How much should we expect from your employees? Surely at least we expect them to do what we pay them for. Surely if they do less than you are paying them for then we should really fire them or at least pay them less, or in some other way hold them accountable. But is this all we should expect from your employees? Simply to do what you have paid them for and nothing more?
If we want a truly successful company we might perhaps want a bit more than this from our employees. We may perhaps want them to go the extra mile. To muck in for the sake of the company and not just because they are getting their pay check at the end of the month. If we understood the fundamental mechanics behind organisational success we would in fact dearly wish for employees that are willing to go the extra mile and muck in for the sake of the company.
We can illustrate the fundamental mechanics behind organisational success with the use of a simple metaphor. The metaphor I am referring to is known as the three bakers metaphor. Suppose there are three bakers who work together for the entire month to produce a very big cake. At the end of the month each baker takes home their slice of the cake. What is left over once the bakers have each taken their slice is the surplus. It is this surplus that we use to measure the success of an enterprise. The surplus might include anything from financial profit to humanitarian aid to a highly empowered work force.
The point to note about the surplus, as is illustrated by the above graphic, is that it only exists because the group collectively have given more than what they have taken. In other words the product of their combined effort was worth more than what they collectively gained from their efforts. This means that organisations are successful to the degree that the people within the organisation do more than they are paid for.
This makes it absolutely clear that we do in fact want to cultivate the conditions in which people willingly go the extra mile if we truly want our organisations to flourish. The only way to do this however is to unlock their willingness. What is required is to get them motivated to do their job for the sake of doing their job. Put simply, they must get something out of their job other than just their pay slip. We need to tap into that well spring of creativity and energy that does not get touched by only offering them a pay slip at the end of the month.
If this is the end goal then it is clear that hiring a person is a whole lot more complicated than just agreeing on formal duties and a salary. The organisation, and more specifically the leaders, need to do something for their employees beyond this.
At Schuitema Associates we believe that the leader needs to care for and grow the employee. The leaders job is to make the employees’ job fundamentally worthwhile, 
not because he/she gets a pay slip out of it, but because the job offers the employee the opportunity to excel as a human being and achieve an element of mastery. If the leader does this for the employee then the employee will go the extra mile and an organisation populated by such individuals will undoubtedly excel.