Cross-Hiring: A Workforce Revolution
Human beings are social beings, constantly learning and growing through our interactions with others. From 99.6% shared DNA, the infinite paths of potential human experience expand. We are all the same thing, simultaneously living completely unique and fascinating lives. Like two trees which appear the same from a distance, only to move closer and appreciate the minute differences in branch curvature and leaf assemblage.
Communication and social networking take advantage of our distinct individual backgrounds, leading to new ideas and the manifestation of previously unknown futures. In order to address the greatest issues facing society, we must better leverage these social processes and allow for more flexible problem-solving.
In the animal kingdom, humans are not generally thought of as physically impressive—without guns or other premodern weapons, our spot on the food chain would quickly tumble. To overcome such insufficiencies, our oversized brains allow for abstract thinking, complex math and moral reasoning, and the creation of tools (among many other cognitive wonders).
Consider the graph above, depicting the amount of energy required for various organisms to move. “Human” sits in the middle of the pack, while “cyclist” greatly outperforms the field, with roughly 98.5% of a cyclist’s effort reaching the wheels and resulting in movement. It is through the creation of ideas/tools (i.e. bicycle) that humans truly flourish.
So where do new ideas come from?
Stephen Johnson wrote the book Where Good Ideas Come From, which attempts to elucidate the mechanisms that promote human innovation and ideas. It’s an ambitious undertaking, unpacking thousands of years of human thinking, but Johnson outlines a set of helpful terms or occurrences. Here are a few:
Adjacent Possible: the space right up against what is or what we think to be currently possible.
Liquid Networks: a broad, diverse social environment allowing for free exchange of time and ideas.
Slow Hunch: the slow development of important ideas over time. Many stories of “sudden insights” are often the result of years of tinkering and contemplation.
Serendipity: being open to “happy accidents” and harnessing them in a beneficial way.
Error: making errors, or failing, is not always a bad thing. Evolution seems to contain a built in rate of error, balancing too much mutation and too much stability.
The Problem of Siloing
There were a few central, high-level ideas during graduate school which radically altered my worldview: 1.) A state of health or well-being is not achieved solely through personal responsibility and/or willpower; 2.) Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets; 3.) Bureaucratic systems are incredibly compartmentalized and siloed.
Silo: isolate (one system, process, department, etc.) from others.
When the opportunity for graduate electives came around, I jumped ship from public health and took a course in Natural Resource & Environmental Policy. Many of our discussions centered around the United States’ clean energy transition goals, and how large-scale national policies often end up hurting small towns and Indigenous groups most (example: Snake River dams and salmon populations). How do you fix a national or global problem without sacrificing the ecological health and livelihoods of those living in the affected areas? One night in class, conversing on the need for creative policy ideas, I asked: What if people were hired by two (or more) organizations at once?
Solution: Cross-Hiring
The basic premise of cross-hiring is to purposefully increase the amount of human exchange and educational crossover within the workplace. The ideas of adjacent possible, liquid networks, slow hunch, serendipity, and error become a recipe for innovation, allowing people to build upon and improve the thoughts and work initiated by others. The Covid Pandemic has already ushered in the beginnings of an occupational revolution, but why stop at remote/flexible work options and No Meeting Wednesday?
Imagine working part-time in your current role, and part-time with an organization with which you frequently collaborate. Or perhaps half your time could go toward that non-profit you’ve always admired. Those who want a change of pace and exposure to different projects/ideas may opt in, while others may choose a traditional 40-hour-per-week role. If cross-hiring were to reach the astronomical levels of politics, we may even see congressional gridlock diminish, as crossing the aisle and bipartisanship increase…..a guy can dream, can’t he?
My hope is that various industries would have a built-in system of hive-mind-like communication across individuals. The energy industry would have direct and immediate access to the food and agriculture industries, which overlap with the transportation industry, which is inextricably linked to the education industry, and on and on. The network needs only a significant minority of people in this dual-position role, say 20-30%, to begin feeling the impact. It becomes a gestalt way of interacting, as the interwoven network of connected individuals becomes more meaningful than any specific link between two nodes. In this way, the needs of the individual, the organization, and society are all addressed and prioritized.
Workforce statistics support this type of occupational shakeup. According to the Pew Research Center, just 51% of Americans are highly satisfied with their job and day-to-day tasks at work. Even less, just 44%, are highly satisfied with their job’s opportunities for training/developing new skills. These percentages are even lower among Millenials and Gen Z’ers, i.e. the future of America’s workforce and the only two generations with increasing numbers of workers.
I’m not smart enough to predict how the impact of an arrangement this pervasive might be measured. Economists may look toward measures of social, human, or intellectual capital over time. Job satisfaction statistics may very well improve, with increased job flexibility and personal/professional development opportunities. In terms of career exploration, one would no longer have to temporarily leave the workforce—and a successful career that supports their family—in order to try their hand at a long-held dream or side interest.
I believe in a future world that proactively prevents, rather than retroactively reacts. A new idea is only crazy until it becomes the norm, as I wrote about in a past newsletter Disrupting Individualism. If we’re hoping for a drastically different (and improved!) outcome than our current social and environmental trajectories, we must actively promote experimental ideas and new ways of doing things. Cross-hiring has this potential, to change society for the better without leaving the individual behind.
“The great driver of scientific innovation and technological innovation has been the historic increase in connectivity, and our ability to reach out and exchange ideas with other people. To borrow other peoples’ hunches and combine them with our hunches and turn them into something new.” — Steven Johnson