The “big 8” deeply embedded life interests
Posted on October 13th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 1 Comment.
In recent times we have been looking to the future, trying to be more thoughtful about how we structure the many things we need to get through each day in order that we can achieve our growth targets.
Hence, I pulled out an old copy of the article “Job Sculpting – the art of retaining your best people” (by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop) which I had been given a number of years ago.
.
The Basic Premise
The basic premise of the article is that you will only be prepared to stick with a company (as an employee, and arguably as an investor as well) if what is asked of you is aligned to your deeply-embedded life interests.
The authors contend that these are 8 of these.
.
The Big Eight
For ease of internal use (and because I don’t want to risk overstepping copyright provisions), I have attached a table listing the top 8 here in a restricted article:
Here’s the table of the 8 core, deeply-embedded life interests
The authors note that:
We have found that most people in business are motivated by between one and three deeply embedded life interests – long-held, emotionally driven passions for certain kinds of activities.
Looking through this list again, I can see 3 that clearly align with activities from which I gain greatest enjoyment. There are a couple of others that I don’t mind, but some bore me to tears.
.
What does it mean for us?
That’s to be expected, I believe the authors would say.
It would also be expected that our company (any company) would need excellence in more than just these 3 areas in order to be successful. Hence, we need to ensure we have:
1) People with a broad spread of drivers.
2) People predominantly working in areas from which they derive greatest enjoyment.
Sounds simple, right?
But the article notes that
“Make no mistake — job sculpting is challenging; it requires managers to play both detective and psychologist. The reason: many people have only a dim awareness of their own deeply embedded life interests.”
By the way, the article above references a book “Discovering your career in business” written by the same authors, which we have added to our shopping cart and will duly read and review.
.
[...] [...]