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Real incentives inside corporations for better work and ideas are created when there is a belief in a future that is tied to one’s effort.

Can meritocracy, a dead idea, in Matt Miller’s A Tyranny of Dead Ideas — be revived?

On October 6, Fortune published an article I wrote on joblessness and solving the skilled worker gap — the idea that we need to stop hiring for specifics — and the idea that we need to give people an opportunity to fully use their skills and talents. http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/05/news/economy/joblessness_training_hiring_practices.fortune/index.htm

It discussed the need to re-evaluate current recruiting. And the need for boards to understand how critically important this is to our economic prosperity.

On October 15, the New York Times, ran an article that dovetailed with this theme and talked about some interesting research: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/your-money/16wealth.html 

“D. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University, said his research showed that many of the people now considered elite in America did not start out that way. He is conducting what he described as the largest study ever of top leaders in America, having talked to over 500 so far across business, nonprofits and academia.  He said he had found that a privileged upbringing did not matter as much as generally thought. Nor, he said, did many of the top leaders inherit large sums of money. While many went to top colleges and a large number attended Harvard Business School, the biggest determining factor of whether someone moved into the elite was an early career opportunity. Being able to look beyond their specialty early — as opposed to being highly specialized their entire career and then thrust into a leadership role — distinguished great leaders more than any inherent advantage in their upbringing, he said.  ‘These people had a chance to be a generalist early on, as opposed to being specialists their whole career,’ Mr. Lindsay said. ‘They had that experience in their early 30s or 40s.’”

It’s time to reboot our thinking — and we don’t even have to re-invent the wheel to do so – we had a model that was working — we just need to revive it.

The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance www.thevaluealliance.com

Eleanor Bloxham www.eleanorbloxham.com

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