The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (book review)

The employer-employee relationship is broken, and managers face a seemingly impossible dilemma: the old model of guaranteed long-term employment no longer works in a business environment defined by continuous change, but neither does a system in which every employee acts like a free agent. This much is true in the eyes of LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman, best-selling writer Ben Casnocha, and Wasabi Ventures general partner Chris Yeh.

Hoffman, Casnocha, and Yeh co-authored the New York Times best seller The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age. The book came out in July, and serves as the logical flipside of the coin to Hoffman and Casnocha’s 2012 The Startup of You, a book that advised individuals on how to start adapting to the future by marketing themselves.

The Alliance seeks to update managers, who may still be operating under an all-too-familiar charade with their employees. For example, during the intake process, employees feel like they must say that they’re looking to join the company’s “family” for the long-run, and no shiny objects or outside opportunities could lure him away. The employer is then supposed to reassure the new guy that if he works hard and helps the company advance, he will be rewarded with job security and a chance for vertical movement up the food chain. The authors write:

Both parties act in a way that blatantly contradicts their official positions. And thanks to this reciprocal self-deception, neither side trusts each other […] employers continually lose valuable people. Employees fail to fully invest in their current position because they’re always scanning the marketplace for new opportunities. […] Employers, managers, and employees need a new relationship framework where they make promises to one another they can actually keep.

Having the courage to lead honest conversations

Hoffman, Casnocha, and Yeh’s overall thesis is that companies and employees should not try to approach their relationship as a life-long dedication, but rather as an open-ended alliance. During the intake process, both parties should be completely honest with one another about what they hope to gain and where they want to go. One example of this could be an employee hoping to one day start his own company, and as such, is looking to gain valuable management skills. As a result, the employer knows how to best train and deploy the individual in a way that will motivate him to work harder and propel the business day-to-day.

Hoffman says that companies looking for high-impact workers should embrace employees with entrepreneurial mindsets because they innately possess what eBay COO John Donahoe calls “the founder mindset.” Donahoe says people with the founder mindset drive change, motivate people, and get stuff done. The alliance is a way for companies to invest in the long-term future without sacrificing adaptability. It also makes employees more valuable on the job market after their time with the company has ended.

From left: Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh.

Defining tours of duty

The book proposes a framework that revolves around “tours of duty” (borrowing a phrase from the military), meaning the employer and employee establish a specific assignment that will help grow the company; one which has a clear beginning and end. Each tour of duty provides a milemarker that lets both parties know when they need to talk again about the next tour within the company, or how the company can assist the employee in making their next career move. This could be placing the employee in a different department (which helps diversify their skills) or allowing the employee to launch their own startup under the firm’s umbrella.

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