The management of Will.....

Recently I had an opportunity to interact with a set of managers to understand their performance issues. As usual I had it non-formally wanting to give everyone a chance to catch things that they think to be apt & required.
The problem was that everyone works harder & does more activities but in vain. Expected results are far far away from anyone. Why? This brought us to question ourselves the basics of performance - Will or Skill?
What should be managed in a team ? Will or Skill?
We endeavored into the individual values and why's of things making it a thoughtful session instead of an interactive one. 


I some how always believed that the Will wins over the Skill - the layman language of 'are you willing' than the management's language of 'can you'. Willingness is more about objectivity & CAN is subjective to one's belief. We have seen people with Will  (here Skill is limited to required basics) doing better than the ones with Skills-without-Will. 
Way back I had a very strong will to sell high priced Encyclopedias door to door that got me the national award for selling & recruiting. Today, the answers to Can I sell and Do I want to sell are Yes & NO. 
The skills that we acquire will take more time to vanish than our will to use them. That's when we outgrow the job. Some people outgrow their activity too fast - like me. Most of them are 'stable' or keep the will to use their skill longer. But either way, we are bound to lose our will one day. 
The idea of a strong will with basic skill sets can deliver superior results brings us to the importance of hiring Will. The will can easily be killed while a skill can not be developed easily. Hence keeping the will of the team & giving time to develop skill could be a better option for productivity.
Today in the world of capsules, we also want to look for some one who had "performed earlier" to come and translate his performance. With the increase in the available job options & narrowing of sectoral gaps in the skill sets, the performer mentally outgrows his performance much sooner than we expect him to. Is it a solution to hire him in the same capacity? Certainly we don't agree.
While what sustains the Will is a subject of an unending debate, its the manager who sustains the will of his team produces results. Here, the constant is the rule of the game.
Skill can be the means and the Will is objectivity. In a changing business environment the means of business keep changing yet the means to protect the Will doesn't. Its all time constant - Human Touch.
Human Will precedes business intelligence. What is its value if we were to buy it? How much we lose if we  don't have that as our business ingredient? New ideas, superior talents, technology driven supports and the like have come handy today, besides human will ....... and nothing can take the place of a human will. How often do we perform a Will Check in our organisations?