1. Inequality in ability is a natural state of existence? True or false?
2. An employees value is, to a large extent, determined by their
performance? True or false?
3. Not all employee are equally valuable to their employer? True or false?
4. Each person is ultimately responsible for their own competency and
their own learning? True or false?
My position is not intended to demean the greatness of human potential.
Indeed, my point is that each of us is responsible for achieving our
fullest potential, and the degree to which we do that determines our value
in various contexts. Business is an excellent environment in which to
discover, express, and explore our own inherent greatness.
Furthermore it is not my position that we should intentionally make work
uncomfortable, as I was accused of doing last night. It is simply my
position that we should recognize that there are differences in
performance between employees, and those differences do impact the value
of each employee. To try to skirt that fact is to make work even more
uncomfortable than it would be otherwise.
And, in closing, I thought I'd list a few things where we do make "value"
judgments through "ranking" performance:
1- Lovers. Many people rank their lovers. Some lovers satisfy needs and
desires better than others. Not all lovers are equally good.
2- Friendship. We each have friends that are congruent with our own likes
and dislikes. We value some friends more than others. Not everyone is a
our best friend.
3- Sports. Some people are better atheletes than others. Not everyone who
wants to play professional sports is good enough to do it.
4- Performing arts. Not everyone can be an opera singer. I know I could
never do it, no matter how much I wanted to (honestly I don't want to, so
I don't lose sleep over it.)
5- Hiring. Why do we chose to employ A over B? Because we perceive A to be
more valuable.
The list could go on and on. The list points out two very clear facts: a)
not everyone has the same ability, b) one's ability does determine their
value in the environment where that ability counts. Hence there is a
natural ranking, according to value. The question is will we recognize
this, and use it to our benefit, or will we spend huge amounts of time and
money trying to get around a natural fact?
-- Benjamin Compton DWS -- "The GroupWise Integration Experts" (617) 267-0044 ext. 16 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>