Forthcoming book: Workforce of One — Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization.

Workforce of One, a Harvard Business Press book, is scheduled to be in stores in early May, 2010.

An excerpt (from an advance copy):

You might have trouble imagining how employees could set their own salaries with no organizationally imposed limits. But that’s exactly what people do in the U.S. Navy. The navy has an online job-auction site where employees can bid on hard-to-fill jobs; whoever offers the lowest salary and meets the qualifications gets the job.

…The result? This democratic, market-based system means that the navy’s top performers who seek extra education and a broader range of assignments will have the opportunity to be paid more and advance more quickly on their own timetable, based on their own custom-designed career paths — not the navy’s.

…The navy is considering eventually posting all jobs on its online job-auction site to allow all personnel to define their own pay and career paths using a market-based system.