EFFECTIVE EARLY CAREER DEVELOPMENT

One way to promote management development is to use ca-
reer-development programs, such as those described above, in
which the focus is on the individual and his or her training. One

of the problems we have seen with training programs is that very
often they enable a person to acquire impressive new skills and
attitudes only to return to a work environment that is not ready
for these skills and, in fact, may be hostile to such changes.
Organizational researchers now recognize that changes must be
made in the work environment, in the rewards and opportunities
it provides, if changes in persons are to continue and be
productive.
Unfortunately, many top executives and personnel managers
either have not received this message or find it difficult to imple-
ment. The fact is that much of the career-development activity
in industry and government is still focused on the person (sending
off somewhere for three days. or two weeks, putting him
"through" a prepackaged program) rather than on the environ-
ment in which he works. In this section we shall consider how
an organization might approach management development not
through any new, extensive programs requiring expensive consul-
tants, training sites, and time away from the job, but through the
analysis and alteration of what is already there—the new recruit,
his job, his supervisor, his peer group, and the organizational
information system? By working with what is already present,
the intent is to show how feasible it would be to make changes
that in sum could have tremendous impact.
What kind of changes might facilitate early career develop-
ment'? Probably the very first would be changes in schools and
jobs. How does one change schools and jobs to get people into
a positive cycle?
‘
The Educational System ‘
·
The first place to correct many of the problems in the first job
is in the educational system—high school, college, or pro_fessional
. school. First, students need more information about occupations
and jobs. Second, the information they get should be more
realistic—positive and negative. Third, students of all types should
receive more training in human relations in work settings. They
need to realize that the technical side of their work is only part
of their job; they need to learn how to "sell" their technical ideas
and solutions to skeptical bosses, colleagues, and clients. They
need to learn how to overcome resistance to change, how to
diagnose and work around problems occasionally, rather than
head—on.
One way to create these changes in schools and colleges
is to introduce courses that deal with interpersonal and group
relations. lvlost of our curricula could use real "beefing up" on '

the social aspects of work. Co—operative programs, internships,
required work leaves, and field projects are other ways of getting
the student into the real world. Many students "step out" for a
year or two on their own and then return to finish their degrees,
which is another way to integrate school and work.
Another strategy is to get the faculty more exposed to the
real world. This could be in the form of research, consulting, or
sabbaticals in industry. l—liring executives or professionals in in-
dustry as visiting faculty on their leaves of absence is another
way of bringing more experience into the classroom.

the organization rather than fully functioning participants. The term
"rotation" literally means "going around in circles." Maybe that
is one reason why young employees’ self-perceptions tend to go
down in the first year. The young person may feel that he is not
doing anything really worthwhile, that he is just being paid to
sit around and observe. lf he stays, this is going to have an adverse
effect on his seIf—image—he is being paid a lot for doing little.

The Supervisor

Another consideration is the superior to whom a new man is as-
signed. Probably the boss has the greatest impact on the definition
of a job. Therefore, if management is going to redesign jobs, it
must also redesign bosses or train them to deal with a new
employee.
This was another realization of the company that tried upgrad-
ing first—year jobs. lt learned in the first year that it had to work
with the bosses as well as new recruits. ln the second year it
put the supervisors through a long training program before new
people came into the organization. Then, as part of the training
program for the new people, the company also involved the superi-
ors, so that each recruit and his boss went through the program
as a team.
This type of learning helps a superior develop a sense of what
we call support/ve autonomy, so he
can tread the fine line between allowing a man independence
(i.e., sink or swim) on the one hand, and providing assistance
with excessive control, on the other. The combination of autonomy
· and the supervisor’s availability and willingness to work as a coach -
when the young person wants help may be the best combination
for learning

Performance Review

Supervisors should also learn how to provide good performance
reviews. lf the new employee is left on his own to determine his
performance, his conclusion may be based on highly distorted
information. It is far better to have the feedback come through
formal channels and get it straight rather than get it through indi-
rect and unreliable means, such as the supervisors’ manner of
saying hello on a certain morning.
An important need for supervisors in this area is to develop
skills in confronting interpersonal problems. lf the new person is
given autonomy, and if the supervisor sees himself as a bit more
of a helper than he may have originally, this suggests that some ‘
new problems may arise. The new man is going to make mistakes,
and he and his supervisor are going to have to learn how to get
through these problems and conflicts as a pair. Also, the super-


The First Assignment

The first step would be to analyze the initial jobs that new people
are given in the organization. What happens to a young person
when he walks in the door? lf that first year is a critical period
in which he is especially susceptible to learning new attitudes,
what is happening to him during that important time? Is he just
absorbing information and not really accomplishing important ob-
jectives? ls that time merely an investment that the company feels
required to make in him? Or is it a time when the company really
expects to challenge him? Does the company have some concrete
goals for him to reach?
The ironic fact seems to be that organizations look at the
first year as a necessary evil: an investment they have to make
in the person until they can assign him an important project where
he can make a valuable contribution. At the same time, the em-
ployee is impatient for something that has meaning and challenge.
Both the organization and the individual want and need the
new person to have challenge and good performance, but for `
understandable reasons both are frustrated. It is not easy to make
jobs more challenging when one gets down to the specifics of
the task. lt may mean hiring fewer people so the organization
can do a better job on the assignments that they are given. One
organization found that its turnover was so high that it had to
hire 120 men each year in order to have 20 at the end of the
year. So it took a gamble and figured that perhaps this attrition
was because the first—year jobs were so unchallenging. The next
year it hired 30 people and worked hard on upgrading first—year
jobs. At the end of the year 25 people were employed and giving
far better first-year performances.
Another recommendation related to early challenge is the
elimination of job-rotating training programs. The first job ought
to be a realistic, permanent assignment and not one seen as
special or part of a training program. This generates job success ·
rather than a succession of jobs. Moving through different short-
term jobs means men are merely observers of different parts of

visor has to learn to put on pressure at the appropriate times, .
when to exercise authority, and when to get tough. It is not only
a matter of learning new values and attitudes about supervisory
style, it is also a matter of translating these into specific interper-
sonal skills and knowing how to apply them at various times.
One way of achieving some of the necessary confrontation
and problem—solving skills would be through a planned, structured
exercise. A group of new employees could meet and draw up
a statement describing their attitudes toward the organization,
toward their supervisors, and toward their careers. Their super-
visors would also meet as a group and draft a similar statement
covering their attitudes toward the new men and their ideas of
what the views of the new recruit are. These statements would
then be used in diagnosing important career and organizational
problems. The structured process and the group-level focus may
be less threatening than unstructured or one-to—one encounters
may be in confronting problems and working through to solutions.

The Recruit and His Goals: Career Planning

A third area of change concerns the organization’s long-term
plans for the new recruit. Perhaps most important would be the
creation of a semi-annual work planning and review program,
designed after the work of McGregor and the General
Electric Company.
The purpose of such a program would be to establish collabo-
rative goal—settings and more self—directed careers. However, the
organization and the individual must be aware of and avoid the
tendency for such programs to "vanish" in the sense we have
used before. Such a program should allow for individual dif- `
ferences in administrative and interpersonal skills, which have
been found to be related to career success
its focus should be on developing these skills in terms of specific
day-to-day behaviors which can be measured and changed by
the person and his supervisor.
Another useful exercise would be for the new recruit and his
supen/isor to examine the company’s goals (or the department’s
or work group's goals) in relation to the recruit’s personal goals
and desires. One issue would be the attractiveness or "valence"
of the organization’s goals to the recruit. Can he identify with
them'? Are they important to him? l-low can they be made more
important'? The other issue is their instrumentality. Does he see
A his efforts toward the organization’s goals as also leading to his
own satisfactions? lf not, how could this connection be better
established? ·
The organization must be aware of the emotional development
taking place in the recruit in his early career years. Organizations,
like universities, have tended to see personal growth as being

independent of or irrelevant to the "really important" career devel-
opment changes—new skills, abilities, and knowledge. The bulk
of a person’s career changes, however, are in the motivational
and attitudinal area. Because motivation and
attitudes are related to performance and success,
it is clear that organizations should see these personal changes
as relevant to their interests. In particular, one never knows when,
how, and what attitudes may be acquired by a new man. The
change may result as much from the climate of the organization
as from the work itself. l\/luch personal stress may result from
the need to achieve and the relative lack of security in the first
year with a new organization. It would also be useful to be alert
for turning points which may help mark important career transi-
tions—the first performance appraisal, the first completed project,
or a particular transfer or promotion. Certain events may have
symbolic value which make them far more important to the recruit
than the organization or the supervisor may realize, and it is impor-
tant to attempt to see the recruit’s career as it appears to him.

Family Changes

Along with recognizing the career as emotional change and iden-
tity development, it is also important to recognize the impact of
another important contributor to these changes—the family. Family
changes, such as marriage, children, relocation, or the death of
a relative, often have profound effects on a person’s identity, atti-
tudes, and motivation. lf these family changes happen to be con-
gruent with career changes, the mutually reinforcing effects could
‘ be far more potent than the sum of the separate influences. An · ~
example of congruent family and career effects might be the way
marriage and a significant promotion could contribute both to
increased career involvement and personal responsibility. On the
other hand, a problem in a critical family transition could greatly -
disrupt a person’s adjustment to an important career change. An
example here might be in-law problems in the new marriage and
problems with the supervisor in the recent promotion; both of
_ these might conceivably center on the issue of competence in
relationships with older people or authority figures. The combina-
tion of similar problems around the same issues in two central
areas of one’s life could greatly compound any feeling of incompe-
tence or low esteem which might result from either problem se-
parately.

The Organization Reward Structure

The fourth arena for facilitating career development concerns
characteristics of the organization itself. One important activity

would be the examination of the organization’s reward structure
in relation to the new recruit’s path-goal profiles. Is the company
using rewards that are valued by the new recruit'? Also, does the
recruit know what kind of behavior leads to these rewards? An
example of a mismatch here occurred in the Fl&D labs studied.
Here the most common rewards were money (pay raises); howev-
er, the scientists did not really understand what they had to do
to get a pay raise. Furthermore, there was evidence that intrinsic
satisfactions, such as greater challenge or autonomy, meant more
to them than money. As a result the companies were trapped
in an upward spiral of salaries with little apparent change in em-
ployee satisfaction. Therefore companies
should: (1) attempt to design jobs so that efforts toward company
goals also contribute to satisfying empIoyees’ needs; and (2) clari-
fy the organization’s reward structure so that executives and
lower—Ievel employees are in agreement about the kind of perform-
ance that is expected and rewarded. Again, an examination of *
these issues through a structured exercise involving senior man-
agers and recent graduates would probably be fruitful. Manage-
ment by objectives is another possible way to integrate
the goals of the new employee with those of the organization.
Even before the recruit is hired, these organizational expecta-
tions should be communicated as well as possible to him, clearly
and realistically. College students have become surprisingly accu-
rate in diagnosing inflated or distorted recruiting information, and
it usually backfires. This is especially important in view of the great
sensitivity and value for openness found in today’s students. In-
deed, according to Schein students report that the areas
A companies stress the most in their recruiting literature are often ` 1
those about which they are most defensive; therefore, what are
promoted as their strongest points often betray their weakest. For
example, if a recruiter stresses all the freedom you will have in
his organization, the reality may be that there are numerous rules
and restrictions! In the insurance industry, an experiment revealed
that recruiting information stressing both the pros and cons of
selling life insurance attracted just as many new agents and result-
ed in lower turnover among the new employees and a concomitant
reduction in training costs. A similar experiment
was successful in reducing dissatisfaction and turnover for tele-
phone operators . Therefore to get and retain good
people, "tell it like it is.

Impact of Peer Group

Another part of the individual's organizational environment with
high potential for career impact is his employee peer group. most
of the new member’s informal learning is communicated by this

group. The peer group can also provide
important emotional support, coaching, and identification models
to help the new recruit manage identity changes, difficult prob-
lems, and critical turning points Peer group interaction is also
associated with reduced turnover.
The peer group is often the employee’s main emotional link
to the organization; often he comes to value the organization only
because of his regard for his peers. For example, much of the
zeal and bravery of l\/larine troops is based on their devotion to
their buddies rather than a general commitment to l\/larine Corps
values
Therefore, an organization would do well to examine the nature
of work—group interaction patterns, norms, and values.
lf these norms and values run counter to the organization’s
goals, a serious problem may exist, and an organizational diag-
nosis might be conducted to determine the probable reasons. lf
the work—group culture is supportive (or perhaps neutral) in relation
to organizational goals, it would be useful to create structures
that would encourage work—related peer interaction—such as
weekly problem-solving sessions, an informal morning coffee
break, team projects, or older "coaches" assigned to new men.
The important point here is that because the peer group is
a potent force, there is a certain amount of risk attached to utilizing
it. A group of employees can very accurately diagnose a "poor"
organizational climate and can effectively transmit this awareness
and quota—restricting pressures to new members. Thus, the peer
A group can be either strongly functional or strongly dysfunctional
for organizational identification.
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