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You
are a star at your company. You consistently pass benchmarks with
flying colors and are rewarded with ascending positions in the
corporate ladder. Surely it's time to start looking outside the company
and shop your talent in the open market.
Not so fast. Success does not so easily transfer in the move between
companies. The fact of the matter is, many high flyers who soar in one
company are horrified to learn the difficulty of repeating their
performance in a new post.
There are lots of reasons for this pattern. First off, many stars
underestimate the network of support staff and business operations that
may be a perfect fit for their talent. Furthermore, every workplace
runs off an informal network of relationships that cannot be so easily
replaced when moving to a new organization. These informal networks
rely on trust and reciprocity, both of which take years to build. To
mix a metaphor, it takes a village to produce a star; in a new village
the "natives" may not be so forthcoming with their generosity.
A research study conducted at Harvard Business School reinforced this
perception. Harvard researchers Boris Groysberg and Ashish Nanda
tracked what happened to star financial analysts who switched
investment banks. The team selected financial analysts because most of
the mobility between jobs occurred in New York. A change in performance
therefore could not be attributed to the peculiarities of a new market
in another city or the
disruption of major family move. Most financial analysts also tend to
stay in the same industry sector, and often even keep the same
clients.
The researchers used as their baseline the rankings of star financial
analysts published in the annual rankings of Institutional Investor
magazine. The rankings take into account how the clients of an
investment bank evaluate the analysts' earnings forecasts, stock
picking, industry knowledge, written reports, accessibility, and
various other factors.
The Harvard Business Review published an overview of the study in its
May 2004 edition. In brief, star analysts who transferred from a highly
rated investment bank to a lower ranked bank had a decline in
performance for the next five years. Those analysts who made a lateral
move to a bank of equal status fell in the rankings as well, but for
only two years. Analysts who moved from a lower ranked bank to a more
highly regarded bank did not show any change, for the better or the
worse, in their performance.
The researchers make an astute observation in their HBR essay: When the
stars join new enterprises, they typically take for granted the
informal systems and relationships that made their success possible at
their previous company. For that reason, they miss out on key clues
that are necessary to navigate the informal business systems in play.
That attitude only reinforces the resentment that their new colleagues
often hold toward the stars who are hired at higher pay and status
beyond their new colleagues.
The take home lesson: don't get carried away with your high performance
and make a foolish move. I had that truth reinforced to me by a man
sitting next to me on a plane flight to Birmingham, Alabama this week.
The man spent most of his life in Minnesota, but recently moved to
Birmingham to take on a senior executive role in a new company. When I
asked him how it was going, his face turned glum as he confessed, "I
made a huge mistake chasing a job title. To tell you the truth, I took
for granted how much I had going for me at my old job back in
Minnesota."
There's a talent myth out there telling you that you should constantly
shop your skills for top value. Be the manager of your own career, as
it were. There's lots of truth in these maxims. Just remember that high
performance is a complex result, and not easily repeated.
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