11 Sept 2010

Talent-Ridden (1)

An article published last month in Workforce Management describes how American Express is entrusting call center agents with more independence as part of a quest to upgrade customer service. John Boudreau, management professor at the University of Southern California comments "You make jobs more pivotal when you allow more discretion".

Organisations like AMEX already depend significantly on their ability to acquire and hold on to talented professionals. Genereating new pivotal roles out of areas that don't naturally call for them increases that dependency: pivotal roles only deliver when their incumbents are talented.

The yield will be interesting to see but I anticipate the effort herculean and its likely cost, well given the times, rather untimely. Good luck to them.

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