In a recent issue of People Management Magazine,
I was reading an article by Margaret Heffernan, a self-styled entrepreneur and
successful CEO. I started doing some research on her and have very quickly
become a fan and devotee of her world view. Partly because I genuinely believe
in her People First philosophy, and partly because growing up in a money
obsessed 80’s sales operation where you really were only as good as your last
deal, I had lived and experienced many of the situations she talks about. Most
powerful for me was her TED Talk called “Forget the Pecking Order at Work”. If you have not
seen this and you work in a large traditional hierarchical organisation, you
should do so immediately if not sooner.
She starts by describing an experiment
conducted by evolutionary biologist William Muir who wanted to study
productivity. Obviously in chickens it’s easy as all you need to do is count
the eggs. He created two flocks, an ordinary, average one and a second one
consisting of highly individually productive chickens, Heffernan calls them
“Super Chickens.” After six generations he compared the results and found that
the average flock’s egg production had increased and the birds themselves were
happy and productive. When he looked at the Super Chicken flock, all except three
were dead. They had pecked the rest to death. The individually productive birds
were only able to achieve success by suppressing the productivity of the rest. The
intent of the story is to highlight the danger of creating organisations along
the Super Chicken model. In so many aspects of daily life we see where this
model does not work. I’m sure that any football fan can tell you what will
happen if there are too many super stars in one team all going for individual
glory rather than collaborating for success.
And yet despite all evidence, many
traditional hierarchical organisations still insist on conforming to this
notion that the more superstars they have, the more productive and better they
will be. The vocabulary and terminology may have changed; in the past they were
known as Super Stars, today we refer to them as Talent and many organisations
invest heavily in the acquisition, development and fast tracking of these
special people to fulfill tomorrow’s organizational strategy while up to 80% of
the other lesser mortal employees (the plodders) are supposed to watch and
admire and in many cases aspire to be more like their Super Chicken colleagues.
I have to smile inwardly when I look back
at the early days of my own career in sales, before moving into HR and L&D,
because I was a Super Chicken. I was a bright young thing fresh from university
full of bravado and false confidence and highly competitive, in other words –
the perfect 80's sales person. I achieved early success and was twice promoted
beyond my capabilities. Whilst I still achieved my individual targets and won
many awards, the rest of my team suffered because as we know with Super
Chickens, come Super Egos. I cringe when I think back of the damage I caused
early on due to my own lack of consideration and collaboration with my team. Despite
this I was still able to win awards and accolades due to the organisation’s continued
fixation on individual achievements and success.
What pleased me a great deal was HR
Magazine’s Katie Jacobs’ article on New Model Leaders: How leadership is
changing (September 2014) where Professor Cliff Oswick of Cass Business school
states: “the days of the ‘rock star’ CEO are behind us. We don't need leaders
who demonstrate ‘strong leadership’. We need people who are inclusive,
reflective and facilitate the ideas of others” In other words: Super Chickens
are out, Super Collaborators are in.
Part of the problem is the high financial
reward companies give to their Super Stars by way of recognizing their
contribution. We see extreme examples of this in the financial sector where all
good Super Stars wait in anticipation for their fabled end of year bonuses. A
refreshing change to this is practiced in the Channel Islands law firm: Carey
Olsen where Simon Nas the HR Director says in a CIPD podcast on Performance
Management regarding their appraisal system: “we have decoupled it from any
aspect of reward or ranking…we want the appraisal to be about relating.” In my
opinion this is the beginning of the end of the Super Chicken Syndrome.
More and more I am seeing organisations that
have evolved a flatter more team based structure where every voice is valued
and success is shared across the whole organisation, effectively breaking down
internal competitiveness and corporate silo’ism while at the same time
increasing shared communication and inter departmental cooperation to create a
far more productive and future proof working environment for their employees.
As Margaret Heffernan says at the end of
her talk: “We won’t solve our problems if we expect them to be solved by a few
Super Men or Super Women. Now we need everyone because it is only when we
accept that everybody has value that we will liberate the energy and imagination
and momentum we need to create the best beyond measure.”
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