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Creating Heart Capital

Humanising technology is an imperative. Make it a priority.

When I coined the phrase “Heart Capital” years ago, I didn’t recognise its prophetic undertones. (Here’s the pdf of the original Heart Capital article.) Its ideas and views regain relevance with today’s ‘communities’.

Here’s Johnnie Moore’s (Johnnie Moore) comment on the article I wrote in 2003.

“I love these lines in particular:

To humanise is to recognise that technology cannot replace the charm of personal contact. To humanise is to disrupt current business thinking and methods. To humanise is to add emotion. To humanise is to add fun to work and work systems.

I think the discussion about emotional environment is important; a lot of money goes into trying to create great physical spaces for work (and that’s no bad thing) but the manners and subtleties of human contact deserve equal attention.

I would add that as well as being fun, the creation of real “heart capital” requires taking risks and being vulnerable. Acknowledging our true feelings feels risky in many environments; yet in my experience it is often a touchstone for deeper and more satisfying human engagement.”

Thank you Johnnie!

Here’s another excerpt from the article:-

It is time now, to create heart capital. An exchange of feelings, emotions and culture to foster knowledge creation and sharing.

– An asset for individual growth and organizational excellence.
– A tool for sharpening the competitive edge.
– A culture for human enrichment.
– A plan to protect and propagate our common heritage.

Let’s ask ourselves some questions.
Is it [not] necessary [for us] to create a new lexicon of corporate nomenclature if we want to change traditional thinking?

For example, HR is traditionally responsible for all people issues in an organization. Does this mean that other departments do not need to care about people? Is there something about the nomenclature “HR” that needs repairing? When dealing with materials, the word “resource” is probably appropriate. But Human Resource?? I thought resources were for people to use, so how appropriate is it to think of human beings as resources?

The entire business terminology needs a revamp. Human Resources should become Corporate Citizenship, Research & Development should become Knowledge Innovation, and so on. The focus is clearly shifting from efficiency to effectiveness, from sentiment to passion, from profit to value and from performance to the emotional well being of the user.

Comments and critiques welcome.

Download the original article.

@SunilMalhotra on twitter