Management as a Liberal Art Research Institute

Attracting and Keeping Star Employees

Carol Mendenall PhD.

PUBLISHED:

September 23, 2022


Recently, there have been several articles and blogs on how small businesses can attract hard-working employees that fit their needs. No matter the recommendations, all can agree that it is difficult for small businesses to offer benefits that potential employees desire. The Forbes Coaches Council (2019) advises companies to offer flexible hours and offer partnership in stock or equity. Businesses should have already created a climate and culture that supports their origin story, a sense of community, ownership, and innovation. Pasetsky, an owner of a public relations firm, suggests outsourcing non-critical functions by using part-time staff to allow full-time staff to focus on innovation. Similar to Forbes, Pasetsky maintains that flexible scheduling is necessary, but also includes a flexible workload. This is especially true with part-time employees who are rather talented but also need to maintain their work for other employers. Communication is key but time must be of equal value. Organize meetings for days that correspond to the beginning of projects or the beginning of the week and limit follow-ups to as needed. Once the match making is done, how do small businesses keep such talented employees? No matter the strategies for attracting talent that will fit your business, it is equally important to support sustainability. This can be accomplished through the coach and consult models of Lipton (2003). These models are based on Adult Learning Theory, which Lipton (2003) expands upon in her book. Employees need guidance so the employer can obtain necessary goals, but also should be given autonomy and opportunity to develop. Coaching is a skill Lipton (2003) suggests for training and retraining based on progress. Consulting is the skill used to maintain accountability and a global perspective of business goals while giving space to hear alternate solutions, innovations, and other perspectives. Lipton (2003) reminds those in this leadership role to switch between the two skills as needed. This method provides structure, knowledge, and accountability to reaching goals, but also gives talented employees the opportunity to give suggestions, use their own ideas to obtain goals, and ownership of the results. This is how to draw and maintain talented business professionals. Drucker’s model of management by objectives allows for employees to set their work schedule within the parameters needed by the company, objectives and discussion on steps to obtain those objectives, and due dates. After a meeting or two on objectives, workload and calendar, a list of objectives is first created by the employer, then discussed with the employee, and then finalized. This process shows employers where support such as training is needed, gives employees the autonomy to choose the pace and design the work, and a system of accountability is created. This strategy creates ownership and a sense of community (Forbes) while allowing for flexible workload (Pasetsky). Management by Objectives (MBO) of Drucker has been an effective model for more than five decades yet it fits in tandem with the suggestions of today. Consider using MBO to obtain and keep talented employees. 


Forbes Coaches Council. 11 Ways Small Businesses Can Attract Top Employees. (June 6, 2019). https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/06/06/11-ways-small-businesses-canattract-top-employees/?sh=7ed5518e16 


Lipton, L., Wellman, B., Humbard, C. (2003). Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide To Learning Focused Relationships. 2nd Edition. Charlotte, VT: MiraVia, LLC 


Pasetsky, M. 7 ways small business owners can attract A-list talent: What is one of the biggest challenges for small business owners in 2022? Finding and retaining A-list talent. (June, 15, 2022). https://www.fastcompany.com/90759189/7-ways-small-business-owners-can-attract-a-list-talent 

A Tribute to Charles Handy (1932-2024)

By Karen Linkletter Ph.D. • January 6, 2025
On December 13, 2024, we lost a seminal management philosopher and theorist: Charles Handy. Like Peter Drucker, Handy was a social thinker and management theorist who emphasized the human side of work as more important than profits and valued individual growth and development in organizations. Handy was born in Ireland and studied at Oxford. In 1956, he went to work for Shell, working in Borneo, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Hill. Disillusioned by corporate life, Handy left Shell in 1962 to study management at MIT in their executive program. Inspired by their humanistic approach, he returned to London in 1967 to start the London Business School. Handy knew Drucker and was a regular keynote speaker at the Global Drucker Forum in Vienna. The two men had much in common in terms of their approaches to management and social theory. Like Drucker, Handy became an author (although, unlike Drucker, Handy was a corporate executive before he turned to writing). Handy wrote not just on business but also society, serving as much as a social ecologist as Drucker was. In his pivotal book, The Age of Unreason (1989), Handy argued for the disruption of discontinuity – resulting in a new world of business, education, and work that was highly unpredictable. He rejected shareholder capitalism and saw the organization as a place for human purpose and fulfillment, based on trust. Like Drucker, Handy advocated federalism in organizations, disseminating authority and responsibility to the lowest possible levels. He also saw “the future that had already happened.” Handy coined the term “portfolio life,” where knowledge workers would increasingly work remotely and for multiple organizations. In the 1980s, he posited that society consisted of “shamrock organizations”: those that had three integrated leaves: full-time employees, outside contractors, and temporary workers. Handy thus foresaw the new “gig economy” and increasingly autonomy of knowledge work. Finally, like Drucker, Handy had a life partner who not only supported his career but was an independent woman with her own interests. Liz Handy, like Doris Drucker, was an entrepreneur who ran an interior design business, and later was a professional photographer and Charles’s business agent.  Minglo Shao, founder of CIAM, remembers Handy as a warm man who made several important contributions to what we see as the fundamentals of Management as a Liberal Art. We are thankful for Handy’s contributions to management theory and social thought, and for his legacy at the Global Drucker Forum in the form of the Charles and Elizabeth Handy Lecture Series.

Treasures from the Charles Handy Drucker Forum legacy

By Richard and Ilse Straub with the Drucker Forum Team • December 29, 2024
For 15 years, Charles Handy did us the enormous honor of choosing the Drucker Forum as a privileged platform for delivering his message to the world, and particularly to the younger generation in which he had such faith. Following up on our initial announcement of Charles’ passing Charles Handy (1932–2024) , we are honored to share a selection of his key contributions to the Forum with our wider community. Charles’ brilliant keynotes at the Drucker Forum have become legendary. Normally accessible only to members of the Drucker Society, from today they are available as recordings to the wider public for a period of 30 days. At the first centennial Forum in 2009, Charles talked about his debt to Peter Drucker while outlining his own fundamental management concepts that he had developed over the years. Two years later, he touched on the ideas of Adam Smith and demonstrated how much more to them there was than the celebrated “invisible hand” of self-interest. In his landmark closing address in 2017, pursuing a thread developed in his 2015 book The Second Curve, he called for a management reformation that would turn it into a tool for the common good – thus drawing the first contours of what we would announce six years later as the Next Management . We took to heart his exhortation not to wait for great leaders but “to start small fires in the darkness, until they spread and the whole world is alight with a better vision of what we could do with our businesses”. Management’s "second curve" will be the focus of the “Charles and Elizabeth Handy Lecture Series” in 2025. Following the loss of his beloved wife Elizabeth in 2018 and a severe stroke, Charles was much reduced in mobility in his last years – but not in his determination to continue spreading his message of hope to the world. He couldn’t participate in person in the Drucker Forum 2022, but he participated in a moving online interview with his son Scott, who directed young actors in a short performance of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot by Beckett to illustrate some points.  Charles also contributed valued digital articles for our blog and for Drucker Forum partners. Even during the most difficult period of his life he continued to write and develop his ideas in weekly columns for the Idler magazine. This entailed first memorizing the article, then dictating it and finally reviewing it by having someone it re-read to him – a remarkable feat of memory and determination. The article is a jewel and most appropriate for Christmas and the season of self-reflection. Have a wonderful Christmas, happy holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

The Future of Knowledge Work: What Drucker can teach us

By Karen Linkletter Ph.D. • November 19, 2024
Interview with Karen Linkletter at the 16th Global Peter Drucker Forum 2024  Video Interview
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