It was only recently that I found out that it was Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, who came up with this quote. Its amazing that this thought from the 500's BC is still, if not all the more, valid in today's times - when questions of work satisfaction, a fulfilled work life have been faced not just by me, but I find from my interactions that a lot of people are contemplating this and are at different stages of career-altering decisions because of this. (I'm still trying to imagine the long, pointy-moustached Confucius thinking of this quote in ancient China, but I will park these thoughts for another time)
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the outlook), leaders of companies have a tougher time motivating and retaining the set of people for whom work satisfaction matters. There is a belief as stated in this article that the key is for leaders to find out from these people - Deep down, when they’re honest with themselves – what do they really want to do? Once they determine that and communicate it, you can see if it is aligned with the company’s needs.
There is alignment of individual goals to company goals and everyone lives happily ever after. Sounds like a fairy tale? It does to me. What I am trying to understand is:
- Can this actually work in larger companies facing all the standard issues around business growth, customer focus, employee retention. How do the goals of 100s and 1000s of employees align with those of the company?
- Can there actually be an alignment of everyone's individual goals that add up to the company's goal?
- Who is responsible for ensuring the alignment - is it only the person(s) at the top running the company or does this need to happen at every level in the organization?
- If individual goals are kept at the forefront, will this not create siloes where people are only set on achieving their own goals - and could not really bother themselves with checking how this impacts the company's goals?
What is all the more interesting is to understand what happens when the same set of employees who earlier believed that that their goals matter, find that the person(s) at the top now have changed and the new set of leaders have a completely divergent view. And their view is that the organization and its goals are larger than the individuals and their goals.
1 comment:
Can this actually work in larger companies facing all the standard issues around business growth, customer focus, employee retention. How do the goals of 100s and 1000s of employees align with those of the company?
The way I've seen it work is company goals get broken down into business unit goals, which in turn get divided into department goals.
Can there actually be an alignment of everyone's individual goals that add up to the company's goal?
Yes and No. Both have to make a place for each other. If that works, then there can be some goal congruence.
Who is responsible for ensuring the alignment - is it only the person(s) at the top running the company or does this need to happen at every level in the organization?
As far as defining the goals goes, its the shareholders. This is precisely the trouble Jerry Yang is running into. As far as alignment goes, its the management.
If individual goals are kept at the forefront, will this not create siloes where people are only set on achieving their own goals - and could not really bother themselves with checking how this impacts the company's goals?
There are some models which seem to work in similar scenarios eg. political systems, feudal systems and extra large corporates. However capitalistic systems do not generally allow it without ensuring some degree of goal congruence.
In the context of your post, leaders of companies do not just have difficulties in ensuring congruence of goals. They often may have difficulties in ensuring congruence of philosophies and tactics in addition to goals. There are multiple ways to reach a goal and thats where philosophies and tactics come in.
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