Executive Summary: Popular catchphrases about hiring crunches and culture trends often market hidden incentives rather than operational reality. A legitimate people agenda must cut through inbound noise and anchor directly to customer value creation. Companies exist to deliver value customers will pay for. This requires translating customer-expected behaviors into actionable, operationalized core values, establishing clear daily execution standards, and determining the optimal organizational scale. Adding headcount without well-defined work creates confusion and dilutes accountability.
Imagine scrolling through your LinkedIn feed. What people-related information do you see?
“We are hiring!”
“My company and colleagues are the best.”
“We are the best company to work for!”
How many “best companies” can there be? If everyone is doing so well, who is not doing well? Someone must be. All the good news is great. But we know there is more to the story when the lights and cameras are off.
There is a lot of talk about the “war for talent,” the “great resignation,” and claims that “people leave their bosses, not the company.” Does it not feel like watching political campaigning? The messages are a little too conveniently repetitive.
As an unrelated comparison, the term BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was a popular framing of developing nations that were slated to become the next economic powerhouses. Since these four countries account for 40% of the global population, I would hope that their economic prospects reflect a larger share of global GDP in the future. But over a decade since its proponents popularized the term, the reality hasn't played out as they hoped.
What was all the BRIC talk intended for? It influenced Foreign Direct Investment into those four countries to support the investment choices of those who moved first and popularized the term. Beyond that, the term had little practical meaning. These four countries have different historical, geopolitical, and economic factors in play and are taking divergent paths.
Catchphrases often market hidden incentives. The reality is far more complex and nuanced. Let’s take a step back and consider this. Why is every company hiring as though the world will run out of people? Why do companies feel compelled to have the same people-focused messages? People haven’t changed significantly in a decade. Technology hasn’t developed enough to change our fundamental nature.
There is an undercurrent of low interest rates and excess funding amounts sloshing around that encourages scale. Let's consider two statistics.
First, according to US Census data, the number of people employed in the Employment Services industry, which includes all hiring and staffing activities, grew by an astonishing 51% between 2010 and 2017. During the same period, we have had so many more outlets to communicate through. Putting these together, should the volume of noise about “people changing jobs” surprise us? No.
Another change in our ecosystem is a proliferation of “leadership coaches,” whose count has increased significantly. I am not opposed to popular conversations around servant leadership. But the proof has to show up in labor productivity, which hasn't happened yet. It will always remain true that every effective kitchen has a head chef, a sous chef, station chefs, and kitchen porters. No good kitchen only has head chefs.
During this strategic planning cycle, I encourage you to separate the inbound noise about people themes and marketing conversations around people from a real and tangible people agenda that serves your company’s stakeholders.
Our company exists to create value for customers. Otherwise, we are in the business of taking money from customers to deliver less value than they pay for. Like everything else in a company, our people agenda must start with customers. The first guiding question to frame the people agenda is:
What are the behavioral traits that customers expect our company to demonstrate?
If there is an angle from which a customer base is held hostage to low value creation, our company likely operates in a monopoly or an oligopoly. It is only a matter of time before the ground shifts to correct this dynamic. The behavioral traits that customers desire aren’t up to employees to opine on or the executives to dictate. Objective information must instead be gathered from optimal customers and the root causes analyzed.
Next, the customer-desired behavioral traits must be translated into the fabric of our company. Our internal operations must balance external stakeholders' desires. The servant leadership talk cannot just be about what we expect from our managers and executives. Each of us can practice it every day. An obvious place to practice is with customers.
How can customer-desired behavioral traits be translated into organizational guardrails to operate by?
These are our well-operationalized core values. Core values are meant to be actionable, just like the Ten Commandments for Christians and Jews or the Five Pillars for Muslims. I recommend using those combined fifteen statements as references for actionable core value design and operationalization because they have proven to be highly effective in guiding behaviors of billions of people over centuries. Sourcing ideas from popular themes is not a path to market leadership. Through planning, every company must ensure core values translate to customer outcomes.
Operationalized core values need to be lived day-to-day by the CEO, executives, supervisors, and employees.
Shifts in the operating environment have accelerated the choices companies must make around where, when, and how employees work. Virtual methods to communicate and manage workers continue to evolve. A significant share of employees in the workforce are now millennials and Gen-Z, who have a different upbringing than previous generations.
These factors have put many companies on the defensive regarding how they frame an effective execution approach. Conforming messages that hope to increase employee satisfaction while desperately adding bodies to fill seats can feel like a necessity to deploy available investment or counter investment-fueled actions from competitors.
I suggest a different approach. Purposefully choose your own people agenda without feeling the need to fit a mold set by social media or “culture” proponents. Companies with value-creating offerings and effective operations tend to have satisfactory environments and low turnover. If that isn’t the case, all the polishing usually adds up to short-term survival that distracts from the underlying issues.
For instance, where employees work from is a tactical choice that companies continue to wrestle with. Many have embraced in-office mandates, while others have chosen a completely remote operating model. There are no blanket right or wrong answers.
On one end, operational continuity and connectivity remain concerns. On the other end, there are reports of employees stacking multiple opportunities simultaneously because tracking work isn’t effective enough. I personally know multiple individuals who accepted two jobs simultaneously to “feel it out.” Most employees say that they are more productive at home. That may be true for some, but rigorous operational evidence must support the choice. Ask yourself:
What are the day-to-day employee behaviors spanning time, location, frequency, and approach that allow the company to live by the operationalized core values and demonstrate the behavioral traits customers expect?
Lastly, a bigger company isn’t always better.
We share this planet with 8 billion people. With technology access, shared languages, and converging working styles, every company has widening access to more of the global population. There are millions all around the world looking for opportunities for a better life and to showcase their talents. Any notion of a shortage of labor is intended to create a demand shock and a perception of supply constraint. If we drill a few layers into the income sources of labor shortage claimants, we will notice that it involves employee transition activities or selling sensationalism.
Every person we recruit from somewhere else is our ethical responsibility. Employees relocate or change their lives to join a company with high hopes. If we were that person, would we prefer that such a big change in our life is built on a solid foundation, or built on sand?
Additionally, throwing people at problems doesn’t work. It just creates confusion and a lack of accountability. In recreational volleyball, a team often plays much better in 4-person formations than 6-person formations holding skill constant. Players tend to lose focus and assume someone else will cover the play when there are five others on the court to pick up the slack. Staffing follows a similar accountability breakdown when there is not enough well-defined work to go around. So, the scale question for our people agenda is:
What is the optimal scale of employees that we can effectively deploy to avoid diminishing returns?
When externalities change, every company needs to reconsider its people agenda; the four steps above provide a strong foundation to rebuild how the company manages its human capital and anchor on customer value.
John Oommen is an electrical engineer turned company-level evolution architect who partners with private company investors and middle-market CEOs to mature and transform portfolio companies. He is the author of Congruence: The Playmaker's Guide to High Value Companies, creator of the underlying proprietary Congruence mindset, model, and method, and pioneer of the Playmaker Capability, which is a must-have value injection mechanism that dovetails purpose, strategy, and operations.
Over more than two decades, John has led company-level transformations, M&A integrations, and operational turnarounds across dozens of mid-market, VC and PE-backed, and Fortune 100 companies, including General Electric, Accenture, Blue Ridge Partners, and Capital One, as well as enterprise clients like Emerson, Ferguson, Cox, Avaya, and Nortek, alongside numerous mid-market companies. He specializes in addressing business-to-business market problems spanning industrial manufacturing, distribution, technology, and tech-enabled services. John holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, and is based in Chicago.
