The future is going away because it's getting bored
Have you ever considered that young Italians leave the country not for the paycheck, but because they’re bored with what we offer them? They want stimulation, a designed path, something to learn. The talent we would want in the company is already in our offices, we are simply not using it. The problem is not the labor market, it is organizational design, which is missing. Organizations are the only human-centered system for accelerating growth, yet we manage them based on historical and family-based sensibilities. Guess how that turns out.
Let the Future Bloom – Hatiye Garip for Fine Acts
Our young people are not leaving for the money
The story we tell ourselves is convenient. Young people leave for higher pay, so it is the market's fault, the salaries, the country. And that would be serious enough, given the efficiency-driven efforts of engineers over the past 30 years.
Yet this is an explanation that lets us off the hook. The trouble is it does not hold. Pay matters, but it explains a part. Those who leave, the young first of all, look for experiences, real responsibility, a path where they can learn and grow. Rarely does someone leave bored by the money. They leave bored by what we ask them to do.
Organizational research shows that retention doesn’t depend on total annual compensation. Even McKinsey says so—and they’re not exactly known for being indifferent to financial KPIs. So why should it be any different for young people?
The new generations are not a problem on the way. They are already inside the company when they’re in their first job or working to support their studies, sitting at the desks, waiting for someone to ask them for more than the assigned task. We use them at half, then watch them leave and act surprised. The talent we hunt for with job ads is, in large part, already on the payroll and they’re walking out the door while we look the other way
Underused talent is sitting right next to you
We open positions, write ads, pay agencies. Meanwhile a large share of the capability we need already exists inside, used well below its potential. It holds for everyone, and more so for younger people and women, whom we ask for a fraction of what they could give. Before looking outside, it would be worth looking at who is already at the table, and maybe asking them what they can do.
It stays invisible for a reason of design. Roles are cut narrow, described by tasks rather than by contribution. Information stays in silos, so nobody sees what a person could do with context and room. So we hire outside the capability that, in raw form, we already hold inside. The cost does not show on the balance sheet, yet we pay it twice.
From managing generations to plurality
Faced with the topic, many react in the most reassuring way. They split people into generations. Boomers, X, millennials, Z, each with its user manual. This approach hides a contradiction, the same one found in some inclusion practices: to include you, I first tell you that you are different. Plurality works the other way around. It looks at what you bring, not when you were born. A plural team performs when differences serve the task, instead of becoming labels to hang.
Those with more road behind them bring judgment, critical thinking, the ability to read a context. The younger bring new questions and an easy fluency with tools that change every six months. The two contributions meet at a single point, the relationship. And a relationship is not decreed, it is built.
You don't learn to run a company at school, or at dinner
We carry two manuals. The one from school, which rewards whoever answers the questions already written. The one from home, made of common sense, instinct, and trust between people. They are useful, yet with these two manuals we try to run complex organizations and act surprised when they jam. Neither one taught us to design an organization. Because designing an organization is a craft, and crafts are learned.
Here is the point that always gets skipped. The organization is the only acceleration system humans ever built by putting other humans together. Alone we are slow, we always have been. Together we accelerate. And yet the organization is also the only machine almost no one actually designs. We inherit it, let it grow by accumulation, patch it when it creaks. Talent slips through our fingers for this reason, not because of English or German salaries.
Relationality is the content of work, not the side dish
Here is the idea worth taking seriously. The fundamental component of the content of work is relationality. It is not the after-hours, it is the work. It is the motor of motivation, and it is how trust and community form inside a company. From here comes a practical consequence for whoever designs the organization. Roles, rituals, spaces, and timing should be designed so that relationship is possible, instead of hoping it happens.
Using the people you already have, and keeping the ones you would otherwise wave goodbye to, is a matter of organizational design. It concerns capability and culture far more than hiring announcements. Designing the future of a company means this too, building the conditions for the talent already inside to give you everything it has.
For that to happen, information has to circulate and decisions have to form where people work. It is hard to ask for full contribution from people we keep on a short leash.