Staffing: "Setting up positions according to people"

In the past, we used to set up posts and allocate people to specific posts, in order to ensure that people can make the best use of their talents and have clear responsibilities.

However, now that the environment has changed, the nature of things has also changed.

The external environment has made uncertainty the norm.

The assumptions, usage scenarios, and operating logic of job and staff assignments are already very different, and their operating methods should be appropriately adjusted, and some may even be subverted.

However, many managers are unaware of this.

If we still follow the past operating routines to carry out position and staffing determination, it is likely that we will not be able to achieve the goal of organizational change.

1. The uncertainty of the future makes it necessary to "put people first and then events" in determining posts and personnel.

The traditional thinking of determining positions and personnel is a relatively typical operating concept of "people first, people later" - decide things or directions first, and then choose people.

However, at the beginning of the 21st century, Jim Collins, a contemporary American management guru, spent five years researching more than 1,400 Fortune 500 companies and found that outstanding companies have always practiced "people first, things first" - choose the right people first.

People, and then decide what to do, he found that this is the key to the success of an excellent company.

The strategy of putting people first and things later seems more meaningful: 1. If you start from "selecting people" rather than "doing things", it will be easier to adapt to this unpredictable world.

As the saying goes: Everything is impermanent, as long as the people are right, the world will be right; 2. If you have the right people, then how to motivate and manage them is no longer a problem.

The right people do not need strict management or motivation, they will be self-driven to achieve success; 3. If you choose the wrong person, no matter how correct your direction is, you will still not be able to reach your destination.

Having a vision but not having the right people to carry it out is of no use.

Based on this, we believe that in an era of uncertainty, the logical sequence of "three determinations" should be to first determine personnel, then determine positions, and then determine staffing.

This is an efficient position and staffing strategy that starts with the end in mind and is result-oriented. It will achieve twice the result with half the effort in achieving organizational or position goals.

2. Changes in the attributes of the organization make it necessary to "personalize" the job and staffing decisions. In this era, the attributes of the organization and the employment relationship in the traditional sense will undergo huge changes. It is no longer the company that hires employees, but the organization that hires employees; no longer

It is capital that hires people, but people hire capital; as companies become more platform-based, the trend of employees becoming more creative will become more and more obvious.

In this situation, the most important goal of organizational management is to release human potential and stimulate individual value creation capabilities.

When an organization sets out to determine positions and staffing, it must consider and design in accordance with this principle and goal, especially for those scarce and precious core talents and elites. When determining posts and staffing, these outstanding talents cannot be applied in a "cutting off the foot to fit the shoe" approach.

It is necessary to fully consider the design of customized positions for them. This is the so-called "personalization", in other words, "designing positions according to people."

The logic of positioning and staffing in the industrial era is to "select people according to their positions and match them with their posts", but in the era of uncertainty, it is "to assign positions according to people and make the best use of their talents". 3. The variability of strategies makes the positioning and staffing must be "agile" for any company.

The fixed positions and fixed staffing are all matched with the organization's strategy and business model. The purpose of fixed positions and fixed staffing is to better achieve the organizational goals.

Make adjustments according to changes in the external environment and corporate strategy, rather than sticking to the old ways and clinging to the original structure and organization within a given time frame without making changes.

In particular, the design of key positions and personnel that support the achievement of strategic and business goals requires agile definition and adjustment to reflect the organization's sensitivity and flexibility to external changes in a dynamic environment.

Of course, the agility of fixed positions and staffing can be treated differently within the entire organization.

For example, in order to adapt to the development characteristics of the uncertain era, the "platform" organizational structure has become the standard for many large companies, especially Internet companies. The outstanding features of this organizational structure are: small front desk (mainly a collection of front-line business departments)

), strong middle office (mainly a collection of resource support departments), and large backend (mainly a collection of functional service departments).

The small front office should maintain a high degree of agility in setting up and assigning positions and staffing, while the middle office and back-office departments can maintain relative stability in their assigned positions and staffing without the need for frequent adjustments due to the compatibility and scalability of organizational capacity building.