Work Like Humans: The Rise of the Human Organization
How many people at your company wake to their alarm in the dawn light and think, “ugh… another work day”?
The millennial generation’s coming of age and the widespread rise of the tech startup has us asking: can work be fun? Firms are dressing down, adding snacks and games to the break room and redesigning their offices to reflect the social spaces we enjoy, rather than the quiet, beige dungeons we certainly do not. But these changes are merely the skin of what is possible. Yes, work can be fun… but it can also be richly collaborative, deeply fulfilling and powerfully meaningful.
We are in the midst of a revolution. Cosmetic changes are a start, like a new paint job on a condemned house. But to truly remake our experience at work — and the results — it’s time to tackle the inside. For decades, we’ve avoided rigorously pursuing the “soft” disciplines because their effects are indirect, they require unprecedented levels of trust, and we’ve viewed dealing with personal issues as a sign of weakness. But personal issues are human issues. When the whole human shows up to work, she has more to offer, grows more and, as a result, earns more, for the organization and for herself.
the human organization
The Human Organization is an emerging model of collaboration that integrates a rigorous approach to creating outcomes (hard disciplines) with an equally rigorous approach to designing and innovating human experience (soft disciplines). Outcomes are managed by planning and enacting behaviors and measuring results; experience is gradually improved by making our values and mindsets explicit, and by living into and testing them. By integrating both disciplines, the Human Organization is at once productive and empathetic, profitable and purposeful.
A Human Organization is a place, not just to earn a paycheck, but to engage in deeply fulfilling work that matters. A place that educates and transforms. Where individuals become inspiring leaders in addition to competent managers. A place that fully utilizes the potential of its team members. Where rich, collaborative relationships, that harness disagreement for growth rather than avoid it at all costs, are nurtured. Where individuals are free to make the decisions necessary to do great work. Where the information needed to make great decisions is available to all. Where it’s possible to work like humans.
what makes us human?
Human perception is two-sided. Only when we honor both perspectives can we work and live to our full potential.
One perspective is our shared, objective view of the external world where the laws of science govern: the collection of artifacts and history of results that we can all observe and agree on. Volumes sold, prices, profits, and workplans all reside in the objective exterior space. Success in this dimension is the impact we have on the world around us.
But the other perspective is our personal, subjective experience of our internal world: the invisible human values and worldviews that shape how we perceive, interact with and respond to the circumstances of our lives. Only you experience your internal space, your value judgments, and your emotions. In organizations, how the team feels walking into work, how a new hire feels about her boss, and how a customer feels when using a product are all interior experiences. We refer to success in this dimension as fulfillment.
how have traditional organizations stifled our humanity?
Traditional organizations have stifled our humanity by resolutely locking our gaze on the exterior side of life, not realizing that the internal and the external arise concurrently rather than compete. We call emotions “personal” and so try to suppress them at the office, but in the process end up suppressing the quality of our work. We’re so focused on demonstrating positive outcomes that we avoid uncovering insights that could help us grow. To the extent that we align, we do so on actions and outcomes, but rarely on values and motivations. Following the lead of the scientific tradition, organizations too often believe that they exist solely to use rigorous measurement and process innovations to enable greater productivity, and thus wealth. This is a laudable, but woefully limited purpose.
That science firmly roots itself in the exterior dimension is appropriate. The scientific method runs on quantification and repeatability. To be scientific, something must have objective reality. But whereas the collision of molecules or the mass of a heavy metal is an objective phenomenon, organizations are networks of human interactions that create outcomes and experiences for human stakeholders. They are objective, but they are simultaneously subjective. When we limit the scope of what is acceptable to manage and develop to the exterior space only, we create rampant externalities in the internal, human space: burnout, disengagement, stagnation, fear and mistrust.
so, what do human organizations do differently?
While integrating the interior, human perspective with exterior, management science affects all aspects of organizational life, here are three key ways that a Human Organization looks different than a traditional one.
1. a human organization aligns around purpose, driven by values.
Traditional organizations have a clear purpose: creating shareholder value. But it is such a limited and unhelpful purpose that it merely serves to perpetuate the external-only myopia of the organization. They mistake profit with value, when in fact it’s merely the objective medium of exchange for subjective value. This confusion leads traditional organizations to focus on short-term value extraction rather than long-term value creation, rendering them unable to reliably generate sustained long term results. Furthermore, when value extraction is held above all else, these firms end up institutionalizing incentives that result in unintended externalities like employee and customer disengagement, rent seeking, and unethical action.
Human Organizations don’t reject profit, they transcend it. Purpose in the human organization is driven by interior variables, by values. Rather than a mere slogan on the wall, Purpose is the intersection of an organization’s ideals, passions and strengths, used in service of the world’s needs to create value. When an organization is aligned around these elements, it is brings the best it has to offer to the market to create subjective value for its network of individual, human stakeholders. When this happens, opportunities to extract value as profit are abundant over the long term.
When purpose is the governing force of an organization’s orbit, it creates synchronicity across previously disparate disciplines. As a result, the organization hires for values, manages by values, builds strategy according to values, gives feedback through the lens of values and learns through values. This focus enables the gradual compounding of small steps to build enduring greatness that is reflected in the organization’s people, its culture and its results.
2. a human organization collaborates synergistically.
Collaboration in traditional organizations is often oppositional. A group of people get together and have a battle of ideas about what to do (e.g, should we use processor A or processor B?) until the strongest or loudest idea emerges. This “survival of the fittest” approach is a reasonably effective way of surfacing the best ideas in an organization, but it completely disregards the benefits of diversity, spawning never ending discussion about “A players” — who are good at creating and defending fully baked ideas — and “B and C players” whose talents may lie elsewhere and are unfortunately disregarded.
In Human Organizations, collaboration begins with alignment around Purpose and values (e.g., we are building a computer to facilitate experiences of creativity through simple, elegant design). Then, solutions are co-designed by making assumptions explicit (e.g., even though drive A is more expensive, it is necessary to enable the graphics rendering capabilities of our ‘creative’ applications). This approach creates space for individuals to expand and sharpen their worldview, thereby creating synergy. Synergistic collaboration, rather than surface the best actions, reveals the most significant values, enabling design and innovation of action to manifest those values.
3. a human organization generates results, develops leaders and builds culture simultaneously by processing tensions.
All organizations make mistakes. All people within organizations make mistakes. Traditional Organizations, recognizing the threat of failure, seek to minimize it. When failures do occur, people repress or hide them on the one hand, or attack each other on the other. Either reaction exerts a heavy toll on individual motivation and bonds of trust.
Human Organizations, on the other hand, never fail. They make explicit assumptions and test them. When the assumptions are wrong, the organization learns, transforming “mistakes” into growth. This growth improves their products and services, develops individual leaders and builds collaborative relationships simultaneously through conversations that grow individual and collective worldviews that enable increasingly effective action.
Human Organizations respect the valuable qualitative data generated by the human subconscious. These continuous quality assessments are delivered in the form of emotions and represent an opportunity for something to improve. Rather than ask people to stifle their emotions and thus important messages, Human Organizations invite them to decode and act on them (see our Tension Processing Tool), in community with their peers. This process opens space for transparent feedback, for examining our own worldviews and for understanding others.
the rise of the human organization
People are waking up to interior experience. Customers are starting to demand that organizations manage and share how and why they do things in addition to what they do. Values alignment and expression is becoming necessary to succeed in the marketplace. Employees are calling for the same. They still want professional success, but now they are asking for growth and meaning as well. Employees are no longer willing to put on a work costume in the morning and pretend to be something less that who they fully are for the majority of their waking hours.
Fortunately, organizations are waking up as well. Organizations are deliberately working to understand their purpose, enabling conversations and innovation on the how and why of their missions. They are enabling collaboration that is enhanced, rather than strained by diversity. And they are inviting us to grow the way we see the world by taking every opportunity to learn through processing tensions. These emergent organizations are Human Organizations. They will be radically better places to work, grow and succeed.
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Interested in more? Please sign up for our newsletter. We’ll be publishing pieces on these three elements of Human Organizations in the coming weeks, as well as profiling organizations and leaders who exemplify this perspective.
Made with love, like humans. Copyright © 2016
Photo credit: Steven Gerner, “Holi | Festival of Colors 2014”, adapted
