Earning Motivation and POWER- Empower
Maverick, allow employees to choose anything and everything related to work? It's not your money anyway that doesn’t mean you talk rubbish, come in and see it all.
People get mad when one speaks about given power to employees because time and again all principles have thought us how to increase productivity by doing bringing in standardization, control, time and work et al. However basic assumption is employee productivity has a cap and getting from current level to cap has very lagging movement between control/standardization making it single biggest problem in management world.
How about turning the assumption on its head? Let’s read on
So, problem at hand is, how do you bring in choice with respect to work? can I chose my work? Can I choose my department? Can I choose my boss? Can I choose my salary? Can I choose my reward? Can I choose my contribution?.................in just one word
How can you
make me spoilt for choice at my work space
just as I am spoilt for choice in say a Marks and Spencers or Walmart.......
lets explore together
Magic Wand ? Dare I say so
OK we spoke of spinning assumptions about productivity over its head so what is this now......let us say productivity of an employee is infinite and it gets "in-tangible" after a certain threshold ...........ok now if this is hypothesis then testing this hypothesis would result in say our new EMPOWEMENT (Earn your Motivation and POWER) let’s find out. However, spare me from a standard testing of this hypothesis for one no Ki-Squares etc.
Assume every role in a organization has a "holder" and "contributor" now Holder is our normal employee in some sense who holds the first responsibility of that role why contributor is his challenger or supporter or a pure maverick with earth shaking ideas the way you want to see it but for all purposes a enthusiastic role .
So by very nature this enthusiastic role is purely optional to be taken by employees who feel they can contribute and hence our "Holder" is irrespective of one or more "contributors" to put is simply, take out contributor and this organization becomes like any other organization today.
So these contributors roles are open, unlimited and any employee who feels has expertise/idea/interest/can contribute to some other role, first assume turn "contributor " despite being a "holder" of something else. So either he just gives his idea and leaves to other role or makes a road map and leave or decides to become a "holder" for this new role to actually see it implemented.
This I think forms broad framework of what I would like to place as "Holder-Contributor" work place model which gives everyone a freedom to choose his role and also comfort to management that he has been proven and tested before he moves into his role of choice.
If such innovative work leads to additional stream of revenue or any cost saving then company would keep a share and rest is provided to contributor who is originator in first place with a major share and "holder:" a minor share as an incentive to incentive for having guided/encouraged/helped "contributor"
Practical impact for one is a fine balance between management's worries and employee’s fancies. While as an employee I can even chose to be a "contributor" to the role of CEO himself while management gets to harness and put to test and even monetize the ideating power of their employees.
While employees know that they are now only limited by their imagination and nothing else management on other hand can only get genuine things flown as employees have taken first initiative to prove himself in his area of choice while current work still holds god and he continues to be rated/ranked and paid based on what he "holds"
Employees other hand can put a value to their "contributions or ideas" beyond the call of their duty and can in turn earn smart rewards both financially and career wise. It will also help them explore how serious they are about their ideas and realistic it is to contribute in some other area.
Challenges could be many, to start with there could be huge rush which might taper down as people realize the essence of their interests and extent of their possible contribution till then for sure it would be nightmarish, This can be partially hedged by phase wise implementation as groups of employees can be asked to register and first 100 could get a chance at first go and so on. Also some filtering in terms of a presentation by interested people could be thought of but that should not be a must. This is because if I have genuine interest but need to know more before I can document or present my thoughts then this should still be encouraged.
Next would be time both holder and contributor would spend. This would be a big issue. While Contributors can be asked to do their part out of normal working hours (as they are trying to fancy their interest to start with) and some point based evaluation can be thought of based on which they may "earn" to use some of their office time to pursue this as they go along. This would be a win-win for organization and associate
However, Holder may not have any incentive to start with (however if something gets successful he would get a share remember?) and may not be ready to do anything after office hours. So this could get tricky until contributor gets to know more insights and comes out with a good presentation which can seek buy-in from Holder, so this is a challenge that contributor has to take come, probably with some kind of moderation allowed just to ensure holder does not feel threatened of his job being impacted and starts shooting-off everything.
Single most challenge lies in buy-in of holder's an there comes organization’s role to ensure holder are best as of date and that’s why they are holders and they can try to pursue common goals of excellence with help of real contributors which would be a win-win situation.
First step is to have an open communication system a.k.a Facebook inside the organization where people team up to discuss their interests and throw their ideas and some more who would respond. Example if I am in finance and have a good idea to be shared with marketing team I would do so on this system and marketing team would respond and this starts the process of match making of holders and contributors
Next provide a platform where things become interesting to take it offline and some evaluation and process oriented platform for people to start working hands-on
Next is of course phases of evaluation and buy-in where cross functional teams may have to participate and look at benefiting from idea, either for societal, organizational, individual or national and decide on recognition and rewards (some common framework will have to be spelt out to start with )
Self and all the books I have read and all the peopel I have met in my life.
Nothing as of now :) just a wil idea
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