Hack:
Reinventing Roles - Giving emotions a chance!
By IMD MBA Group 9 IMD MBA Group 9 - IMD Lausanne
November 6, 2010 at 9:43am
Moonshots
Summary
Implement a system of matching employees to roles based on the employees' emotional drivers rather than functional skills or experiences.
Problem
In most organisations, roles are filled primarily on the basis of functional /soft skills and experience. This means that the manager who fits into a role must primarily have the right knowledge, soft skills and experience to move into the role rather than the mental drivers/motivations that the manager may have while considering that role. Therefore, not ensuring that the role meets the motivational drivers of a manager most likely would end up in demotivating and eventually disempowering the manager. At a large scale, it kills self empowerment and ownership for the job and would also disengage employees. This would also impact the ability of the organisation to innovate.
Solution
The solution is to understand the emotional drivers of an employee at all stages of her career and then position her in a role that provides her that emotional satisfaction. Therefore the steps for achieving this are:
a) First, through rigourous testing methods and personal interviews, understand what are the employees' current emotional drivers. These can vary from wanting to see the world, working with or away from people, wanting to become a totally nerdy expert in any one field etc. Thus, it is important to understand these drivers.
b) Then every role has to be defined in terms of which emotional drivers it fulfils most.
c) For every role, resource it with the employee whose emotional needs are most met by the role
d) Therefore, the requirements for a role are the requisite emotional drivers rather than traditional functional/soft skills or experiences.
e) The functional skills will also be tested but there is more of an aptitude requirement rather than the real skill requirement
a) First, through rigourous testing methods and personal interviews, understand what are the employees' current emotional drivers. These can vary from wanting to see the world, working with or away from people, wanting to become a totally nerdy expert in any one field etc. Thus, it is important to understand these drivers.
b) Then every role has to be defined in terms of which emotional drivers it fulfils most.
c) For every role, resource it with the employee whose emotional needs are most met by the role
d) Therefore, the requirements for a role are the requisite emotional drivers rather than traditional functional/soft skills or experiences.
e) The functional skills will also be tested but there is more of an aptitude requirement rather than the real skill requirement
The key change that will come in the role matching excercise is that employees will be resourced more on the basis of their emotional drivers vis-a-vis their functional skills.
Practical Impact
In practice, an employee will get a certain role because she wants to see the world. Even though her functional skills may not be upto mark, she will put in the extra effort to learn those since she is very emotionally satisfied with the role.
This would result in higher engagement leading to empowerment and eventually performance since the employee would feel obligated to return back the favor.
This would also result in more innovation within the organisation as the employee may have a different functaional background leading to newer ideas and questions!
This would result in higher engagement leading to empowerment and eventually performance since the employee would feel obligated to return back the favor.
This would also result in more innovation within the organisation as the employee may have a different functaional background leading to newer ideas and questions!
First Steps
- Select the high potential employees to pilot the concept
- Measure their emotional drivers
- Find the roles for them which meet their emotional requirements
- Measure their motivation levels and performance in those roles
- Based on the success of the program, roll out the program across the organisation
- Measure their emotional drivers
- Find the roles for them which meet their emotional requirements
- Measure their motivation levels and performance in those roles
- Based on the success of the program, roll out the program across the organisation
Credits
This hack has been developed by a team consisting of MBA participants at IMD. The team members are:
- Jerome Briggs
- Csaba Holop
- David Sebastio
- Melanie Oesterle
- Ashish Verma
- Jerome Briggs
- Csaba Holop
- David Sebastio
- Melanie Oesterle
- Ashish Verma
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