Powerful, rewarding employee relations...

If you asked me to join your organisation as Cultural Ambassador - rallying the troops; spreading company love and looking for new and wondrous ways to optimise the performance of our people...   I would jump at the chance.  Did I mention the 8-figure salary that comes with the position??  Because you would have to pay me more than $10m a year to do this.  And for all intents and purposes I would do a great job - or at least that 8-figure salary would buy you a large bucket of determination and diligence.

What you are really expecting from me is to create powerful and mutually rewarding connections between individuals and the company they work for (which includes other individuals).  Realistically I need to know the company and it mission and values; its execution plan and what human resources are required to deliver and finally I would need to intimately understand the motivation and capabilities of each employee.  Well guess what?  It has taken more than 50 years for me to figure myself out - and I feel as though I have only scratched the surface.

But let's pretend there are lots of wonderful, smart leaders in the company that can cover off the vision, values and objectives (clearly and accurately without personal agenda or bias!).  How do we then describe the vast set of skills, behaviours, experience and knowledge that is required to do the work?  Balancing the company books requires accounting skills and integrity but so does designing a new accounting software package.  What is the difference (if there is one)?  And if you want your people to be agile, independent thinkers, able to work in autonomous squads - then what do you also need leaders for?  If you are a hip and groovy organisation (yes... I really just said "hip and groovy") you are going to want to see diversity and your employees must "bring their whole self to work" and also understand work/life balance.  But when assigning someone to a role or completing a performance review, you actually want me to create little boxes that describe "competency groups" and compare individuals against each other to determine who generated the most value - even though you could never imagine that the person who had to leave at 3pm every day to pick up their children could possible generate as much value as Bob who is in the office 12 hours straight.

And don't even get me started on potential and developing talent. If someone is taught to build widgets - and they do it really  well, and they are social and fun and so honest they never take company-supplied pens out of the office...   does that mean they will also be an awesome Accountant.  Well...   maybe.  And maybe not!

So you are going to have to cough up some big bucks if you want me to sort all this out for you.  Although if we start with the premise that everyone is gifted, that could solve a heap of effort and stress trying to find the right person for the job.  We'll just ask them if they want the job and work out the rest later...