Ben--
I would very much like to know how you determine value to the company in
such a way that you can assign compensation levels to the value.
This is a leading question, because I think compensation has more to do
with leveraging risk, skills marketability, expected return on investment
in the human resource (and probably several other components that don't
occur to me right now).
I'm interested in your view, though, because I've wrestled with the
paradox the question creates.
Referees are not as well compensated as most professional basketball
players, I'm told. Are they less valuable? Sure couldn't have a game
without them (despite most peoples' thoughts to the contrary).
According to many diversity surveys, women and other ethnic/racial
minorities tend to end up in the lower-compensation rungs (in the US) than
their white, male counterparts. Where does value ring in here?
I hope you'll sense the sincerity of my question, because I would like to
believe that value has something to do with the process--but I think it
has more to do with the factors I've enumerated. Of course, I may be
simply guilty of over-semanticising, where value has to do with economic
factors and not the relative contribution to the organization (like, if
the telephone receptionist didn't answer the telephones one day, how
valuable would the rest of the employees be that day?).
I am also curious, Ben, how much of the values that you are sharing with
us here reflect your experiences with Novell, which you've shared with us
so well. Are these the values that they espoused in their assessment of
employee value, the need to artificially generate competition and
otherwise (no other word for it, Ben) dehumanize the organizational
environment.
I'm glad you decided to hang out with us some more, Ben--and I look
forward to hearing some more of your thoughts on these questions.
Doc Holloway
-- A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. - Emily Dickinson http://www.planet.net/pkrisxle/emily/poemsOnline.htmlThresholds--developing critical skills for living organizations Richard C. "Doc" Holloway Visit us at <http://www.thresholds.com/community/learnshops/index.html> P.O. Box 2361 Phone:01 360 786 0925 Olympia, WA 98507 USA Fax: 01 360 709 4361
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