Organization & Employee Growth at Cross Roads: Anti-Analysis

This blog of mine got posted on my companys' intranet website!!!

Disclaimer: Dear Reader, this blog is philosophical and in a lighter vein and not be taken literally!

Recently I came across a thought provoking quote, the essence of which was: "Every employee in a organization eventually rises to his or her level of incompetancy". It supposedly means that people keep rising in an organization until it is found that they are incompetent to rise any further. In other words, every growing individual rises to his/her peak potential which is nothing but his/her minimum in-competancy level. From there onwards the road goes only downhill. Followers of Murphy's law of negative thinking will readily lap up the quote as a fact. But for the positive and rational ones,a second and a deeper thought provokes an philosophical and also at times curious analysis. The point of contention is whether "Peak performance amounts to minimum in-competancy and can address the resulting problem". Let's try to prove and address some solution for the contention:

In the rat race for growth, it is making the right choices on the part of employees and creating right choices on the part of the organizations which ultimately differentiates winners from losers. Employees confront the if-else dilemma quite often in the course of their careers, and those who make the right choices too often will reach their peak performance too soon. While the organizations which generate enough choices or opportunities for their employees are only speeding the onset of peak performance of their employees. This should be generally considered true because every individual practically has some or other limitation, whereby he/she will reach potential peak someday. One more understood fact is that not every employee can reach the top simultaneously. Some room is needed at the top for vertical movement. So employees who reach their potential peak positions in the organization are at the cross roads of their career and usually do not know where to proceed for further growth. Eventually the smart ones quit and look for greener pastures and start it all over again and the tired ones stay put and continue to stagnate and reach their saturation point which can also be termed as in-competancy in today's cut throat competitive world. So it does prove that peak performance may amount to in-competancy in many if not all the cases.

Now, the compassionate ones may counter-argue that it is fault of the organization if it does not generate further growth opportunity for their already peaked employees. But then haven't we all heard that "Its employees which maketh and grow an organization"?

The above discussion in turn means that employees should make wrong choices to "avoid" reaching their peak performance (minimum in-competancy) and also organizations must do everything possible to stunt growth opportunities of their employees to avoid them from reaching their peak (minimum in-competancy). Now, this is a rhetoric statement which is as absurd as it is in-correct. So then what is the right thing? Should or shouldn't the employees peak? Should or shouldn't the organization encourage employee growth? The answer,dear reader, lies in collective growth and not individual growth!! Few peaking employees can never grow an organization (since they will eventually reach their in-competancy level !!). Leaders cannot lead dumb followers, they need an intelligent herd to follow them. So it is the collective and relative growth of all employees which can build successful organizations and address the problem of career peaking. And yes,by the way, the quote also stands proved!!