Tenure versus loyalty

# Chapter 230

Tenure is not loyalty – tenure is time.

Tenure is not necessarily talent – many mediocre people stay with companies for a long time. - Masterminds

Lots of people see tenure - the length of time a person possesses or holds a position - as conferring certain rights and privileges and often it can. I don’t know how anyone in the modern world could consider tenure as loyalty, but clearly some do. I know back in my days of academia, staying the course in one university until you were granted “tenure” was the highest goal for many of my fellow teachers. This gave them super security as the position they had as teacher, basically became a guaranteed position for their entire working life, if they wanted it to be. This is the holy grail in academics. Relatively few ever get to this place. And my kids work in some government jobs that have tenure as position security as well. But don’t ever ever think of it as loyalty to the organization. Well it could be, but humans are human and they stay because it benefits them in some fashion that they find acceptable. Period. They don’t stay on at your org because they want to prove to you how loyal they are or can be.

On the other hand, don’t diss the mediocre people, because you have lots of jobs that are mediocre and need mediocre people to do them regularly. Not everyone aspires to be an expert in your business. But everyone needs a job.