To answer this question I will ask another question that I usually pose to MBA students at business schools during the talks I give from time to time.
The question is – “What is your ideal job?” I usually spend 20 minutes white boarding the various answers that come in. The answers are tentative at first covering things like –“It should utilize all my strengths” or “I should have a supportive boss”. As the group gets comfortable, the more practical ones come out with “The money and perks should be good” or “Overseas travel opportunities have to be there” or “There should be good work life balance” etc etc
After I am through with their list, I write down what I think are the qualities of an IDEAL JOB!! It goes like this -
It’s a place where I AM WANTED!! It’s a job where my COMPENSATION is a little more than those of my colleagues’ with whom I choose to compare at any point in time. And its a role where there are NO TARGETS!
When I write down the last one there is usually a roar of knowing laughter from the batch of students. Because they know in their hearts that when they seek out Marketing, Mergers & Acquisitions, Consulting, Strategy, Business Analysis, Transformation positions in a company, what they are seeking is a role that is lower on direct accountability but high on visibility. :-)
Anyway let’s take the 3 statements I wrote above and dive a bit deeper into them.
I AM WANTED
This is such a powerful and a primordial need that all of us have. At the core we want to know and be assured that whatever happens we will never be cast away. We would probably give off our absolute best if this situation came to pass in our work lives. But unfortunately that is never the case. Modern organizations generally have this tendency to keep you ever so slightly OFF BALANCE. The belief being that if someone gets this feeling of being wanted and becomes secure then s/he will exploit the corporation.
Having said this you will also notice that in any organization there will be this core set of people who have total clarity on their being wanted. I have been in several companies by now and have seen this set of people and envied their position. Not that they were all totally inept, but this feeling of security at the very core gives them a base from which they can act with supreme confidence.
The reality is that barring God no one loves us unconditionally to give us the assurance that, come what may you will not be cast away (parents come closest). As individuals we have to set this expectation right in our heads to avoid disappointment and work hard to make our results and efforts count so that we know in our hearts that we delivered value.
As leaders I guess we can do our little bit too, to pass on the feeling to our team and make them feel wanted. I am sure we have all our own little ways.
As individuals we try and fulfil this need on our own, bolstered in parts by our friends and loved ones and colleagues. Due to adverse circumstances when these support systems weaken, the feeling of I AM NOT WANTED HERE increases and people start looking out. (BTW I am talking here of the average worker and not the low performing unproductive person.)
This feeling of I AM WANTED is so crucial that the other two are derivations from this one principle in my opinion.
COMPENSATION
I have always believed in the axiom that “You are Happy in the Absolute and Miserable in Comparison”. Compensation is a toy in the hands of the Comparison demon. In actual fact we probably need much less than our current pay to live well. If Green Earth people have their way we should all get back to living on farms and growing our own food in which case we can do with even lesser pay. :-)
Humour apart, the general fact is that absolute compensation, unless it really impacts a person’s life adversely, is never a trigger for a person to start looking out. Otherwise why do people work for tiny start ups or NGOs where they are paid far less than “market” and yet work long hours and demonstrate deep ownership in the discharge of their responsibilities?
How do we control the working of this aspect on a team member? How do we help him / her handle the comparison demon? I believe if we have created sufficient WANTEDNESS, compensation is not as high a priority to the extent you are seen to be fair. When we stretch the rubber band on the WANTEDNESS bit and allow it to snap, an otherwise balanced individual starts reaching out to seek it outside and the compensation demon raises its ugly head.
TARGETS
This seems like an absurd ask in today’s dog eat dog, QoQ competitive world. People may ask – “How can any job not have a target? Today every job has to have a target!!”
What the MBA students are perhaps implying when they refer to a no target job is one where there is no Damocles sword hanging over your head every minute all ready to chop it off if you fail. If you analyze this a bit more, it relates very closely with the “I AM WANTED” need.
Again have you noticed the core set of people in any company that I talked of earlier? Targets don’t bother them at all because they seem so secure in themselves. And you know what, most times they do end up meeting their targets anyway.
Are they secure because they are sure of meeting targets or are they meeting targets because they are secure? Question to reflect on!!!
Lately I have read HBR articles that have focused on the aspect of leaders focusing on customer service and employee engagement over fiscal numbers and metrics. Leaders that have pursued this have reaped the added benefit of improved productivity and bottom line despite not focusing overtly on it, these articles say.
I am not sure if most companies have taken this path though. From what I have seen of most companies the pendulum swings wildly from cuddling to cutting depending on the state of the market.
Of course we have this famous saying that folks never leave a company, they leave a boss!!! And at the root of this is the inability of the supervisor to make the team FEEL WANTED!!
_________________________________________________________________________
SUBSCRIBE to my newsletter - The Corporate Karma Guide if you wish to be notified about future posts.
Follow me on Twitter @krishg40