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The creative added value

People tell a story about Pablo Picasso from his time in Paris. When he was dining in a restaurant, a woman asked him for a sketch. In return, he could set any price, and she would pay. Picasso sketched something on a napkin, signed it, and said, “That’ll be $10,000.” Surprised, the woman raised her eyebrows, “But it only took thirty seconds.”. “No,” replied Picasso, “it took me forty years.” This is the creative added value that only evolves over time and is usually ignored when a result gets evaluated.

Doesn’t that happen to you every day at work. On the one hand, employers want to use their human resources with all their skills. On the other hand, employees wish to be rewarded adequately. Since a job usually consists of tasks, authorities, and responsibilities, which are independent of the person, the required skills are taken for granted, if they are noted at all. How can we factor in actual knowledge, existing skills, and experiences?

  • Recognizing
    With a mechanistic worldview, involved people assume that knowledge and skills are documented as credentials. Yet, these snapshots do not tell anything about the retrievable capabilities. Acquired knowledge is losing its value faster and faster due to accelerated progress – starting with the latest version of MS Office and moving on to internal DIY booking systems and entirely new applications that replace long-standing practices. Specific enablers, such as collaboration, leadership, and change competencies, as well as several years of professional practice, can only be measured indirectly and require a particular intuition to recognize these additional contributions. The agile enterprise will replace existing job descriptions with profiles of projects and people in the near future. In any case, employees should regularly become aware of their current opportunities and use them in their activities. Leaders have the duty of promoting the existing means and making them usable for the company. Skill profiles provide the basis for matching people and tasks.
  • Applying
    Individuals use their full set of abilities unconsciously. Thereby, they forget to utilize the above Picasso effect for themselves. For this purpose, the creative added value provided should run as an additional contribution to the personal assessment, or even the descriptions of a job should be upgraded. It does not fit performance orientation to pay the High-Performer just as little as the Low-Performer. In addition to recognizing the added value, the application in a company requires the fostering and skillful allocation of the additional skills. As more and more tasks are project-based, generic capability profiles are needed. They are used to profile the task roles as well as to describe the people. By matching them, e.g., with HCM software, the most suitable personalities can be assigned to a task. The extendable employee profiles can be used for a long time, and the needs-oriented project profiles will replace the time-consuming job descriptions in the medium term.
  • Honoring
    When various people perform a task, they differ due to the execution period (start/end and time spent), commitment, quality, and results. Simple activities, such as writing a report, may take one person a few days and another some weeks. In the first case, a finalized printable and in the other case, an unfinished version to be revised are delivered. In the end, the first person produces many more results than the other – for the same pay. As soon as the hardworking notice this, they will adjust their work pace to match the worst. Unless: they are rewarded for their better performance.
  • Integrating
    The requirements should not only be derived from a technical matter but also the additional capabilities – e.g., cross-functional knowledge concerning the business, mutual understanding as well as coordinating and leading diverse personalities. The mastery of the new VUCA world with the help of holistic and critical thinking as well as practical changeability complete the creative added value. As requirements are in permanent transition, profiles must be able to incorporate the latest skills on time. In HR, it is no longer enough to maintain a template for the job description. Changing skill profiles must be elaborated on a company-by-company basis and made available to all participants.

Bottom line: As companies are phasing out lifetime employment in favor of outsourcing and temporary employment, applicants will also have to adapt to the new hire-and-fire mode and become more adept at selling their added value. In the spirit of Picasso, it will no longer be enough to be paid for the timely length of a deliverable, but also to include in the calculation the additional soft components that go far beyond the technical exams performed. This applies equally to technical, methodological, social, and systems competencies. Just as companies adjust their pay according to supply and demand, so must the “providers”. In the best case, companies will realize that with this bidding war, they will lose money since cheap labor provides related services, which destroys their reputation. All parties involved must recognize, use, honor, and integrate them into day-to-day business for skills to be considered. Above all, the creative added value results from ongoing routine, practical experience, and the employees’ passion that makes the difference, and that must be factored in the assessment. Those who do not master this view of creative added value will fail in the short to medium term.

More attention on the personal contribution

The larger an organization, the more it is built upon the division of labor. Tasks are distributed not only horizontally from one function to another but also vertically – employees and leaders of teams, departments, divisions, businesses unit, and corporations. As in a snowball system, superiors consider the performances of all subordinates as its share of the whole. They infer the rationale for paying itself up to 273 times the average salary. But without considering that every role, no matter how small, has a decisive share in the overall result. Let us remember the story of the lost nail.

A blacksmith forgot a nail while shoeing a horse, causing a horseshoe to fall off, by which the horse’s leg broke and threw off the riding messenger, who was thus unable to deliver the message, causing the army to suffer defeat and ultimately losing the war and due to it the kingdom.

And only because the blacksmith forgot a nail. It was the blacksmith’s contribution that had unforeseen consequences.

People are not machines. This effectuates that the individual contributions turn out differently. These performances are influenced by their biography, traits, passions, and daily conditions. Further differences result from the respective circumstances, i.e., the time, speed, focus, result, quality, outcomes, diligence, comprehensiveness, and perseverance. However, the basis is the individual part built on practical experience, existing knowledge, commitment, and appreciation by superiors and colleagues.

  • Practical experience
    The most important is the practical experience, i.e., insights acquired through the consistent routine (regular application of obtained findings, mental models, and experiences through Learning-by-doing). If we see something new, we memorize only 20% – if we hear it, 30%; if we see and hear, 50%; if we see and hear and talk, 70%; and if we do it, 90%. Practical exercises create in active training or learning-on-the-job, informal learning in vocational weekdays, agile skills in the long term. Unlike theoretical training, personal application anchors skills for long-term recall. Yet, companies cannot assess these experiences, as their effectiveness only becomes apparent later in action.
  • Certified knowledge
    Originally, monastic and cathedral schools and later the early universities, such as Bologna, Oxford, Heidelberg, and Harvard, had a holistic approach, similar to vocational apprenticeship – young people studied, that is, observe, investigate, and engage in-depth with the world. After six years of research and learning, they attained the lowest degree, the baccalaureate. After another twelve years, they earned the magister degree or doctorate – and this with an average life expectancy of 32 years. This required various oaths as well as a private and a public exam. Today, a study is more like a continuation of schooling and predominantly limited to small areas of knowledge – although interdisciplinary courses, such as cognitive science, systems theory, or psycholinguistics, are making the boundaries between faculties more permeable. The purpose is primarily to confirm temporary knowledge, i.e., to recall a specific knowledge, at one point in time as completely as possible. In addition, the speed by which new knowledge and standards emerge has led to institutions offering training and grant certifications. In contrast to practical experience, theoretical training provides the content of a knowledge area and confirms, through fitting exams, that students have memorized a particular material. This is practical for companies, as they receive the final certificates, “objective” proof of the skills for selecting employees.
  • Decisive commitment
    Regardless of the experience and knowledge available, the personal contribution is determined by the commitment of individuals. Attitudes toward the company drive the engagement and are composed of emotional attachment, acceptance of the corporate governance, and perceived advantages. Even with the best conditions, indifferent personalities deliver worse results than committed ones with less qualification. This explains the efforts made to bind the low-commitment participants more closely to the company with coaching, team building, and participation in decision-making. For a company, this means, above all, winning leaders for the human image of Theory Y or even experimenting with entirely new work models to make it easier for the workforce to commit and thus deliver better results.
  • Appreciated performances
    The well-being of the members of a company results from respectful interaction with each other. In contrast, negative feedback, unfairness, and unequal treatment damage the satisfaction and self-esteem of ALL involved people. Especially micromanagers, who disempower employees by interfering in the smallest details, changing results, and not developing appreciation undermine commitment. As a result, those who actually work, leave the fulfillment of the task to these supervisors, who feel affirmed by the growing number of errors that they have to do everything by themselves – a vicious circle (see also Theory X). For companies, this demands developing an appropriate mindset (e.g., Theory Y). In the future, processes that follow a strict workflow will be shifted into IT. For the leaders remain the “human” tasks to serve the committed employees (Servant Leadership).

Bottom line: The personal contribution of the employees results from their doing, i.e., the ideas, actions, and results. This is supported by relevant experiences, acquired knowledge, and the desire to contribute maximally. When the performers can also expect that their part of the whole is appreciated, you have the best conditions to deliver top results. Since people are not programmable entities, who, once they are provided with business processes, rules and assignments, always function the same way, we need to put more attention on their actual contributions. This requires leaders who follow the activities mindfully. The smaller the company, the greater the likelihood that there is not enough time to take care of leadership skills. Therefore, these companies need to start developing a contemporary mindset. For example, every corporate member must develop entrepreneurship, encouraging followers of Theory Y and eliminating those of Theory X. The personal contribution of EVERYONE is the difference that makes the difference.