In order for a company to exist 20, 50, or 100 years from now, it must be adaptive. The secret sauce to being adaptive as a company is employing people with entrepreneurial talent. These aren’t necessarily people who have started or desire to start a business. Rather, these are people that are themselves adaptive.
So how do companies attract entrepreneurial talent?
Talent of this nature doesn’t want to be placed in a box where its predefined role only reaches so far. It wants a say in how it can be best utilized.
In the new book The Alliance, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, along with two fellow entrepreneurs, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, discuss why businesses need to change the way they manage talent by building what they call an alliance.
An alliance is about being completely honest about each other’s goals from the beginning and working together to create a mutually beneficial role within the company.
The alliance takes the form of what Hoffman calls the “tour of duty”, which is essentially a set amount of time (3-5 years) in which the employee has the opportunity to accomplish something significant in the company that will be great for the company and great for the person’s future employability.
With the right fit, tours of duty can be rounded out and refined into a more permanent role within the company.
It all begins with an honest conversation about each party’s goals.
Both employee and manager know that there is a good chance that the employee will not work there for the rest of his or her career. The modern career is changing. Unlike the past, it is a rarity that people spend their lifetime working at a single company. Instead, people hop from job to job every few years. Companies can no longer recruit, hire, and manage under the presumption of lifetime employment.
Start by discussing what the employee wants to be doing in 3-5 years from now. In interviews, Hoffman even likes to ask “What job do you want after this?” It shows that the employer cares about the person’s career and it builds trust.
As a part of building the alliance, creating a term sheet will make it clear what the company can offer in exchange for what it expects.
Implementing tours of duty can be an effective way for large and small businesses alike to harness entrepreneurial talent. At the very least, the principles behind its hiring philosophy can facilitate the creation of an honest mission between employer and employee that results in true value creation for both.
