Kris Dunn, who blogs as the HR Capitalist, has written an article on Workforce.com: "Does Your Company Need More Ditch Diggers or Stars?" In the article he makes the excellent point that, although HR appears to be obsessed with "high performance" and "always hiring the best," the steady workers bring critical value to the workforce. These are the people who meet performance expectations and compete to produce in the roles where they are assigned–but do not compete to climb the org chart. They are best suited in roles that are not "star-driven" (as sales or business development jobs are), but are more production oriented.

Dunn’s perspective in corporate HR is centered around filling full-time, permanent positions. But it so happens that these "ditch diggers" are the reliable producers who are often on the teams that Project Workforce Managers manage. Indeed, teams could barely function if everyone was a "star," trying to outperform the rest of the team at the expense of the tasks at hand. "Ditch diggers" are the ones who get projects done.

In a Workforce 2.0 world, where roles are defined on a project-by-project basis, Project Workforce Managers, and the Resource Managers who help them staff projects, need to know how to identify the "ditch diggers" who will give them reliable, predictable results. So I recommend Dunn’s article, and, if he writes it, the book on the same topic.