Change of Corporate America
Thoughts:
Society has gotten a bit ahead of itself in respect to prestige, title, degree, etc. Corporate America has become rigid in these "must haves" that is then pushed up against tenure and amount of time spent in previous role(s).
We shouldn't forget that degrees and titles are just vehicles or representations (supposed) of the development, of your mind. We forget what a degree represents, it represents cognitive development and knowledge gained, based on that specific school and degree program.
I understand the idea of starting at the bottom and then growing vertically in a linear fashion based on performance. That whole concept, I understand and I'm not arguing against that.
What I'm arguing is that corporate America (and the West in general) move to a more flexible model that places professionals in their deserved place within the organizational hierarchy based on hard skills, soft skills, and a perceived confidence metric system based on peers. When a person actually has the skills to manage a team and could do a better job of the existing leader(s), why shouldn't they be able to inhabit that position? Or at least interview for it. Corporate America still bends itself on years of experience expended in prior positions, prior titles, degree's, etc. Especially with the boom of the internet and the access most people have (with an internet connected device), the "gig learning ecosystem" is very much as real as the "gig economy." People are constantly researching, reading, studying materials, through a multitude of means, maybe they have something to offer above what is currently being offered. With such a dynamic and rapid changing economy, this will help create more agile organizations to produce alpha.
Am I crazy? Add your thoughts on this.
To rephrase what’s been said, the question is really “why does corporate America uphold seniority of age over other ‘meritocratic’ metrics?” There are a variety of reasons for this, which are described below:
1. Many people are wired to find meritocratic structures demotivating. You can see this in the way people are paid. Only salespeople and CEOs are really paid on the basis of targets (stock options or cash or what have you). Most other people want straight cash and a predictable salary. They don’t want to compete with other people in a meritocracy. The Welchian “cut the bottom 10% no matter what” has been shown to be a very toxic and destructive way of running a business, despite the meritocratic rationale.
2. Meritocracies can create perverse incentives and lead to excess. Enron was a very meritocratic entity. It had very well defined performance targets and people met them. The rockstars who followed the rules were quickly promoted faster than people who were older. You had 20-somethings on the commodities trading desk who were running the Death Star scheme and killing it on salary. Is this the entity you want? It’s peak meritocracy.
3. Meritocracy is bad for retention. Let’s say you have a geezer who’s fairly good at their job, but there’s a younger rockstar in the group who’s way better. Is it really so awful to let the geezer keep a higher title in name while you quietly pay the rockstar more and he follows the traditional line of progression title-wise. I don’t think that sounds too awful. Not recognizing the talent outright would be bad, but I don’t think titles are everything. If you promoted the rockstar over the geezer, you might lose the geezer for no good reason despite them still being a good employee. It can be bad politics to always promote the young rockstars. At a certain point, you have to pick the best spot on a scale from Japanese unfireable salaryman to Jack Welch’s perform in the top nine deciles or I’m canning your ***. I think either one can get really bad.
Happy to explore more if you want.
Lol, I heard about the Enron scandal but I did not know they named their criminal schemes "Death Star", "Fat Boy", "Ricochet", "Black Widow", and "Bigfoot".😂😂 What a bunch of assholes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_(business)
Then all the special purpose vehicles like Chewco and Jedi. Say what you want about them, they had some fun names for things.
Yes, that is essentially what I'm arguing against and for... a meritocratic system that looks more to knowledge and definitive skills, rather than senority, age, time spent within organization. Let's explore. Pay does not have to be classical "performance based" or "incentive driven" as you mentioned stock options, sales roles, etc. Tht's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is most organizations would be best off organizing their people based on a pre-determined definitive skillset for the role in question and take seniority or age with less emphasis on the qualification of said role.
What do you think? Let's explore
Glad to know I’ve understood you well. We really have to separate out two things here:
1. Modality of rewards. Cash, equity, hookers, blow, perquisites. I don’t really care about this piece for this conversation.
2. Method or formula for calculating #1. This can be straight salary based on how many times a rock has gone around a flaming ball of hydrogen gas. This can be based on sales targets. It can be based on reviews with colleagues (this sounds the closest to what you’re suggesting). Reviews with colleagues where they assess your strengths and weaknesses is very qualitative and difficult for objectivity. Are we introducing issues of discrimination here? What happens if you don’t like someone because they didn’t go to a fancy school? Is this meritocratic? Are we introducing issues with politics here? Is the workplace more Machiavelli’s Prince or The Three Musketeers (all for one and one for all)? Qualitative reviews can get bad, particularly in larger organizations. These are important questions that may lead you to feel less confident that this idea is best. Be cautious.
Yes.
You're on the right track here. What if (and there are starups pursuing this currently) candidates were given a sort of game or test, to assess one's ability to best do the job at hand and then looked to leadership potentiality based on prior experiences, both within and abroad, the current organization?
What I'm advocating for here is the breakdown of the seniority tenure walls that assume that a person with the most years is best suited for the position. Now, oftentimes in the workforce years of experience does in fact produce the best candidate for that next level role, but that's not always the case. Some people have incredible industry knowledge but then get into management and suffer in strategic planning, direction, managing other people.
I love your philosophical and historical intertwining's but let's stay laser focused and see if we can further reason this out. Hit me Kelly
Your enthusiasm is… palpable. I’ll hit you as best I can. What you’ve proposed is basically a 3rd-party version of the colleague reviews, accomplished with quantitative tests that aim to measure qualitative attributes for good leadership. Temporarily ignoring the validity of those assessments, I think 3rd-party consultants are often a great way of sucking the politics out of things. “You suck at managing, grandpa” turns into “BCG thinks you suck at managing, grandpa,” which may be more palatable or less easily disputed after the fact. That’s all tenable stuff. My problem then becomes the validity of these tests. How do you test for leadership? How do you test past performance or experience? Interview people? Take the candidate’s word for it? How are we measuring this?
You’ve offered a less political way of doing things, but you just have to have validity here.
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