Job Sculpting the Art of Retaining Your Best People

12/21/1999

Are employees who excel at at their jobs probable to be happy in what they practice? Not necessarily, say noted career experts Timothy Butler and James Waldroop. The real keys to job satisfaction are neither skills nor values, just "deeply embedded life interests." In this excerpt from their article in the Harvard Business organisation Review, Butler and Waldroop tell how managers should understand the psychology of job satsifaction if they desire to keep their best people on board.
(For an application of Butler's and Waldroop'southward ideas in career self-assessment, come across their online tool CareerLeader.)

Hiring good people is tough, but as every senior executive knows, keeping them can be even tougher. Indeed, about executives can tell a story or two almost a talented professional who joined their visitor to great fanfare, added enormous value for a couple of years, so departed unexpectedly. Usually such exits are written off. "She got an offer she couldn't refuse," you lot hear, or, "No one stays with one company for very long these days."

Our research over the past 12 years strongly suggests that quite another dynamic is frequently at piece of work. Many talented professionals get out their organizations because senior managers don't understand the psychology of work satisfaction; they assume that people who excel at their work are necessarily happy in their jobs. Sounds logical enough. But the fact is, strong skills don't always reverberate or atomic number 82 to job satisfaction. Many professionals, specially the leagues of 20- and 30-somethings streaming out of today'south MBA programs, are so well educated and accomplishment oriented that they could succeed in virtually any task. Only will they stay?

The answer is, simply if the chore matches their deeply embedded life interests. These interests are not hobbies — opera, skiing, and and so forth — nor are they topical enthusiasms, such as Chinese history, the stock marketplace, or oceanography. Instead, deeply embedded life interests are long-held, emotionally driven passions, intricately entwined with personality and thus born of an indeterminate mix of nature and nurture. Deeply embedded life interests do not determine what people are good at — they drive what kinds of activities make them happy. At work, that happiness often translates into commitment. Information technology keeps people engaged, and it keeps them from quitting.

In our research, we plant only 8 deeply embedded life interests for people drawn to business careers. [See the sidebar, " CareerLeader and the Business Career Interest Inventory," for more than on the viii life interests and their application in self-cess]. Life interests outset showing themselves in childhood and remain relatively stable throughout our lives, even though they may manifest themselves in dissimilar means at different times. For instance, a child with a nascent deeply embedded life interest in creative product — a love for inventing or starting things, or both — may be drawn to writing stories and plays. As a teenager, the life interest might express itself in a hobby of devising mechanical gadgets or an extracurricular pursuit of starting a loftier school sports or literary mag. As an adult, the creative-production life interest might chimera upwardly equally a drive to be an entrepreneur or a blueprint engineer. It might fifty-fifty testify itself as a love for stories again — pushing the person toward a career in, say, producing movies.

Think of a deeply embedded life involvement as a geothermal pool of superheated water. Information technology will ascent to the surface in one place as a hot spring and in another as a geyser. Merely beneath the surface — at the core of the individual — the pool is constantly bubbling. Deeply embedded life interests ever seem to find expression, even if a person has to modify jobs — or careers — for that to happen.

Task sculpting is the art of matching people to jobs that permit their deeply embedded life interests to exist expressed. It is the art of forging a customized career path in club to increase the adventure of retaining talented people. Make no mistake — job sculpting is challenging; information technology requires managers to play both detective and psychologist. The reason: many people have only a dim awareness of their own deeply embedded life interests. They may have spent their lives fulfilling other people'southward expectations of them, or they may have followed the most common career advice: "Do what you're proficient at." For case, we know of a woman who, on the basis of her skill at chemistry in college, was urged to become a doctor. She complied and achieved peachy success every bit a neurologist, just at age 42 she finally quit to open a nursery school. She loved children, demonstrating a deeply embedded life involvement in counseling and mentoring. And more of import, as it turned out, she was as well driven by a life interest in enterprise command, the want to be in charge of an organisation's overall operations. It was a long fourth dimension earlier she stopped remarking, "All those years wasted."

Other people don't know their own deeply embedded life interests because they accept taken the path of least resistance: "Well, my dad was a lawyer." Or they've simply been unaware of many career choices at critical points in their lives. About college seniors and new MBAs set sail on their careers knowing very niggling almost all the possible islands in the ocean. And finally, some people cease up in the incorrect jobs because they accept chosen, for reasons good and bad, to follow the siren songs of financial reward or prestige. Regardless of the reason, the fact is that a good number of people, at least upward until midlife, don't actually know what kind of work will make them happy. (For more than on the importance of life interests, abilities, and values in job satisfaction, see "It's a Matter of Degree.")

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<I>CareerLeader</I> and the Business Career Interest Inventory

The 8 life interests identified by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop as a key tool for managers to retain their all-time employees can exist equally valuable for employees themselves. Codified as the Business Career Involvement Inventory (BCII), these interests lie at the core of the online business career self-assessment program Butler and Waldroop call CareerLeader.

The BCII model distinguishes itself from other career interest models in that it is activeness-based, rather than based on full general interest patterns. It's founded on the notion that interests, non skills, should exist the foundation of peoples' careers. The BCII provides a measure of interest patterns as they employ to business work roles and work environments in the following cadre function areas:

- Application of Technology measures interests that are ofttimes associated with engineering science, production, operations, and the general employ of technology to accomplish business objectives
- Quantitative Analysis measures interests that are realized through trouble-solving that relies on mathematical analysis
- Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking measures interests involving broadly conceptual approaches to business problems
- Creative Production measures interests that are realized through highly artistic activities such equally the development of new products or marketing concepts, the gernation of new business ideas, etc.
- Counseling and Mentoring measures interests that involve developing relationships equally a crucial part of business concern work, such equally coaching, training and mentoring
- Managing People and Relationships measures interests that involve developing relationships as a crucial part of business concern piece of work, such as coaching, preparation and mentoring
- Enterprise Control measures interests that are realized through having ultimate determination-making dominance for complete operations
- Influence Through Language and Ideas measures interest in exercising influence through the skillful utilize of written and spoken language

For more on the BCII and its application, visit the CareerLeader Spider web site.

It's a Matter of Degree

Over the past several decades, endless studies have been conducted to observe what makes people happy at work. The research almost always focuses on iii variables: ability, values, and life interests. In this article, we argue that life interests are paramount — just what of the other ii? Don't they matter? The reply is yes, merely less so.

Ability — meaning the skills, experience, and knowledge a person brings to the job — tin can make an employee experience competent. That's important; after all, research has shown that a feeling of incompetence hinders creativity, not to mention productivity. Simply although competence can certainly help a person go hired, its upshot is generally short lived. People who are adept at their jobs aren't necessarily engaged by them.

In the context of career satisfaction, values refer to the rewards people seek. Some people value money, others want intellectual claiming, and all the same others desire prestige or a comfortable lifestyle. People with the aforementioned abilities and life interests may pursue different careers based on their values. Have three people who excel at and love quantitative analysis. 1 might pursue a career equally a professor of finance for the intellectual challenge. Another might go directly to Wall Street to reap the financial rewards. And a third might pursue whatever job track leads to the CEO's office — driven past a desire for power and influence.

Similar ability, values thing. In fact, people rarely have jobs that don't match their values. A person who hates to travel would not bound at an offer from a management consulting firm. Someone who values financial security won't chase a career equally an independent contractor. But people can be drawn into going downward career paths because they have the power and like the rewards — fifty-fifty though they're non interested in the piece of work. Subsequently a short period of success, they become disenchanted, lose interest, and either quit or but work less productively.

That's why nosotros have concluded that life interests are the about important of the three variables of career satisfaction. You can be good at a job — indeed, you lot mostly need to be and you can like the rewards you receive from it. Simply only life interests will go along most people happy and fulfilled over the long term. And that's the cardinal to retentivity.

—Timothy Butler and James Waldroop

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Source: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/job-sculpting-the-art-of-retaining-your-best-people

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