Assess My Partners

The days of the standing army of employees are coming to an end. Wirearchy is replacing hierarchy. Collaboration is the name of the game. Organization development that continue to focus only on employees not only risks irrelevance in the 21^st century, but worse, threatens to become a boat anchor keeping the sails of innovation from catching any wind.

Most organizations of any size have long since implemented assessment programs and tools designed to ensure that we don’t hire only for skill and then wind up firing for attitude. Psychometric assessment is a well-developed science and there few people who have not encountered Myers-Briggs, DISC, or other similar instruments designed to uncover style and motivational characteristics. Organizations that paid attention to culture, and hired for fit as much as for skill saw significant performance improvements. And better culture meant less friction and greater synergy.

But that was yesterday’s world, and two key trends today mean that what got us here won’t get us there:

1. First, the relentless and accelerating pace of change has forced a rethink of organizational models and the development of more virtual organizations that increasingly rely on external Partners to provide much of what is needed. P&G famously started this trend in the early 90s, and now wants 50% of new products are expected to come from outside the company. They have mapped out the world’s innovation strengths, going to Brazil for natural extracts, Russia for scientific problems and elsewhere for other needs.
2. For many established organizations, this has forced leadership out of its traditional comfort zone. In an increasingly horizontal world where the employee base is shrinking and organizational borders are blurring, old hierarchical control mechanisms no longer work and new mechanisms to support collaboration, manage performance, and build trust are essential prerequisites to employee performance and engagement.

The result of all this is that organizations need not only new ways to manage a different workforce composition, but new skills to manage it. We have traditionally seen our Vendor relationships as something to be managed by numbers.  While some organizations focus on value, many focus simply on cost, with sourcing policies that seemingly ignore the Pareto Principle. Just as the proverbial “bad apple” can infect the barrel of employees, the wrong Partner will be an expensive mistake. Building the alignment and trust that leads to success in an open world requires extending assessment for compatible values and culture to the virtual workforce as well as for employees.