Creating a company in which stars delight to work

An unusually large number of employees worldwide have left work over the past year in what has become known as the “Great Resignation”.

The pandemic seems to have caused people to reconsider what they want from work. If you own a business, the break in December may be a good time to reflect on the value you offer employees.

Small firms cannot match the big ones for salary, benefits and career paths, but they do attract loyal staff through less tangible benefits such as freedom to focus on what they enjoy doing, and informal, generative relationships with smart colleagues.

I read recently that firms that appoint a human resources (HR) person perform less well. Correlational findings are always suspect, and I would be surprised if the mere presence of HR destroys a company. More likely is either that firms already in trouble look for an HR appointment to sort them out, or that growth in the firm both requires more systems and stifles performance at the same time.

But I can well believe that all the structures, policies and procedures we think we need to manage a growing workforce can take the fun out of working. Those who are attracted by the feel of a start-up are repelled by the weight of a bureaucracy. So often size stifles delight.

We need standard operating procedures to save time and maintain quality, and policies helpfully provide standard answers to recurring questions. How can we incorporate these without imposing conformity?

Recently I have been writing about the ecosystem that promotes small business in an economy. Ecosystemic thinking can apply internally too. One of the key insights of systems thinking is that the obvious solution often does not work.

Doing more of the same to solve a problem that similar attempts failed to solve previously does not help.

If talented people are leaving a team, the team leader may try to maintain quality among those who are left by reinforcing the restrictive practices that led to the exodus in the first place. One person’s sincere solution can so easily become another’s problem, and vice versa, so her team may then resist her efforts in a sincere attempt to create space for initiative, leading in turn to her imposing restrictions with even greater enthusiasm.

That pattern is called escalation.

The solution then is not the obvious one of better processes, but a change of heart of the team leader to celebrate initiative and her team’s innate desire to do a good job. Similarly, if strict regulations haven’t stopped theft, why make even stricter regulations? That may be the obvious knee-jerk solution, but a more helpful response would be to analyse why the regulations are not being observed.

The answer is likely to be more nuanced, like adjusting the reward systems that encourage managers to ignore theft rather than stop it, and adjusting more complex elements of organisational culture that model and condone dishonesty.

Systemic thinkers understand the perspectives of the system’s various players and the payoffs and feedback loops that sustain their behaviour, and look for a likely point of leverage that will disrupt it positively.

The people needed to balance the founding entrepreneur’s lack of structure can do their job too well. As they teach us the extraordinarily productive value of processes, policies and procedures, let them learn the extraordinarily productive value of respecting the best team members’ freedom to contribute insight, initiative and innovation. We can have both if we resist the obvious solution and accommodate the giftedness of our star members.

So if you get a chance to think while on the beach or in the mountains this December, consider how to build a facilitative business in which your stars are delighted to work.