Connections
Community of Adults
Tamara J. Erickson, 03-14-2010
What if you turned your human resource processes inside out this year? Encouraged people to work as much or as little as they feel is necessary to accomplish the task at hand? Left it to employees to get feedback on their work, if and when they want it? Even let employees set their own compensation?
For most of us, these examples probably seem like an invitation for chaos. But each is already an active, successful practice in some organizations today. And all reflect an overall movement toward what I call a “community of adults” organizational philosophy.
A community of adults philosophy recasts the employment relationship from one of paternalistic care to adult choice. It moves away from the idea that the boss is better able to balance the needs of the individual with those of the organization — and discards the underlying adversarial notion that it is impossible for individuals to make win-win choices for themselves and the business. Perhaps most importantly, it moves from a one-size-fits-all approach to one that recognizes multiple dimensions of diversity in today’s workforce.
This recasting of the relationship between individuals and organizations is coming, driven in large part by the nature of the work beginning to dominate the economy. Knowledge work — demanding innovation, collaboration and individual initiative — is the fastest-growing category of work today. Individuals in these roles flourish under conditions that are different than those that drive success in repetitive, process-based work. Process-based work is about tasks performed consistently and reliably, often in the same place at the same time. Managers judge performance through in-process inspection.
The conditions that encourage successful knowledge work are different. Here, workers rely on their accumulated knowledge and experience to create — to invent, to share relevant information, to delight customers. This work often can be done virtually and asynchronously, in part because managers’ in-process observations have limited value. Quality is assessed after completion. Managers can’t force people to do these tasks well or even determine if they are being done well while the work is under way.
Knowledge work requires individual responsibility and high levels of discretionary effort. It asks individuals to make smart decisions and invest creative energy — to behave as adults. Work is less about conforming to a single way and more about independent, adult decisions and actions. Acceptance of a more diverse range of choices is implicit.
That requires a change in our management philosophy. Remember telling a child to “act like an adult if you want to be treated like an adult”? The same is certainly true in the inverse — companies that want to encourage discretionary, adult behavior must relate to those doing the work as adults.
A simple example of a practice that exemplifies a community of adults is offering a menu of benefit options and letting employees choose those that they prefer. But what would it look like if one went further?
Further along the spectrum might include encouraging employees to own their own feedback process. For example, a social network tool called Rypple allows employees to identify people they trust and whose opinions they value — and request feedback from these individuals as frequently as they like. The approach has great appeal to younger employees who like the opportunity to receive frequent feedback, but the philosophy behind the approach is what I most admire: It asks adults to assume responsibility for their own feedback and learning.
Going even further, Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco and author of The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works, argues that well-informed employees are in the best position to determine their own compensation. Semco has a program called Up ‘n’ Down Pay in which employees manage their own pay, flexibly. The company has found that individuals almost always do so fairly based on the information they are provided regarding compensation levels for comparable jobs in the company or industry — in part because their choices will need to withstand the scrutiny of colleagues. In Semler’s mind, this approach not only produces a fair outcome, but also allows managers to focus on work that really counts.
Semler points out, “Thirty percent of all issues in organizations are what I call boarding school issues: rewards, punishments, how to dress, what time to show up, how to address superiors, how to behave properly.” He advocates turning these decisions over to the individual adults who work in the organization.
So do I. «
Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and expert on organizations, innovation and talent. She is the author of What’s Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead and Getting the Career You Want. She can be reached at editor@diversity-executive.com.
