Take on the risk


This is something I have been advocating for years , whether the conditions are boom or bust. Too many good people have been lost from organisations because they were denied an opportunity of promotion or of a new assignment when they knew they were ready, but the company did not. Those words, ˜You're doing a great job Sally, but let's review your next step in another 12 months,' might sound reasonable to a manager. But it translates to Sally as, ˜We really don't think you are good enough for that promotion/assignment, maybe we'll look at it again in a year or so.' Sally goes home, the headhunter calls and it's all over bar the leaving party.

As several senior managers who ˜get it' have told me, ˜Your concerns about moving them up are never matched by the company that wants to hire them. 'Use them or lose them' becomes the watchword.'

Having said that, there is the opposite risk too. Pushing too hard and forcing someone to stretch the envelope of experience and responsibility beyond where they are really comfortable - making the workstyle you have chosen dominate the employee's lifestyle. This is almost always bound to fail. The employee will be under pressure (pressure that he or she has not created and is not in control of), and their performance will consequently suffer. When lifestyle and workstyle get into conflict, instead of co-existing there has to be a breakdown somewhere. Often this situation occurs because senior managers (with successful careers under their belt) fail to grasp the fact that not everyone wants to be promoted or manage others. They are very, very happy doing a job they like. They are committed, engaged and most often respect the firm for allowing them to do what they want - live their lifestyle inside your workstyle. To meddle with that is to court disaster. This does mean that developing different career tracks inside a business makes a lot of sense, so you can accommodate all those different lifestyles that people bring to work with them every day. Accommodate your employees ' lives (think back to that table in Chapter 1) by getting what you want and what they want into synergy. It is possible to have their goals and your goals running in parallel.




The New Rules of Engagement(c) Life-Work Balance and Employee Commitment
Performance Tuning for Linux(R) Servers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 131

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