Juxtaposition can be deadly. Something which, viewed in
isolation, seems explainable or understandable, can, placed next
to its drastic opposite, seem utterly obtuse and even mildly absurd.
So this weekend we have The American Lawyer‘s release
of its annual survey of
mid-level associates, and Business
Week‘s cover
story on "how to recruit, train, and hold on to great people." The
survey, with responses from nearly 6,000 associates, can be summed
up thus:
"[it provides] a glimpse of what upper management and
youngish associates think of each other. Sometimes it’s not pretty."
By contrast, the Business Week story takes off from this
premise:
“‘There are very few companies that feel they
have an excess of talent,’ says Paul Rogers, a partner at consulting
firm Bain & Co. At
the same time, business has gotten tougher, and companies are counting
on their people to be flexible enough to move at today’s accelerated
pace, yet creative enough to excite consumers around the world…"
Indeed. And so corporations are doing everything they can—spending
$50-billion a year, one estimate has it—to uncover, nurture,
reward, and promote talent.
As hierarchies flatten, corporations become more global, and competition
intensifies, who can afford to skimp on developing talent? Yet
these are some of the things associates had to say: A mentor
delivering "feedback" "just yells at me." "It
is easier to hack into the CIA computer network than to learn about
executive committee decisions that affect everyone." After
pulling all-nighters, one’s reward is to have partners demand immediate
changes to the work without explanation.
Can the associates be partly to blame for not taking the initiative? Consider: "One
Proskauer Rose midlevel brought to her last semiannual review
a wish list that included requests for more writing and deposition
experience and a mentor for business development skills. They
kind of laughed and said, ‘You shouldn’t be worried about [these
things]’ at my level. It was frustrating: It was like talking to
dead air,’ she says."
The Business Week piece, by contrast, painstakingly recaps
the heroic steps companies such as Schlumberger, Dell, IBM, Johnson
+ Johnson, and, inevitably and famously, GE, take to identify,
nurture, and reward talent. But if I can leave you
with one and only one take-away, it’s in this graphic,
"What Not To Do," and especially the toxic habit of assuming that
management of people means criticizing their shortcomings rather
than reinforcing their strengths. Study after study has shown
that the best managers spend 80% of their time trying to amplify
people’s strengths rather than mending their weaknesses. As BW puts
it, "Copy them."
