Building In Flow- Hire Hard, Manage Easy!

My colleague made a great point about contributors in his post last week. As a practicing HR executive and consultant for over 30 years it has been amazing to see that most organizations squander a tremendous amount of resource- the 80% of a workforce that resides between the top performers and the folks we should move up or out. How many of us really spend time focusing on that group?

Daniel Pink, in his book, Drive, describes the phenomenon of "Flow". As Pink describes it flow is that place where your objectives and effort are perfectly synchronized. You have the ability to get immediate feedback without unnecessary external feedback and there is just the right tension between effort and ability. When you are in flow you are engaged fully in the activity. Pink and others including Seth Godin describe that as a big part of the Industrial Revolution we deleted flow from the mix. We didn't want employees distracted by looking for flow. We wanted to break things down to be simple and repetitive. That makes it easy and cheap to recreate the activity. The value of the labor content goes down and the "owner" enjoys the margin. You exchange personal competency for "security". Almost all of our educational and training systems are based on this model. When you control the economy or the balance of economic power this works pretty well.

The alternative to this model is building in engagement. Engagement requires recognizing things like organizational and individual values and synchronizing them. It requires a whole different way of hiring and training. Most hiring protocols focus a lot about things like KSA's- or knowledge, skills, and abilities. With the advent of the ADA or American's with Disabilities Act, we added a whole new level of psychological and verbal proctology with excruciating descriptions of the work environment and physical and mental capabilities. It doesn't talk about congruency, or values, or fit. I find most to be terribly two dimensional.

The statistics on turnover in the U.S. alone are horrendous. Estimates range as high as $5 trillion annually. Employee dissatisfaction is at historic highs with 55% of employees indicating discontent with their current job. The "efficiency" of the U.S. economy is estimated at 30%, and that was pre-recession. The biggest reasons for turnover and lost productivity are organizational "fit" and poor management.

A recent study I encountered says that our current approach to training has us spending $100 billion annually with less than 10% of the "training" translating into long term or sustained job performance.

Alternatively engaged organizations enjoy advantages in almost every key performance indicator including productivity, profitability, and sustainability. Their turnover rates are also much lower. Engaged organizations build flow in to their processes. They start with who they hire and then reinforce their values and culture throughout the rest of their "systems". They hire and reinforce contribution as a core value.

If you are a CEO, organizational leader, or an HR person tasked with the attraction and retention of talent to sustain your organization I would suggest you ask yourself some questions:

• Am I addressing flow in my hiring and selection at all?
• Am I trying to "bolt it on" if I am not building it in?
• What would our organization and bottom line look like if 80% of our staff were experiencing flow?

I believe top performing organizations hire and manage for flow. What do you think?