Is it Prague Spring for Talent?

Spring is in the air, well at least that’s what the picture of tulips on my calendar bravely suggests. This time of year I am reminded of an event that took place in the late 1960’s that gave our then highly polarized world a brief but tantalizing glimpse of what the future would bring. For a few fleeting months in 1968, Czechoslovakia’s part of the Iron Curtain was drawn back. People rallied in the streets demanding political and artistic freedom. The government recognized these grassroots calls for change. But soon the Soviet Army and it Warsaw Pact allies deployed tanks and troops into the country. What came to be known as the ‘Prague Spring’ was suddenly flash frozen back into winter.

This was not the end of the story however, it was just the beginning. Despite the brutal crackdown, the forces for massive change had been unleashed. Twenty-one years later – popular uprisings and demonstrations in places like Budapest, Bucharest, East Berlin, and again, Prague, precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and ushered in a new and lasting democratic spring for all the peoples of Eastern Europe. The ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989 was the culmination of a series of events started in Prague during that fateful spring of 1968.

My conversations over the past few months with executives and workers in major corporations suggest that a Prague Spring for talent might be subtly unfolding. Some HR executives are beginning to notice a change in what high caliber talent are looking for and valuing. For example, one executive in a large multinational company recently told me that she is observing a distinct shift from the ‘War for Talent’ to the ‘Search for Meaning’. An increasing number of talented individuals are apparently asking whether money and positions on the upper wrung of the corporate ladder are what they really want out of life. Many are looking for more meaningful work and organizations with a mission and purpose they can believe in.

I got a first hand glimpse of this phenomenon recently when I met a bright and accomplished executive working for a highly regarded global company. I’ll refer to him as Ted. Despite several years of exciting jobs offering loads of opportunities for achievement and growth, Ted felt compelled to make a dramatic change. He decided to leave his company to join a not-for-profit organization with a health-related mission. Like me, you are probably wondering why make such a move in the prime of your career just when you have ‘made it’?

For one thing, Ted could no longer get excited about his employer’s business and mission. He wanted to be associated with something deeper and more meaningful. But there was another factor - the urgent need for a sustainable work-life balance. Ted was burned out by the long hours and grueling travel. One wonders how many other highly talented and accomplished workers like him are leaving lucrative positions in large corporations to seek meaning and balance in other pursuits or organizations. These individuals have one thing in common with the people who marched through Prague that fateful spring of 1968 – the desire for freedom and control over their lives and destinies.

Ted’s story leads me to wonder whether companies are providing enough of what talented individuals like him desperately want from their work and life. Meaning and balance add up to an even bigger desire – sustainability. Many workers across the age spectrum – Gen Y, Gen X and Boomers – crave sustainable work-life balance yet few organizations offer it. Why not? Is business so unforgiving that an individual must give up a huge part of one’s self and one’s life to be successful in one’s work? Or does this tradeoff represent a systematic flaw in the ethos of corporations that can only be changed via fundamental transformation of the culture that dominates these organizations?

Perhaps like the decline and fall of the old Communist system, change will be wrought not from within but from outside. Voices that cannot be heard within the system will leave to express their views and pursue their dreams outside of it. After the Prague Spring was crushed some 150,000 Czechs and Slovaks fled to the West. Included were many of the best and brightest minds of the population. Today, corporations may be losing some of their best and brightest talent, not to direct business competitors but to organizations in the not-for-profit sector or new businesses built on premises and beliefs different than the shareholder value über alles ethos of most public corporations.

The warm winds of change are beginning to stir in the corporate world and like the Prague Spring of 1968, a long process of transformation may indeed be starting. As more people seek alternatives to the unbalanced and unfulfilling employment deals offered by many corporations, the pressures for change will continue to grow. Like the notion of a free and democratic Eastern Europe, what seem to be the most far-fetched of dreams, if pursued by enough people, eventually becomes reality. Are you one of those people seeking meaning and sustainability from your job and employer? Take heart, spring will soon be here.