Not optional to include everyone in strategy and design sessions

 Why is getting feedback on your plans so important? This twitter thread has the answer.

https://twitter.com/sahrasulaiman/status/1493618903364345860

It starts with a discussion of how a soap dispenser design, while it looks cool, takes a huge amount of time to maintenance because it's nearly impossible to refill. 

If you don't talk to people who have to maintenance or use your design - like soap dispensers in an airport bathroom that are impossible to refill, you end up creating huge problems for users. 

The thread is a list of things that engineers and designers could have fixed if they had talked to the end user or maintenance person.  Don’t just make things look cool – make sure they are functional too.

Things like - designing a hospital with no place for staff to sleep at because - it didn't dawn on the architect that doctors and nurses, often sleep at the hospital to be available if needed. Talking to workers, isn't optional. It's mandatory if you want to do a good job. 

It should be obvious how this relates to Humanistic Management.  The old model of management was adversarial. The new model is collaborative. The reason is obvious. No one knows what they don't know. Including people, helps make sure you fill in the gaps of what you don't know.

The key to success? Listening to people tell you things you don't want to hear and taking their comments constructively. If someone is telling you - your design won't work, they probably aren't trying to sabotage you. They probably are just trying to make sure that whatever is built - succeeds. 

Why are ethics so important?

Why are ethics so important? Because you can't make good decisions without them. 

Thinks about this. What is a good decision? Or a good solution?  Without defining what "good" means in the particular situation you are in, you cannot answer that question.

All good decision making requires the active application of ethics to decide between options. There is ALWAYS some metric being used to define good. Whether we are talking about a good hire, or a good customer or a good solution. 

If we don't actively and explicitly discuss what we mean by good, we a) have trouble creating consensus and b) often end up with bad results because we used bad ethics without questioning them.

Whenever I am on a team having a disagreement, my first effort is to ask questions. What is a good outcome? Or an ideal outcome? And most importantly - why. 

For instance, I was at a tower company, a good tower to the marketing team is a tower they can market. A good tower to the maintenance team was a tower that didn't require a lot of maintenance. A good tower to the financial team was a tower that brought in more cash flow than debt. 

Until we talked about the various differences in how the groups were defining good, we couldn't get consensus on this question. Once we did get clarity on the various versions of what good means, we could.

Now, I know what you are saying, but Jennifer, those aren't- ethics, like we think of ethics. But they are. They are closely related to them. 

Once you start discussing what good means, you can start bringing in the more moral aspects of ethics. Do this help or hurt the community? Does it help or hurt people in general? What about the climate?  These are all valid ethical considerations that should be integrated into decision making, both on a personal and a professional level.

So, stop worrying about whether you can discuss ethics. You are already. Or should be already. And don't be shy about bringing in moral metrics in addition to the business cases for what is good. Doing so will elevate the discussion. Engage people in the problem solving effort and make it collaborative. 

As always, I do have courses to help you learn this. My courses provide certificates of completion and are approved by HRCI and SHRM for continuing education credits.

Reality Based Decision Making for Effective Strategy Development - https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/ - 1 hour business

Principles of Humanistic Leadership https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-leadership/ 2 hours 

Or become a certified humanistic leadership professional - https://humanistlearning.com/certified-humanistic-leadership-professional/

My new management book

I published a new book for Business Expert Press edited by David M. Wasieleski, Professor of Management & Business Ethics in the Palumbo Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University. 

The book is called: Applied Humanism - How to create more effective and ethical businesses. This book provides a short introduction to the philosophy of humanism and discusses how and why it is being applied to business and why it is so effective when you do so.

Review:

Chris Laszlo - of the Weatherhead Institute - has already read it and said,

 "I just finished reading your new book, Applied Humanism. I loved its clarity and straightforwardness. In many ways the writing is deceptively simple: the concepts and their applications are universal in appeal yet subtle in their implications for living and working in today’s world."

You can’t understand humanistic business management unless you understand what humanism is. This book provides a short introduction to the philosophy of humanism and discusses how and why it is being applied to business and why it is so effective when you do so. Humanism helps us prioritize human value as important. It supports positive interpersonal relationships and collaborative and respectful decision-making. Since all businesses are in the business of solving problems, good problem solving is essential to good business.

Humanism has already transformed many other disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, and more. Additionally, humanism is foundational to the practice of human resources, without which businesses cannot operate. It is important for business managers to understand the philosophy fully so they can understand how to not only manage people more effectively, but how to operate their businesses in a way that helps the communities in which they operate. This book will provide the primer they need to create more effective and ethical businesses.

This book can be purchased at amazon as a kindle or paperback book: https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Humanism-Effective-Ethical-Businesses/dp/1949991423/

If you are interested in using the book in a course please visit Business Expert Press and request a desk copy: https://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/applied-humanism-how-to-create-more-effective-and-ethical-businesses/

The book is divided into 4 sections

1. Introduction to the philosophy of Humanism (Philosophy)
2. Applying Humanism to the Business of Business (Integrating Ethics into Decision Making and Interpersonal Relationships)
3. Problem Solving Like a Humanist (Strategy and Decision Making)
4. Case Studies – Applying Humanist methodology to problems liked Diversity & Inclusion and Harassment problems in the workplace.

Finding Clarity

Gain Clarity, Get Committed, and Capture Your Goals With Critical Thinking

Humanists are by and large internally motivated. Our philosophy helps us to prioritize our ethics and find balance between our competing needs, desires and responsibilities. Plus, and this is a big plus, the time we spend on learning how to think well helps us to find clarity.

I say this because a LOT of people think that critical thinking is boring and intellectual. But spending some time learning how to think about how you think is actually the key to gaining clarity and from clarity commitment and motivation to accomplish your goals, whatever they might be. 

So, let’s talk about the process of finding clarity in the context of critical thinking and Humanist ethics and how this will help us to be more successful in life. 

First up: Refection.

What do you want to accomplish and more importantly, why?

If you want to gain clarity of purpose in your life, you need to spend some time considering why you think the things you think and whether what you think is even so. This is the power of critical thinking and the power of why. Asking yourself why helps you properly define the real problem you are trying to solve. This helps bring clarity and puts in you a position to be successful! In a way that focusing on what you want to accomplish won’t.

Next: Visioning.

Now that you are clear on your goal, the next step is to consider what an ideal solution to your problem might be. And again, we have to do something thinking to get this right. If you don’t want your solution to be limited, you need to ask yourself is what if.  What if things were different? What if I could end world hunger? What if there were no limitations put on you. Finding the motivation to take on the world is tough. Spending time thinking about what if possibilities helps you gain the motivation by helping you truly understand what is at stake and what can be gained by your efforts. 

Finally: Strategy.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, why you want to accomplish and what the benefits are to acheiving your goals, the next step is to develop a pragmatic strategy to accomplish it. Pie in the sky ideas are great but they won’t become reality unless you do some hard thinking about what is possible in reality. What steps do you need to take to get there. What will actually work vs. what do you just think will work. And again, critical thinking is key. If your assumptions about what works and what doesn’t is flawed, you aren’t going to succeed.  Critical thinking is key.

Here is a nice exercise, share with me what your goals are and more importantly why you chose that goal.