DO YOU THINK YOU ARE AN EMPLOYEE? THINK!

“An?employee?is a worker hired by an employer to do a specific job. Employers control how employees are paid, when employees work, and how employees work” [i]. This definition captures the essence of an employee relationship.

The employer has control, but what about the employee? Is he a passive recipient of directions and instructions? In Ghana, employees act as passive recipients of instructions, not as partners with a stake in the venture.

This posture drives attitudes toward work. The general complaint is we have very poor attitudes towards work. Some behaviors associated with Ghanaian workers are apathy to work, disloyalty, low productivity, and low skills, poor attitude to customers.

My perception from working with finance professionals is, most don’t take the initiative, don’t take responsibility for improving themselves, and don’t think about output, individually and collectively.

What if an employee is not what you think?

According to Andy Grove, an employee is a business with one employee—yourself! [ii]

Andy Grove, a former CEO of Intel sought to change the idea of who is an employee and the attitudes that come with it, when he offered some brief thoughts in his book titled High Output Management, on what American managers must do to sustain careers in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to Andy Grove, an employee is a business with one employee—yourself. He insists that “you compete with millions of similar businesses. There are millions of others all over the world, picking up the pace, capable of doing the same work, and perhaps more eager to do it. You may be tempted to look around your workplace and point to your fellow workers as your rivals, but they are not. People who work for organizations that compete with your firm outnumber them a million to one”.

“So, if you want to work and continue to work, you must continually dedicate yourself to keeping your individual competitive advantage.”

If the idea of competing with millions across the globe seemed far-fetched in the 80s and 90s, it is a reality in the 21st century. The message from Andy Grove is very clear. Nobody owes you a career, nobody owes you a good life. It is up to you.

What must you do to keep your competitive advantage?

There is no formula for that, but Andy Grove makes these suggestions:

• Enhance your values every day–what you must do to enhance your value every day depends on your situation. Do things that enhance your value every day.
• Learn to improve your existing skills and get new ones. The proof of skill is the results you get, not the certificate.
• Adapt–many forces are reshaping work. It’s your duty to expect change and adapt to be relevant in the evolving workplace.
• Move from job to job, industry to industry—if you must change jobs and industries to gain the skills you need to adapt and be relevant, do it.
• You must retrench and start again if you must. If your job has no future, you must learn a different trade, do it! ?

To help you think about enhancing your competitive advantage, he asks you to ponder these questions.

• Are you adding value or merely passing information along? How do you add more value? What adds value depends on your circumstance.
• Are you plugged into what is happening around you? Do you wait for others to interpret what is going on for you?
• Are you connected plugged in people or are you floating by yourself?
• Are you trying new ideas, new techniques, and new technologies - trying them, not just reading about them? Or are you waiting for others to figure out how they can re-engineer your workplace and you out of the workplace?

Conclusion

I agree with Andy Grove. I have argued in my post on careers that you must build careers intentionally.

You’ll probably have a working life of 30 to 40 years. Over 30-40 years, will you do the work you love, in the way you want, for people you want to work with and earn the income you desire over the 30-40 years?

Will you adapt to changes that will happen in the workplace? Will you be relevant throughout?

Employees acting as a business of one person are the ones likely to have long and impactful careers. That’s because they take responsibility and do as Andy Grove suggests.

George Katako

[i] Susan Heathfield, https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-an-employee-1918111

[ii] Andrew S Grove, High Output Management, Vintage Books, Sept 1995