HR Blog

Where have all the strikers gone?

I’m no football fan, but I do keep my ears and eyes open, and now and again I pick up some piece of information about the state of our national sport. For instance I recently heard a reporter comment about an international match involving Anderlecht that we had played typical football once again: we dominated the game, yet were unable to score. I quite often hear it said that we’re good on team spirit, but seem unable to rely on our strikers these days.
As in football, so too in business: teamwork is essential, but it’s goals that make the difference.
Sport always works as a metaphor for business: companies engage in coaching and training, companies have teams, companies want to score goals. And yet when it comes to strikers, the comparison shows us up somewhat.
Businesses do all they can to send people out into the world like some well-oiled machine with a common purpose, but the star players seem to be kept on quite a tight leash within the organisation. Teamwork has become so important that goal-scoring seems to be fading into insignificance by comparison. It’s a tricky dilemma for HR: do we just reward the team, or do we give extra rewards to the people who convert the teamwork into solid achievements? HR tools seem to be designed on the principle ‘united we stand’, but this means that individual talents tend to be disregarded.
Everyone has talent, but are we aware that every talent must also be able to show its worth?
Bear in mind that at the end of the year it’s the number of goals that counts – not the number of passes.
 

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