INTELLIGENT PEOPLE DEMAND THEIR RIGHTS (More or less): CLAWING THROUGH THE THICKETS TO EMPLOYEE AND ORGANISATIONAL SUCCESS

*liberally seasoned with quotations from ‘Straight From the Gut’___ ‘A confession: I hate having to use the first person. Nearly everything I’ve done in my life has been accomplished with other people. Yet when you write a book like this, you’re forced to use the narrative “I” when it’s really the “we” that counts’___ The job-finding/job-courting process is ludicrous to well-trained and steady eyes. Why is that so? Because Intelligent People will demand their rights - And their sights aren’t always ‘steady’ ___ Let me soften that. It’s not for employees or prospective candidates to demand anything. Rather, they have certain expectations that they hope to meet collectively with a willing partner. ___ Above all, proactive candidates want to make ‘Big decisions in the real game’. And as a corollary to that wish, they seek to form a true partnership where their own ideas are utilised; where these people open up and transfer around, not out of a prospective organisation.___ Why do “we” so often fail to realise such expectations for elevated performance, satisfaction and engagement in the employment game? We don’t, as a rule, give confidence its due.___ In other words, ‘Legitimate self-confidence is a winner’. And the opposite is vapid.___ And so we refuse to accept that certain approaches to managing talent work better than others. This is particularly an issue, I would propose, in the recruitment racket. Whereas you should wish to avoid prima donna types, you can grant able candidates, if not the ‘spotlight’, at least a workshop to register their thoughts and concerns. With all their quirks and kudos. (Yesterday, for instance, I was reading about Irving Langmuir who generated internally 60 patents in the fields of surface chemistry and molecular science). ___ Otherwise your ‘brand’, or more familiarly, the vital essence of what drives your people to do things, withers and wastes. Your group starts to look slovenly, even selfish and stupid. Monitored against fail-safe, established criteria, human endeavour is functionalised out of existence. Operational excellence declines into the cycle of opening a rusty can with nasty, sharp edges. Not to mention you experience plain boredom. ‘You don’t meet all established criteria’, you say. “What a bore”, I think. “What a drag: Is this for real!?”___ In brief, EXCELLENCE should not be a dirty word. And certainly not one uttered sotto voce. Instead of thinking within an organisational setting, seek the ‘right setting’ for your – or more appropriately, “our” - talent to flourish. (Clue, here: There is no one setting). Hence celebrated (and controversial) economist, Joseph Stiglitz commented in Making Globalization Work:___ ‘With corporations at the center of globalization, they can be blamed for much of its ills as well as given credit for many of its achievements. Just as the issue is not whether globalization itself is good or bad but how we can reshape it to make it work better, the question about corporations should be: what can be done to minimize their damage and maximize their contribution to society?’___ This mindset of collective achievement thus presupposes individual and bodily responsibility and accountability.___ During the Industrial Revolution, we might observe, Britain was declared the ‘workshop of the world’. I hope that we, in Australia and elsewhere, can rapidly create a ‘people factory of the world’. We’re certainly not there yet. That may make employees sad, and it might even be a little embarrassing to our national psyche.___ Nonetheless, what truly remains is a challenge.___ And that’s the reason, in the people business, we must minister and mentor, as well as manage and measure. It comes down to energy. Are our smart people getting what they need to help us all succeed? For example, I have a friend with a PhD in English literature - in a large retail chain – working on stodgy emails instead of serious reportage or advertising copy. What a waste of talent!! (Can you be sure anyone else is picking up the organisational slack?)___ The antinomy of performance excellence and overwhelming progress – which takes us all with it, and not before – is clearly that anathema, ‘Groupthink’. Take this passage from ABC Chairman, Maurice Newman’s speech to ABC employees - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/maurice-newman-speech/story-e6frg996-1225839427099:___ ‘Long, long ago, as a young security analyst, I developed a relationship with journalists, some of whom remain friends to this day. Journalists were important people to me in my developing career. A respectable newspaper or radio station citing my research was good for business and good for job promotion too. It was a new experience for me and gave me an insight into a whole new world – the media. However, what I thought were good stories were not always seen that way by journalists. My take on events was sometimes rejected and another position adopted. That was their right. Sometimes when what was obvious to me became obvious to them, I would puzzle why the Bonds, Skases, Rivkins, Judges, et al could ever have been seen for other than what they were. I concluded that these adulatory waves of uncritical group-think came easily for journalists who were spoon fed exclusive stories, lavishly entertained and given other incentives by these corporate wizards. It encouraged laziness and a lack of critical enquiry. Group-think so limits curiosity that instead of fresh thinking, it encourages the same stale orthodoxies and superficial stereotypes. People and issues are seen as either worthy or unworthy’.___ People are seen as worthy or unworthy. Indeed.. ___ One should remember, however, ‘Where God parachutes us is a matter of luck’. Too often, it appears, organisations and recruiters luck out on the selection and succession process, be the industry or business what it may. They hire for a role, not for culture. They “hire”, they don’t court. They judge, they do not energize. And the corpus of existing talent doesn’t make it to where it truly wants to go.. In consequence ready talent takes a hike. Hearing the subtle, underline message, they remove elsewhere. In search of happier climes. ___ To put it succinctly, ‘Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions that it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur’. As such, brand and bluster is never enough now. Thus one should ask, ‘Is the company you read about in the annual report, the company you work for?’ Are your colleagues, in the arts, in science wherever, the people you wish to emulate? Do you discern a straight-line march from fear to drudgery or an enlivened exponential? Where are they going? Are “we” going somewhere? Questions to contemplate. Questions to ask. ___ Perfectibility may be elusive. A heady chimera. On the other hand, who wants to stick at defence all their career? Perhaps we can’t enjoy everything we desire, yet we should be able to remark: ___ ‘I loved to go on the field when I thought I could play, and I loved cheering from the sidelines’.. ___ In tune with this sentiment, we can in time, I'm confident, agree to adopt, together with Joseph Stigtlitz, this maxim of organisational development and human achievement:___ ‘Companies can be thought of as communities, people working together in a common purpose – say, to produce a product or provide a service. And as they work together, they care about each other, the communities in which they work, and the broader community, the world, in which we all live’. In the people game, you’ve gotta move from defensive linebacker to offensive halfback.. C’mon, I just want “us” to get a kick out of life!