The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age

"We're happy to have you on the team. We expect a great future. Now, please sign this form that says we can fire you at any time for any reason."The classic model for employment is gone. The days of job security are no more. While there are benefits to employees being able to easily switch companies, it has slowly created a culture with a problem. The employee/employer relationship has turned adversarial.Employers are trepidatious to support employee growth because they fear employees are just waiting to hop ship. Employees want to look out for themselves, and have a problem with loyalty when they know they're expendable.The Alliance addresses these issues and provides a solid foundation for how to reframe the relationship. Yes, spending your full career with a company is no longer likely. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be a lifetime relationship between companies and their employees. The Alliance explains how these can be mutually beneficial.Companies should accept that most employees are only there for a short time. "Tours of Duty" are a good way to make sure that both the company and employee get the most of their time at the company. Employee networks are becoming more and more valuable. Companies need to be harnessing these to help both themselves and their employees. Finally, companies need to think about how they'll maintain contact with their employees if and when they leave the company.If any of these sound like issues you've seen as an employer or employee, you definitely need to pick this book up. It's a quick read with a lot of pragmatic advice. It's time we start changing the employment paradigm, and I hope the Alliance catches on.

People with talent have more options. That is true in good times and in bad, for high-level skilled workers and for those with low-level skills. In almost every country in the world, staff can be “let go.” This can be a protracted process, or a simple one. If the company does not need or want you, your employment will be terminated.The employees are expected to be loyal and committed, and to work in the best interests of the company until they retire. This is despite the clear but rarely ever stated, understanding that your job might disappear as a result of a restructuring, or a decree from a boardroom in another country. Should you, in turn, inform you company that you have accepted an offer of better employment, you might be asked to leave immediately. This is instead of working out your notice period, because you cannot be trusted to work out your time in the best interests of the company. After all, you have left before your retirement.No thoughtful person should be unaware of this imbalance – the employee must commit, but the company cannot be expected to.The days when “employers and employees committed to each other, for better or worse, through bull and bear markets, until retirement did them part,” are over. Loyalty is scarce, long-term ties are rare. The past will not, and cannot return The Alliance, Hoffman’s latest book, addresses this problem. You cannot get a person’s talent working for the good of the company if you do not have their commitment. Employees who fail to fully invest in their current positions are constantly scanning the marketplace for new opportunities.What we can expect, and what the book sets out to sketch is a framework that encourages a different employer-employee relationship.Reid Hoffman is an internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author, best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, The Alliance describes a relationship based on both employer and employee adding value to each other: “Help make our company more valuable, and we will make you more valuable.”This is a team where mutually adding value secures the bond. It is not a family were commitment is unchanging. No one asks their child to leave because she scored an “F” in biology,The Alliance has already taken root in the high-tech, start-up community of Silicon Valley. The secret of success in Silicon Valley is really about the way the companies build alliances with their people. Talent is Silicon Valley’s most valuable resource, and they treat this resource accordingly, explains Hoffman. Most people will know about the geniuses of the Valley, but few about it’s management practices. Employers use the alliance to recruit, manage, and retain incredibly talented, entrepreneurial employees.Hoffman uses the term “Tour of Duty” to describe how employment is understood. The term comes from the military where a tour of duty refers to a single specific deployment. A soldier will see a number of tours of duty in his career, each for a predetermined time, and to accomplish a specific task. One might be to assist with the evacuation effort after the earthquake, and another to secure a hospital in a remote area.In the business context, a tour of duty is a clearly defined task to be achieve within a finite period of time. It is an ethical, reciprocal, commitment between employer and employee. The company commits to honouring its obligations to the employee during this tour of duty, and the employee commits to honouring the needs of the company for this finite period.The expectation of value from each party are made explicit, and are accepted by the other. You, the employee will be exposed and trained in the merchandising methods of the firm for the next 18 months, and will learn about our state-of-the-art systems. This, we agree is something necessary for the career you desire to pursue, here or somewhere else. You will fulfil your task thoughtfully, and will look for ways the company can improve their systems and alert us to new possibilities.There are three general tours of duty. The most basic one is the Rotational Tour. This is a fairly structured tour designed for entry-level staff, often to get acquainted with the company and to be exposed to various facets of the business they might wish to contribute to. Google, for example, puts recent college graduates through a structured, twenty-seven-month Rotational tour that exposes them to three different roles each for nine months. Both the staff member and the company benefit from this fixed term commitment.The second level tour of duty is the Transformational tour. This tour will be tailored to the specific needs of the company, and the specific aspirations of the employee. It is called “Transformational” because it is intended to transform both the company and the career of the employee. An initial transformations tour will last between and two and five years.Violating the commitment during what is essentially a short period, would not be in the interests of any mature employee. Who would hire talent that did not honour commitments made, and who would choose to work for an organization that does not honour commitments made to employees?The third tour of duty is only offered to those employees who are a perfect cultural fit with the organization. The employee “sees working at the company as his last job, and the company wants the employee to stay until he retires.” This is called the Foundational tour of duty.Mutual respect underlies this alliance. Expectations are required of both sides, as well as the satisfaction of each other’s needs. The duration of the relationship is, for the most part, relatively short, making commitment possible to honour.The book describes all aspects of the implementation, and forewarns of challenges you might encounter.Our workplaces will benefit from this re-think.Readability Light --+-- SeriousInsights High --+-- LowPractical High --+-- Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works.

An easy, but useful, read. In my experience, most business books have about 30 pages of information that the author repeats 5 or 6 times to get to book length. This book isn't like that. It is actually useful.The authors attack the tired concept that a business is like a "family" by, in my opinion, more accurately analogizing the relationship to that of an alliance. The employer and employee are allies initially, and perhaps the alliance will continue for a long time, but the alliance will change with time. Indeed, the authors argue that the alliance may continue after the employer-employee relationship has ended. They present examples (e.g., alumni groups) of how this might work. I was also impressed with the authors' emphasis on the ethical dimensions of an alliance. Lifetime employment may be rare, but long-term relationships may still be formed.Social media's integration into the alliance will undoubtedly occur. The authors suggest some ways to do so. This process will probably require more management attention than anticipated.I am in higher education and the prescriptions of the authors will not apply there as completely as it might to high tech and other businesses. However, for me, the book inspired consideration of how some of its ideas might be applied in my world. I recommend it.

I read a blog post by Reid Hoffman with the introduction of the ideas in this book, and thought the post offered a really insightful way to think about career management in the coming years. So when it alluded to more detail in this book, I was looking forward to hearing more detail about it.The ideas are expounded upon a bit more in this book, but I think they stayed too high level to be that much more valuable than the blog. The other issue I had was that I thought the writing plugged LinkedIn too much. 'LinkedIn' seems to appear on almost every other page, and this got really annoying about a third of the way through the book.Though it is not very long, you may have a better experience not reading every word and just skimming through each chapter. Overall, more disappointed than not.

The management recommendations are clear and immediatly applicableI recomend this book to all managers in all sectors, specially HR managers

Die Zeit verändert sich und auch die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mitarbeiter und Manger ändert sich. The Alliance zeigt ein Weg für neue und zeitgemäße Umgang für beide Parteien.

I really enjoyed The Alliance! I found the concepts really described my career trajectory and planning. I had learned some of the ideas over the course of my career, but this book puts them into a concise package. Reid Hoffman's ideas are a combination of current best practices and a peek into the future. I think this is important reading for people that want a different approach to planning their careers or for anyone involved in other people's career development! I think the ideas are very powerful. I have purchased copies for the people managers that I know.

Very informative and full of useful tips.

Very helpfull. It doesn't rediscover the wheel. Just say what we dont really want to see in the daily routine hiring new staff.After reading it i discovered a new way to see candidates for a job when I interview people