# 79: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “The Alliance”
Story behind the Book Choice
This time, it is very easy to understand why I bought this book. It is about talents and employer-employee relationships. This topic has been occupying me since my first days at work after graduating from high school. To be even more precise: I developed a sensitivity for HR issues when I was even younger. But it does not matter when my interest in this emerged. What is important is what the authors say about the present condition.
The Alliance is a really quick read but it is worth looking into it. I am a fan of Reid Hoffman because of his background in philosophy and his impressive achievements. What the authors mean by “alliance” is basically a new form of employer-employee relationship that is based on honest and open communication. The goal is to develop talents in the best way possible by allowing them to complete “Tours of Duty.”
These tours are known from the military. You go through different stations in different roles. But the goal is not to just complete them as you would in any trainee program. The stations are chosen in a way that you can achieve tangible results that bring you ahead in your career while at the same time making the company move forward. The most important thing, however, is that the different tours of duty are all designed for the ultimate purpose of allowing you to reach your long-term career goal — even if it might lead you to leave your current employer.
For sure, Hoffman and his co-authors talk a lot about examples from LinkedIn. But that could be expected (Reid co-founded the network) and I am completely fine with this. There are also many other examples from other companies mentioned. Almost all of these examples are from Silicon Valley companies. That is not surprising either but needs to be taken into account by readers from Europe/Germany. The book’s thesis that “alliances” are needed to fix the broken practice of “hire and fire” is based on the U.S. job reality.
Still, I would argue, even though we have different work contracts in Europe and Germany, many of the other transformational factors that the authors mention apply to our situation as well. Above all, this means the end of the notion that you have one career and one employer in your lifetime. This notion has already been abandoned from reality, mostly. So, let me briefly talk about three passages that I enjoyed reading very much because they stimulated further thoughts.
- Entrepreneurial employees
Actually, I had known about this story before but it strikes me again and again. It is about how Lasseter got fired by Disney because he had seen a huge opportunity to go into computer-animated movie production. Disney did not share this vision. They fired him right away because he was supposedly wasting his time with thoughts that were going nowhere. As it turned out, this was the biggest mistake Disney made and it cost them a lot of money. Had Lasseter been able to pursue his vision at Disney, the entire market would probably look different today and Pixar might not even exist.
The reason why this story struck me again when reading the book today is because I am convinced that so many people on this planet get fired everyday exactly because they see more than anybody else and they have the potential to implement their ideas. But everybody else is simply not seeing this. There might not be any general asshole mentality involved on the part of employers. This behavior can really be motivated by the fear that employees who make crazy suggestions pose a threat to the efficiency of an organization.
I would not say that we have really come to abandon this mindset of “we have always done it this way, we do not need to change.” I do see that companies, also large ones, are slowly changing now. But really entrepreneurial employees are still being treated as outcasts. Most exceptions to this norm are indeed found in the startup world. But just because startups are entrepreneurial ventures, that does not automatically mean that the founders are equally open to entrepreneurial employees. So, we still have a long way to go on this issue, I guess. And I am aware that an organization in which everyone acts like an entrepreneur would not function.
2. Values
The task which the authors describe here when talking about how to put together a team of employees is one of my favorite coaching exercises. I sometimes do it myself, actually, at longer intervals, of course. Whenever I lacked any sense of direction with respect to my career plans, I did this — I thought of three people I admire. This always brought be back to “reality” — my reality. I mean that environment that I feel comfortable in. The authors of the book talk a lot about meeting people who are “intellectually stimulating” and I do think that everything they say about the value of personal networks is highly up to date and will never lose importance. They also give their own answers to the “name three people” task in the appendix which is quite interesting to read.
3. Alumni Networks
This entire alumni issue is so self-evident but German universities are still lagging behind. As far as I can see, they are only slowly discovering the value of well-curated alumni networks. To me, all of this is the result of the lack of open innovation in universities. One can only hope that they start seeing the brand value in this and the immense benefit this brings to the (former) students. Although not all of these benefits can be quantified, they definitely exist. The most important sentence for me therefore is the last one.
“Just as uncertainty doesn’t equal risky, unpredictability doesn’t equal low value.”
Actually, I have no idea why people — even large and prestigious institutions — still do not get the value of networks. The reason why I do not understand this is not even related to present-day (digital) networking insights. To me personally, my intuitive appreciation of human networks stems from pre-digital days. Humans are social animals and the only way that we can survive, in an evolutionary way, is by surrounding ourselves with other human beings (at least in non-Corona times). This is very simple, I think. Networks truly are as valuable as money. It did not take the internet or LinkedIn for this.
Overall, The Alliance, from my perspective, is all about networking. The way I define networking is: building meaningful relationships that allow one to grow. I think, the idea of supporting these employer-employee alliances based on Tours of Duty is a highly pragmatic one that can easily be implemented by companies across all industries. The question for me remains when the education system will finally respond to the transformation of the work world. To me, they are the bottle neck.
Entrepreneurial employees need to have a basic understanding of their talents and their values if they are to claim their “right” to form alliances. Let us hope that there are enough “entrepreneurial” teachers and professors who encourage their students early on to start their personal Tours of Duty early in life. We will all benefit from these inspiring students and later colleagues who have the courage to speak up when they see new solutions to old problems. And hopefully, their employees will have learned from Disney’s mistake.
Reflection Questions
1) How do you think about “entrepreneurial employees”?
2) If your boss offered you to go on a Tour of Duty for three years — where would you like to end up at the end and which new skills would you like to learn on the tour?
3) If you could hire three people from your personal network to join your company (your current employer); who would it be?