The End of Apprenticeship
Posted By Rob Millard - 2 Comments -
David Maister's material is always solid and worth noting, but every now and again he comes up with something that transcends even this and produces a piece that is both fundamental and truly profound.
His recent posting titled The End of Apprenticeship is an excellent example. The implications of this shift in the way that people are managed (or not) as they progress (or not) through their careers is strategically disturbing. The resulting distractions and talent leakage wreak havoc, at the very least with a firm's ability to execute strategy.
David is right. The apprenticeship model that characterized law firms in particular through most of the twentieth century, is all but dead. He lists eight things that firms are doing, that has killed it off:
a) Lengthening the time and odds of making it to "partner-level" positions
b) Hiring experienced people at advanced levels, thereby 'blocking' the path for those who were coming up the old way
c) Establishing permanent non-partner positions, also 'blocking the path' and signaling that not everyone was expected to have career advancement
d) Making partners' lives so stressful and unattractive that many junior people increasingly question whether the benefits of partnership are worth the efforts that an apprenticeship would require
e) Placing greater pressure on partners to generate work and serve clients, thereby reducing the amount of partner time available for mentoring, coaching and development of juniors
f) Shifting responsibility for developing people away from senior professionals and reassigning it to trainers and HR departments (!)
g) Holding back crucial feedback on whether or not people were going to 'make it.' (Ostensibly this was to avoid making misleading promises for future promotions, but increasingly gave the impression that the firm wanted people to hang around "one more year" without the firm having to give any reciprocal undertaking)
h) No longer viewing their employees as future partners, but treating them like REAL employees - resources to be consumed, not assets to be grown.
It's worth scrolling down through the comments, too. Here's a gem from Bruce MacEwen over at Adam Smith Esq ....
"If you're right-as I desperately fear you are-that the old apprenticeship model is well and truly broken, then we need courageous and long-term thinkers to help us invent a new paradigm. (The apprenticeship model was the antithesis of short-term thinking, and anything worthy of replacing it must be as well.)
The irony, if there is irony and not just tragedy, in the current situation is that it's precisely the high performance/high achievement people who see through the fog-machine of performance (non-) reviews and rhetoric about "commitments to professional development" and who are the first to opt out of the exploitative, demoralizing system. After all, they have options.
Perhaps only when the cost of this supra-normal attrition among the "best and brightest" begins to really hurt will firms be motivated to look beyond the common wisdom for revolutionary new paradigms."
And Eric Boehme over at Beat Your Own Drum ....
"I listen to HR go on ad naseum about employee retention. We need to keep the "good ones." The high performers.
Who do we lose? The high performers. Why? You nailed it. (f) drives it home. It is so refreshing to see people out here in the blogosphere discussing the root of the problem instead of new and inventive ways to treat the symptoms."
I suspect that this is not the last that we will see "discussing the root of the problem" and also the quest to find real and sustainable solutions. Not by a long chalk! I suspect we will be hearing more not only from David but also from a whole range of other blogs including, for that matter, Adventure of Strategy.
Comments, as always, are most welcome and may be posted below.
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Hi, this is a really important issue and I hope more bloggers will join in the ongoing conversation about it. At legal sanity http://www.legalsanity.com/, we referenced Maister's post on apprenticeship as part of a larger commentary on what's behind lawyer attrition http://www.legalsanity.com/2006/06/articles/whats-the-problem/whatas-behind-lawyer-attrition/. I enjoyed reading your coverage of the subject, Lori Herz
Rob,
This was truly one of David's best blog posts to date. What needs to be said was said. I wish every manager could read that post.
I wish everyone who is seeking their true potential would be able to read that post.
I just subscribed to you. I am looking forward to reading more....
Eric