> Well, my belief is that a company is well justified to decide that it's
> not worth investing in the development of someone IF that person does not
> have the abilities or the willingness to do so. There are a lot of
> competent people out there that can be hired and become contributors to
> the organization a lot faster and at a much lower cost.
Christian, your comment triggered a thought (it was probably there all the
time, but hidden): that which is going on in the world of downsizing seems
to be similar, if not identical, to what most businesses have been doing
with "hard" or permanent investment resources forever. Personnel
downsizing appears to be a logical extension of traditional business
resource planning / project analysis / performance improvement / etc. So
what's new?
We humans have a hard time when it appears our contributions are compared
with those of a computer chip or a program to optimize production
scheduling, for example. Being human, performing a particular task within
a range of agreed-to possibilities places us directly in competition not
only with
"a lot of competent people out there that can be hired and become
contributors to the organization a lot faster and at a much lower cost",
but also with inanimate systems that perform tasks many of us were trained
and/or developed skills to perform alone or in collaboration with others.
And then there's outsourcing where companies have come to recognize they
may not have a competitive edge with their existing personnel - either
workers or managers - and decided to hand over certain responsibilities to
"outsiders" to perform many tasks that were previously thought only
belonged to "insiders".
Side-stepping the moral and ethical issues with this - our - behavior, few
successful organizations keep a piece of equipment when it's past its
prime - i.e. when it can't become a competitive contributor - or when a
new cost-effective substitute is available. We humans have fared better:
maintaining our positions in organizations sometimes for reasons other
than for our competitive competence. Now the options for effective human
resources are not only the individuals listed in one's local newspaper,
but those advertising their services from all over the planet on the
internet.
As you imply, Christian, the model for human resources is changing
"especially in a world of accelerated complexity...." with more and more
emphasis on performance compared to whatever are the known and available
alternatives. If there ever was a case to be made for self-learning aimed
a helping (1) individuals continually increase their capacity (2) to
produce (tangible) results (3) that they really care about, it's now.
We're no longer a protected species.
Regards,
Terry Priebe
Decision Support Associates, Inc.
http://www.de-sa.com
--Terry Priebe <insight@dca.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>