What do you bring to the table?

For a highly paid senior executive recruited from the outside, one question the board asks is what value he adds to the enterprise — what does he bring to the table?

The expression “bring to the table” is noted in Lois Beckwith’s irreverent management book, Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit. The phrase refers to individuals “who are important to an organization because of what they bring to the table in the form of skills, knowledge, contribution to a revenuegenerating center, and connections.” Note that the last one, especially in highly regulated businesses and conglomerates, includes political clout and friends in high places.

The “potluck” party provides the paradigm for this management table metaphor. The custom of not burdening a host with preparing food for a large group in a reunion requires that guests each bring food and drinks for the party. The visitor who contributes nothing is considered boorish — so you just brought your appetite?

In the corporate context, “potluck management” requires that every employee brings something of value to her job. For this business model, ideal for shoestring-budget start-ups, each individual needs to bring something to the party. A simple test suffices: If “A” leaves the company tomorrow, does the company lose anything of value? Well, this does not always elicit a quick response, especially from “A.”

In prehistoric times, Homo sapiens (or more precisely, Homo erectus — referring to his way of walking upright, rather than the state of one particular appendage) was a hunter-gatherer who had to chase dinner or he starves.

Hard-nosed companies like this hunter-gatherer model.