probably the only 500-year-old
super-model still capable of arousing a few people. But
despite its long-lasting allure, often it only captures
around 20% of the real value of contemporary companies.
Today, knowledge makes all the difference. And just who
owns that—George Soros?
Ironically, in retrospect it turns out that Karl Marx was
right. People now control the most critical
resources—individually rather than
collectively—their own brains. What is crucial at
many firms is perhaps not so much the core competencies
as the “core
competents”—individuals who make
competencies happen. Competents are “mobile
monopolies” who will stay only as long as the
organization offers them something they want. To thrive,
companies must apply strategies that revolve around
simultaneously attracting and reducing the power of
competent individuals—talent transfusion and
transformation.
Talent Transfusion
In a world where competition in the labor market is
increasingly generic, we are all players in a great
global attraction game. Success is contingent on
exploiting the fact that human beings want to express
their individuality and their need for belonging.
People no longer work out of moral obligations.
Lifelong loyalty to a company, country, brand, rock band,
husband, or wife is a thing of the past. Today, smart
people hire organizations, rather than vice versa. For
stars, the organization is disposable—a temporary
home. And competents are not bulk goods. So, attracting
talent calls for individual personalization.
People can be treated and approached, evaluated and
rewarded, motivated and inspired in a number of ways. If
Madonna will not settle for anything the slightest bit
normal or average, why should you or your fellow
competents? It used to be XM (extra medium). Now it must
be XMe. Instead of being provided with detailed job
descriptions, competents should provide managers with
motivation descriptions. But people also want to
belong. Firms with a future will launch strategies
focused on organizational tribalization. In a
tribe, employees share rewards, ownership, culture, or
whatever. Increasingly, values will constitute such a
least common denominator. Today, we see many successful
companies recruiting people with the “right”
attitude, then training them in skills—not the
reverse. Look at organizations as diverse as Southwest
Airlines or Hell’s Angels. Just imagine
Hell’s Angels hiring for skills! These
organizations do not believe in the idea of bringing in
smart people and then brainwashing them at training camps
because 1) the half-life of knowledge is coming down
fast, and 2) for most of us it is easier to change our
skills than our basic values.
Talent Transformation
Companies also need to work hard to reduce their
dependence on competents. Two strategies that we already
see signs of deal with managing intelligence in an
intelligent way.
The typical company of today may not suffer from knowing
too little, but rather from not knowing what it knows. A
critical task for any organization aspiring to be
successful is thus to engage in knowledge
codification—transforming the core competents
into core competencies. The firm must turn human capital
into structural capital — in the form of systems
and procedures, routines, etc. While human capital is
best thought of as a liability, structural capital is
definitely an asset on the balance sheet.
A second measure aimed at improving the performance of
the firm and lessening the power of competents is
increased employee socialization. By working in
teams or spending time together after work, over time,
groups will develop tacit knowledge. People will know
things that they cannot tell. The existence of tacit
knowledge means that it is more difficult for competitors
to imitate the knowledge of the firm. Tacit knowledge
also makes it harder for people to walk out the door with
their skill-sets intact. They can only bring their
intrapersonal competence with them. Socialization = tacit
knowledge = knowledge handcuffs.
U2
A final word of caution. I fear that many modern managers
are overlooking something important—themselves.
Forget about talent-taming for a while. From a personal
point of view, your most important job is ensuring that
the structural capital of the organization over time
becomes your human capital. Go for lifelong employability
rather than lifetime employment. Make capital
dance.
Jonas Ridderstråle works as an assistant
professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies in
Leadership at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is
the co-author of international best seller Funky
Business: Talent makes capital dance. (www.funkybusiness.com)
March 2002 News for a Change
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