Work, It’s Just a Job!

Friday, May 02, 2014

 

It’s Just a Job!  That is how many employees perceive their employment and their relationship with their employers.  Looking around, many see there are few, if any, advancement opportunities available to them and their co-workers.  With no apparent growth prospects it is not hard to understand why such employees become disenchanted with and disengaged from their organizations.  It is also not hard to understand why employers struggle to retain talent and to get and keep their workforces engaged.  Even for workers who are highly talented, motivated, engaged, and making significant contributions, it often seems their employment has little in the way of true opportunities.

 

If a worker perceives there are no advancement opportunities abounding within their employer, the problem is they have not looked hard enough.  The door of opportunities may not be labeled; it may not have a sign post or arrows panted on the floor, pointing the way.  Opportunities must be sought.  Sometimes workers must create their own opportunities by finding a problem and offering up a solution.  By identifying a problem and finding a solution, thus creating their own opportunities, employees begin to think like owners, like entrepreneurs.

 

Organizations may facilitate the pairing of employees and opportunities but they cannot make that relationship solidify.  Matching the right employee with the right opportunity is helpful but it takes more than a set of skills to achieve the appropriate and workable employee-opportunity mix.  Flour + Sugar + Leveling + Eggs + Milk, does not a cake automatically make.  The ingredients must be carefully bended and emulsified, then placed in the correct environment.  Leave out any ingredient, mix improperly, place in the wrong environment and there will be no cake.  Baking, employees, and organizational opportunities are all investments, some are short term, and some are of a longer duration.  The first requires the development of culinary skills, the later requires employee development.

 

Few investors, other than maybe Warren Buffett, have millions to invest in a single project; the same can be said for organizations.  Most are unwilling to turnover a high value, high visibility project to a completely untested employee.  Most employees do not come to an employer fully formed and fully developed with all of the skills desired to shepherd a new system implementation, integration of a new acquisition or rescue a failing business.  Long before we are permitted to take on that break-out project or assignment, most employees must invest their time in acquiring the project, communications, and technical skills needed.  This is the rate-of-return for their investment.

 

It is easy to understand how any employee can be impatient, even frustrated at having to play supporting roles, when in their mind they are ready for the spotlight.  But just like any star, talented employees must be honed through a successive series of assignments for them to develop.  Underprepared employees are not just an issue for the employee.  Failure to develop a talented employee reflects on both their first line manager and the organization as a whole.  Even a diamond has to be polished to bring out its inner brilliance.