Box of delight

Often when I tell people that we have filled half of the top leadership positions at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering with women, I can almost see the unspoken assumption in many of their eyes: They think we did it by passing over better-qualified male candidates.

At the 10 U.S. engineering schools with the largest research budgets, women make up about 17 percent of the faculty. It’s always noticed when women constitute a higher-than-usual proportion of an engineering college’s leadership, but somehow we don’t make the same assumptions about talent when all of a school’s top positions are filled by men.

Our research into more than 100 workplace pioneers reveals an important shift –“from job descriptions to talents and mastery”. It’s a clear differentiator between traditional and pioneering organizations.

Traditional organizations focus on fixed job descriptions, and linear careers that move from one description to the next. Progressive organizations focus on “talents & mastery”– and craft jobs and development opportunities around the specific skills employees would love to exploit.

A staggering 67% of employees don’t use their talents in day-to-day activities. (See our previous post.) What a waste of talent! And job satisfaction!

The first fix? Map the talents you have on board. The second? Ask how can you put them to use. The third? Ensure people are working on the things they do best.