I think some corporations are in serious jeopardy.
The problem is that the intent of employees to perform on a job and earn a living for themselves doesn’t follow output toward the benefit of the company. In other words, most employees really don’t care about the companies they work for and their only objective is just to hold on to their jobs.
What is the benefit to the company? Nothing!
Ironically, it’s really not the employees fault – it’s 100% on the way companies are structured and the philosophies by which they deliver services that is driving incorrect employee behavior – and the inability for companies to grow and shrink organically according to the market and putting employees on the edge to perform. It’s not a win-win for both the employee and company – it’s a win-loss.
One BIG problem we are facing today is that managers hire based on inherent needs of companies rather than long-term vision. Employees really don’t have a long-term vision of how their work is going to impact the long-term vision of the company. From janitors to executives to middle managers – if you don’t know where you are going, you will just be fire-fitting real-time events – rather than working toward long-term vision while at the same time overcoming near-term struggles by eliminating those issues creating the firefights.
There is a huge discrepancy that corporations have in terms of the BIG VISION they want employees to work toward and near term real-time events. This discrepancy is what is screwing up so many companies. Immediate inherent needs are driven by some sort of stimulus put on a business process that has an impact to resources (e.g., people), activities (e.g., internal actions), and systems (e.g., applications). The reason why impact is inherent is that it is point in time – most likely right now – largely driven by where attention (e.g, mission needs) in an organization is being placed and where attention is being delivered (e.g. what the customer-base wants).
Yes, we need to hire based on immediate needs but the ship needs to set sail in a particular direction regardless. So many public and private organizations are just dily-dallying around where they THINK they should go, rather than where they REALLY need to go. The vision is all you need to get people going and to continuously make it clear what their path is. Through the vision, every employee needs to answer WHY they are in the company and HOW they will meet the vision while at the same time meeting short-term suspense deadlines.
When companies fail to determine where they really need to place attention in terms of long-term vision – they fail and employees win. Why? Because a company’s existence is predicated on near term actions that take them into the future.
People generally get hired based on changing needs and wants of companies driven by the “market.” This is essentially the platform that drives business flow (supply and demand). I know this sounds so darn cliché – but hear me out. Unlike elastic technologies (e.g., cloud computing) that can be increased or decreased based on demand – it is impossible for organizations to keep up with growth and decline organically. When demand is high, they fall short because they don’t have sound resources to produce results quickly – hence missing out on equity. When demand is short, they end up losing revenue as overhead dollars are paying for non-productive employees.The truth is that this is happening all over the world – it’s the mismanagement of corporate demand exceptions and the where and when, and how employees need to be used.This model sucks for those employees in Jobs where they are “drinking out of the firehose” – jobs that are organically driven to accept demand – and survive – for example like shipping warehouses where objects need to move quickly, hotel lobbies where lines need to move quickly, sandwich shops where edible concoctions need to be constructed quickly, and pizza services where food needs to be delivered quickly. The processes are fairly clean, repetitive, and the mission is clear. In these cases service needs to be delivered in real-time and needs to be excellent for organizations to survive. The value chain from entry to exit needs to be superb. Any breakdown in business processes and the business goes into jeopardy. These organizations are driven by employees where they are actually working (producing) and this work equals pay.What we need to understand is the difference between Presence and Performance. In some organizations presence is vital toward performance. In others, if you are really lucky there really is not correlation between the two – you can essentially be present, and not perform. This is great for those organizations that are dependent on a pool of money to survive – for example – allocation of funds from one department to another or within government. Once the funds are allocated – you are set to do whatever you want whenever – and it is even better in government organizations where there are no widgets that need to be produced.
In essence: the presence of these employees is directly attributable to the sustainability of the company. In other words – time and effort spent in the company by the employee provides direct output in terms of performance. What sucks is that a dollar earned by everyone is not the same. Some people are continuously working 8 hours, pushing hard to drive the business, to earn less than someone who is clocking in 8 hours and not doing much toward the business. It’s a function of product demand.
In other organizations time equals pay. What this means is that service delivery is non-existent or the customer is unclear. This is great for those who land in jobs here as their worth is not measured by-product but by presence. In other words – just show up and you will be get paid – because things are so unclear, processes are broken, and the market is unknown. This is great when you receive a pool of money and it’s unclear by the provisioning organization how the money needs to be used. You can essentially waste time and money and still get your bills paid. This is called landing on the gold mine.
One problem that we are encountering at work is that the best practices of incorporating 8 hour days is the incorrect measuring stick for paying employees. It is the industry that drives pay and hours. In many public organizations, employees don’t really need to do much as there is no widget production. In those industries that are creation-driven (i.e., car production, manufacturing, etc.) there is much more “wear and tear” on the human body. The funny thing is that as no calorie from one food product is equal to another, no dollar that an employee earns is really equal to another employee. The sweat that one puts in to earn a dollars varies significantly from EACH employee – it is driven as a function of the marketplace they are in and supply and demand. Corporations like Amazon, Zappos, Apple, IBM, etc. survive on supple and demand by the external marketplace (i.e., customers). Government agency survive based on dollar allocations – what is available – driven by an internal marketplace (i.e., other government agencies, government employees, citizens).
If only companies would learn to control demand efficiently. Companies have a long way to go to figure out the right formula but the more organically transformative they are, the greater the chance for them to be inorganic.
Here is the idea: Companies need to continuously evaluate business processes that drive results and see how many employees are needed to drive results. They need to do this whether they are private or public companies. They need to have a clear vision and need to make sure intended results to be produced are known. The demand of the market is driven by the number of people. As processes shrink so do people. You need to be able to grow and expand by the business process driven by the long-term vision as well as short-term demand.
Figure this formula out and it can be a win-win for the company and employee.