Gary Hamel’s pyramid of human capabilities
April 8, 2010
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(Click to enlarge)
This is a transcript from Gary Hamel video on management innovation. The author of Future of Management presents his Maslow pyramid describing the hierarchy of human capabilities within a work environment.
There are 6 levels of engagement and human capabilities in the work space :
- Obedience : show up, do the job
- Diligence : work hard, stay focus, long hours etc …
- Intellect : taking responsibility for their own skills, bring best practices to the work place
- Initiative : taking ownership for a problem, an opportunity before you ask them, not bound by a definition of their job
- Human creativity : brought by people who would ask how to do this in a fundamental different way ? What is there to learn from other industries ? Where are the chances for radical innovation in this product/service ?
- Passion and zeal : for whom their job is not only intellectually meaningful it is indeed spiritualy meaningful to them. Enormous meaning comes out of their work.
Layers 1 to 3 are becoming global commoditites. One can buy these human capabilities in any low cost country in the world. There is certainly no company in the western world with a cost structure able to defend their place in the world if this is all they’re getting out of their employees.
If you attach some percentage to that hierarchy to your people, what proportion of their capabilities are they bringing each day ? We’ve asked that question, we’ve done some surveys and most of the results were showing that we’ve getting about 50-55% of our employees capabilities.
Which means that we only are tapping into the first 3 commoditized capabilities, not in the last three which are the ones bringing most value.
That’s not enough for the world that lies ahead.
This is the reason why employee’s engagement is such a critical issue whenever working with knowledge workers.
Now : what is the proportion of their capabilities people bring into your company ? Is that acceptable for you ? How do you plan to improve these capabilities ?
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April 8, 2010 at 10:29 am
As a guess, I would say that in many companies, the first layer ‘Obedience’ probably count for as high as 30% of the workforce if not more …
I’ve seen more often than not people coming to the office for the paycheck at the end of the month …
Mostly because the company did not offer anything else of course, but still …
April 8, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Hey man,
From my company’s perspective, I’ll add a few thoughts: 1. I hate the word obedience, it sounds too top-down to me and I really like other 5 in my employees. You’re right, obedience quickly becomes a commodity, especially because the other 5 already result in the latter.
2. Intellect/Creativity & Diligence don’t usually match. People who are really, really smart, usually work in bursts, creativity comes in bursts, and a really good mix is if you have the creatives working together with the “dilligents” (for lack of a better word).
3. the implication is that having all 6 capabilities in the same person is a very rare thing.
Probably other stuff to add, but that’s it for now.
April 8, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Interesting and should be discuss in details because none of this level is sure !
See what happens when you don’t treat your workforce like they should deserve.
Strike, betray, counteract…
You have to work hard in your compagny values and how manager makes them live to climb these levels…
A view about this pyramid for employee in entreprise 2.0 :
http://tinyurl.com/yapplc9
April 9, 2010 at 7:28 am
Barthox > thanks for your comment. fully agree with you. It is the responsibility of managers to make sure people make sens out of their contribution and they’re happy to come to work
Vincent-vw> see Barthox comments above. there are still MANY people bringing onl obedience to work – they just show up and do the job. I understand you’re not comfortable with this but it’s not a manager view it’s just a fact.
Vincent> Thanks for your comment. No disrespect but you’d better think twice before questioning Gary’s point of view. This guy has fascinating understanding and view on management. Refer to his book the Future of management discussed there.
June 11, 2010 at 5:30 am
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April 17, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Molto interessante Ale. A presto! Tommaso
May 1, 2012 at 7:46 am
This is a nice way of thinking the value people bring to their work. Is there any research regarding the impact each stage has on productivity? Or the success of the company?
May 1, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Hi Urigol, thanks for the
comment. I’m not sure about a study. However, you can see some references of this in Gary Hamel’s fantastic book The Future of Management