I've had several very thoughtful messages from people, and so I've decided
to resubscribe. In another message I'll explain in more detail why I
unsubscribed.
In response to Eric Budd who wrote:
"It makes as much sense to rank people as it does to rank components of
your automobile."
I would say, there are a number of significant differences between the
components of an automobile and employees. The foremost difference being
volition. An employ can increase or decrease their performance on their
own, without any external influence or power. My automobile cannot do
either without me pressing the accelerater. And, as a corollary, an
employee is capable of internal motivation while a car inanimate and
therefore incapable of being motivated by anything - - internal and
external to it.
An employee can respond to different performance rewards and incentives in
a rational way, while my automobile is never rewarded for its performance.
The reason for ranking employees is to 1) determine the value of each
employee, 2) create competition between employees. Both of these are
critical to the long-term success of any business.
If a business doesn't know who the most valuable employees are, how are
they to reward people based on performance? And if employees aren't
rewarded for their performance, then what are they rewarded for? Rewarding
people based on subjective criteria increases the risk that a business
will behave in unethical ways (I define unethical, in this context, as
rewarding someone for something they have not done). Furthermore, if
employees aren't ranked how are they to know if they need to improve their
skills or increase their knowledge so they can become more valuable to the
company?
Most people respond to competition. In the face of competition a person is
faced with two choices: Compete as hard as you can, or get off the playing
field. That is the whole premise of a business: Compete with other
businesses, and if you can no longer compete find another business to go
into. Why should the same principle not apply to employees? As employees
compete for the value they give their employer the business as a whole
increases it's competitiveness. What better way to encourage learning than
to have people compete with one another based on their knowledge and
skill?
Competition is a natural principle that has universal application. Instead
of fighting it, why not leverage it?
-- Benjamin Compton DWS Computer Consultants "The GroupWise Integration Experts" E-Mail: bcompton@emailsolutions.com http://www.emailsolutions.comLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>