Don't get used to it...

Honestly, I won't be coming back twice a day on a regular basis, although posting at my every whim is extremely attractive to me the fact is that I do have to do other things, if I didn't have to do other things it wouldn't have taken me this long to start a blog in the first place (right?).

More on that "reverse mortgaging" of careers. Here's what I see. Companies tout their advancement and retention policies to recruit people. People eagerly apply for jobs, the business grows, more jobs, more applicants, more new employees as this is happening the company itself becomes more desirable to work for making retention easier and easier. Now people are there for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and more and their expectation is to advance through the ranks and the company feeds that expectation and encourages employees to expect advancement and to work towards the advancement. What if an employer offered employees the opportunity to reverse mortgage their career? What if you could honestly say that you've gotten as high in the organization as you want to go but you still want to work and actively contribute and be respected for your longevity? Wouldn't it be great to walk into a goal setting meeting and say that you were happy right where you were and wanted to propose ways that you could contribute more from the perspective of long-term company knowledge? Oh wouldn't honesty be great?

The Gore-Tex company is often cited as a model of a well run company. There are many business school examples based on Gore-Tex but the question that I've never gotten an answer to is "why isn't this model implemented everywhere?" From what I recall they have no titles they are all "team members" they become a "leader" when their team makes them a leader by natural selection and leadership traits. You can choose the team you want to work with. Studying this model over and over again in different courses has led me to think about it quite a bit as I look at the day-to-dayness of corporate America in the news.

Ever notice that the least important jobs range from approximately Associate Director (or some equivalent) to somewhere just below VP? Think about where you work (if it's a corporate job) the higher managers hold the least value. If you're a "worker bee" at a manager or below level or some sort of specialist, think about the people one or two levels above you; if they were gone how much of a negative impact would it have on actually getting the work done? My guess, NONE! Think about it for a while and really give some thought to what some of these people do, from my window into that world what I see is the people occupying those levels are the ones who are most viciously positioning themselves to acquire more power.

Life imitates video games.

What does a director do (or an Associate Director, an Assistant Director, a Sr. Director, Sr. Assoc. Director, Exec. Director, Sr. Exec. Director...I could go on but you get the picture)? They don't actually DO the work; they negotiate with other people in the organization for whatever will get them more power to advance to the next round. Very often they are far removed from the actual work being done because that has diminished in importance for them and been replaced with the need to create political liaisons internally and wrest work, power and/or recognition for themselves. How sad really. How exhausting...work, just WORK is so much easier to deal with.

But this speaks to the "team" environment. No one wants to intentionally do a bad job (or at least MOST people don't) so if everyone was told that they should pick a team and work on it and that's how they would be judged instead of being judged by a superior questing for power it would be even greater incentive to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job.

Imagine that the head of your company brought everyone into a room tomorrow (or Tuesday for those of you that have tomorrow off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and told you that he/she had ordered new business cards for everyone and everyone's title was now the same...Team Member. That's it, no flowery title just "Team Member". You would retain your pay level because you clawed your way there, you earned it through longevity or perseverance but you would no longer know what someone was by their title.

You would no longer report into a manager but your contributions would be judged and governed by your other team members and HR would be there to intervene in a really dicey situation. You would not plan your goals each year and be reviewed with harsh or flowery language by someone who holds your fate in their hands but would be subject to what your team members thought of you. You could opt to move on from your team if things weren't working out with that team.

This person is also going to tell you that while you were off enjoying your weekend all the offices had been dismantled and team areas had been created instead. There would be no need for offices because there's no more direct reports, no more "confidential" meetings, etc.

Where would you fall in this? Would you be happy? Scared? Relieved? Excited? Challenged? Disgusted? Would you be one of the displaced powerful or one of the newly empowered team members? Would you work with more dedication? Feel more vested in your job?

When I think like this it makes it difficult to believe that everyone doesn't see this but it also begs the question of the human need to exert power over other humans. We claim to be the most evolved species but I think we're fooling ourselves. Thoughts from the universe?