Business as Community

Unless you are a solo-entrepreneur, your business includes people.

Your company is built by people for people and people matter. Those people who intersect with your business are your community. Whether they are employees, bosses, or customers.

This understanding of business as community is the foundation on which humanistic business management is built. Smart leaders recognize and accept the responsibilities and opportunities that comes with being part of a community.

Business should be both about opportunity and about responsibility. Exploitative capitalism exploits the opportunities, but doesn’t take responsibility for the outcomes of their behavior. It’s irresponsible.

Humanistic capitalism grasps opportunities in a way that is responsible to the communities in which they work and operate.

Isn’t it time we start rejecting exploitative business models and promote more humanistic ones?

To learn more check out:

• Why Humanistic Management
• Principles of Humanistic Management

Bias, Stereotypes and Trust

How biases and stereotypes impact trust and how we can help make our workplaces more respectful and diverse.

I am going to share with you an article about some research that was done on middle school kids regarding stereotypes and trust. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-02/sfri-fyo020117.php
 Kids, and people, notice when they aren’t being treated fairly and if happens repeatedly they lose trust in authority – for good reason.

"Youth of color enter middle school aware that majority groups could view them stereotypically," notes Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, who coauthored the study. "But when teachers surprise them with an early experience that conveys that they are not being seen in terms of stereotypes, but rather respected, it creates trust and may set in motion a positive cycle of expectations."

The actionable intelligence for teachers is that going out of your way to express trust and that you don’t see them as a stereotype goes a LONG way towards establishing trust and that kids who experience social trust, have fewer problems.

The reason this is important to managers in the workplace is because, at some point, these kids grow up and enter the workforce. The same dynamics at play in the classroom exist in the workplace.

The big difference is that the biases are more ingrained at this point. Both on the part of the majority group seeing people stereotypically and on the part of minority groups who have spent their lives dealing with people who don’t respect them as fully human individuals.

It isn’t enough to talk a good talk about diversity.  If it were, we wouldn’t continue to have diversity problems.

In order to overcome these built in biases, we have to be proactive.  We have to go out of our way to recruit a diverse workforce. We have to go out of our way to express trust and respect. We have to go out of our way to build the relationships on which trust is built.

It isn’t enough to recruit in a diverse set of people. If they are not welcomed and respected and trusted, you will have problems in the workplace.

Fortunately, you can take proactive steps. Among those is learning about how implicit bias effects your decision making so that just maybe we can start hiring more truly diverse work forces. And we can also get training in how behaviors and corporate cultures are changed so that all of your staff can do a better job of making people feel like respected members of the team. And finally, training on how to stop harassment and bullying in the workplace, because seriously, there is nothing that screams disrespect more than being targeted by a bully and having your employer not do anything about it.

To learn more about how to help check out these courses:

• Unconvering & Controlling Your Hidden Biases - Free
• Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace - $35
• Bridging the Generation Divide - $35

Servant Leadership

I love the concept of servant leadership and it’s how I view the role of a manager.

When there is work to be done, people need to do it. But to do the work, they need tools, training and supplies. The role of the manager is to make sure people have what they need to do the work they have been asked to do

This is a very egalitarian model and it is consistent with my instincts as a Humanistic Manager, which is not to elevate one human above the rest, but to help each other build something cool together.

This sort of leadership requires humility. Understanding that the project isn’t about the manager. It’s about the project getting done and getting done well.

Humility also helps a leader to listen to the staff and respect their input when something goes wrong so it can be fixed. The last thing anyone wants or needs when there is a problem is a mandate to do something that not only won’t fix the problem, but that will make the problem harder to solve.

Finally, being a servant means serving. There is a problem to  be solved, the servant dedicates themselves to solving it. It is in this last area that shines for me as a Humanist.  I want to make things better. Not just for myself, but for others and for the communities in which I live.  This is my primary motivation in life.

Servant leadership in business isn’t just focused on business, and management. It’s also focused on why the business exists in the first place and what sort of impact the business is having on their customers, their employees and the communities in which they operate.

Solving a problem for yourself by creating problems for others – IS NOT servant leadership or humanistic leadership. So take your role as a leader/manager seriously and get to work helping us solve our problems.

To learn more – check out these courses

• Principles of Humanistic Management
• Seven Sins of Staff Management

Meaning & Purpose in Business

If you want to have more meaning and purpose in your business life, start by thinking about your values.

Ethics and values are critical to understanding meaning and purpose.  Your values help you figure out what it is that matters to you. When you know what matters to you, it becomes easier to make decisions in support of your values. This is true whether you are talking about your personal life or your professional life.

In the day to day hustle of just getting through the day, it is easy to lose sight of what you value. This is one of the reasons why people struggle with work life balance, relationships, and satisfaction and engagement at work.

At some point, most of us need jobs, mostly so that we can afford to have shelter, food and medical care. But what happens when the only jobs available cause harm to others or are exploitative?

I’ve known people who have left high paying jobs, because they didn’t want to be involved in making weapons. It just wasn’t worth the money to them anymore.  I’ve also known people who stayed at jobs that treated them badly because they needed the money.

Work is moral. Our choices, to either support or enable bad behavior or businesses that run counter to our values impacts the sort of world we live in.

The point of Humanistic Business Management isn’t just to encourage better treatment of the humans working for businesses. It’s also about what businesses do for business and in the course of conducting business.

Is the product or service net beneficial to humans and the world in which we live? Or is it harmful?  Does the company acquire the resources necessary to create the products and services in a comprehensively ethical way or not?

Think of humanistic business management as being concerned with three levels of business simultaneously. It is concerned with the problem being solve, how the problem is being solve and ultimately the impact this business has on all the people impacted by the business (workers, employers and clients).

Do you currently feel like your work has meaning and purpose? If not, what do you plan to do to change that?

To learn more consider taking: https://humanistlearning.com/workplacemeaningandpurpose/

The Simple Truth is – Humanism Matters

There continues to be a lot of discussion about Humanistic Business and leadership. The reason why? Because Humanism matters.

We live in a diverse global society. The biggest businesses are global, our commerce is global, thanks to the internet, our friendsships are increasing global. And our food, thankfully, is global as well (I’m a big fan of Peruvian, Indian and Columbian food for instance).

All this global diversity has benefits, but like all good things, has a downside as well. How we chose to manage the benefits vs. the drawbacks will dictate our success going into the future.

People who are afraid of all this globalization rightly see the downside and it scares them. People who are for globalization are looking at the upside and think it outweighs the downside. Blind fear doesn't lead to good decisions, but neither does blind optimism.

What would be incredibly helpful is a honest discussion of the pros and cons so that we maximize the good and minimize the harm.  That isn’t going to happen in the media or through our politicians.  But we as individuals can and must discuss this and this is why Humanism matters.

Humanism, because it’s focused on our common human morality, can help us cut across religious and cultural differences to find a common moral language and framework. It encourages us to recognize the humanity of those who are different from us so we can recognize and explore their moral reasoning to find areas of common ground.

Humanism is also reality based. We don’t like to make decisions based on assumptions, we want good science based information. Without that we are adrift.

Finally, a humanistic mindset helps us recognize that we are all dependent on the society in which we live. Our businesses rely on customers and those customers live somewhere and need food, water, shelter, health care and a sense of community. Everywhere in the world this is true.

Humanism in business matters because businesses and working and commerce defines how we interact with each other. We can either use our businesses to help humanity as a whole progress to peace and community, or we can allow our societies to be consumed with greed. We can balance profit and benefit to society. And we must. And this is why Humanism matters.

To learn more – take the free online course – Why Humanistic Management offered by the Humanistic Management Network through my company – Humanist Learning Systems - http://humanistlearning.info/why-humanistic-management/

Facing Your Fears … in Business

Businesses are by definition public. For some people, that causes a lot of anxiety.

 Being professional isn’t always easy. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t occasionally suffer from self-doubt. For some people, this doubt – holds them back.  They don’t advocate for themselves or their ideas as they should. They accept working conditions that they shouldn’t and/or they allow customers or managers to treat them badly when they shouldn’t.

I don’t care who you are, at some point, you are going to struggle in business and in your professional life. There is no easy solution to the problems. Sometimes when you are going through hell, all you can do is keep going.

What I find helps me though, is my commitment to morality. Grounding my decisions in morality helps me find courage to face the whatever it is I need to face.  Because whatever is going on – isn’t just about me. It’s about others too.  While I might be quite willing to put up with quite a lot of BS, I’m less likely to allow others to be treated poorly.

The other thing grounding my thinking in morality does is it helps me to “fight the good fight” on behalf of what I know to be right.  Obviously – self righteous indignation can also be used for evil, but most of us won’t get anywhere close to falling off that ledge. Our problem is that we aren’t righteous enough.

If you find yourself struggling, go ahead and consider the moral ramifications of what is going on.  You may just find the motivation to do what is right and to insist on what is right despite all the pressure to stop. 

Learn more about how to integrate your morals into your decision making with – Planning for Personal Success – online course - https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/

And finally, on the subject of fear. Allowing your fears to hold you back isn’t an option when you are advocating for what you know to be morally right.  When things matter, we will do what is necessary to make it happen. Mattering is a matter of morality. Don’t neglect your moral reasoning. It really will help.

Critical Thinking and Humanism in Business

If you have a job, your job is to solve a problem. Solving problems effectively requires critical thinking skills.

All business are in the business of solving customers problems. People are hired to work for the company to help the company better solve these problems and to solve the problems that prevent the staff from solving the customer’s problems.

Eventually companies get big enough where they need to hire HR professionals to solve the problems that come with having people on payroll. Like how to pay people efficiently and make sure they get the benefits the company provides and to correct paychecks that have errors. HR also has to ensure that all paperwork is in compliance and that people are legally allowed to work for the company to preemptively ensure that legal problems aren’t created through ignorance of the law. Eventually companies get big enough that they also need to hire HR professionals dedicated to dealing with the problems of employee relations, which is a fancy way of saying, interpersonal problems that can cause legal liability for the company if not dealt with properly.

Since every aspect of a business is related to solving a problem, learning how to solve problems is an essential skill for any job. This is why critical thinking is so important.

A humanistic approach to business is a way of understanding the interrelated nature of the problems we are solving and the people for who and with whom we are working. We are never simply solving one problem. All the problems of the company are related. We don’t want to fix one problem and create another problem if we can avoid it.

Humanistic business management is a holistic way of viewing the business of business. Critical thinking is central to this approach because it is impossible to weigh all the various elements at play unless you know how to think clearly.

Critical thinking is useful precisely because it requires the challenging of assumptions. The question why – why are we doing things this way? What exactly are we trying to accomplish? What else and who else is impacted by this decision? By asking these questions we can see the big picture and how our piece of the puzzle relates to everything else that is going on within the company.

It is mind expanding. Like viewing the complexity of the cosmos within the inter-dependent web of employees that is your company.  I find this connected and yet holistic viewpoint inspiring and motivating.  And while it make seem like a lot to take in, by taking the time to think about how things work together, you actually are able to gain a clarity that helps focus on the problems that really matter.

Critical Thinking and Humanism in Business. It’s a powerful combination.

Diversity of opinion matters

How diversity and disagreements can help you improve your life and make better decisions. This is why Humanists spend so much time learning how to think critically.

The single most important thing you can do to improve your life is to make better decisions. This is also true of our business decisions. The better our decisions are, the better our outcomes will be. This is why Humanists are always going on and on about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is the key to making better decisions. And this takes practice. But the hardest part of thinking critically is challenging our own assumptions. It is very easy to critique the thinking of others. It is much hard to critique our own thinking. 

This is why good thinkers welcome diverse viewpoints. We don’t view disagreement as a bad thing. Quite the contrary, we LOVE to argue. Most people like to have their opinions validated. It feels good to think you are right.

However, thinking you are right is not the same as actually being right. Humanists aren’t interesting in validating our opinions. What we want to do is challenge our thinking to improve our opinions. To do this we actively seek out diverse viewpoints. In a business setting, this means seeking a diverse work place. Yes, it is hard to create a truly diverse workplace because, shocker, diversity means disagreements. However, when nurtured properly, those disagreements don’t need to be antagonistic. They can be incredibly productive and help everyone do their jobs better because we are collectively doing a better job of critiquing our thinking.

Embrace diversity. It will help you improve your thinking and your decision making and that will lead to better outcomes for everyone.

Be honest - how diverse is your team or group of friends? What can you do differently to improve the diversity in your life?

Helping people manage change

New years is right around the corner. This means people all over the world are making resolutions to change. Most of them are going to fail. I don’t say this to be pessimistic. It is just that realistically understanding why people fail to change is the key to helping make sure that we, ourselves, do.

The first thing we need to realize is that change takes time. We can’t just decide to change and then change. We have to work on unlearning our old counterproductive habits and replacing them with new, improved and more productive habits.

Whether it is learning to eat better, or not being so judgmental about other people. Old habits are hard to break and to break them we need gentle reminders to do and be better. And we need those reminders to be consistent over time until the new habits are habitualized. 

The more we practice the new habits, the easier they become. If you a manager of other people and you are trying to help change the business practices of your organization, the most important thing you can do for your staff is to give them the time they need to adopt the new ways of doing things and to provide compassionate gentle nudges to encourage them to continue adapting to the changes.

Always remember, everyone reacts to change differently. Some people embrace change quickly. Some, like my husband, are more wary of change and they need to see others embrace it and succeed with it before they will even consider making the changes themselves. So stagger your change across the organization. Look for early adopters and get them going first. Then look for most everyone else to adapt those changes and finally, realize that there will always be feet draggers. They aren’t dragging their feet to be difficult, they just need more time to adjust and respond to change and they are often pretty stubborn so pushing them isn’t going to get them on board, it will only create resentment. They key to getting the feet draggers is to help them see how much happier and effective everyone else is now that they have embraced the needed changes and that they should too.

Remember, everyone responds to change differently. Your job as their manager is to help them adapt to change in a way that respects them for the individual they are and without treating them like a programmable robot.

Learn more about the science of change with this free e-course: https://humanistlearning.com/the-science-of-change/ 

How not to treat your vendors

File this under Humanistic Management

My husband is in sales. He was referred to a new customer by one of his existing accounts. My husband is really wonderful and trustworthy and honest and people like doing business with him so he does get quite a bit of referral business. Because, and I know this may come as a shock, but all things being equal, most of us would prefer to do business with a nice honest person than a slimy person who is only looking out for themselves.

Anyway – this new customer had placed an order, but then didn’t have the check on delivery.  He promised to bring it the next day but also wanted to eliminate some things and get new pricing on others. Needless to say, the next day, still no check, and further changes to the order. This went on for 5 days. My husband finally told the guy his money was no good and he would have to buy his product from someone else, but he was going to pick up all their stuff and that would be the end of it.

I am relating this story because it isn’t like this customer was trying to screw my husband and his company over. He was just so concerned about being taken for a ride himself, he assumed that he was and treated my husband and the company he worked for accordingly. As a result, he pissed his vendor, my husband, off and will now have to deal with people who may not be as courteous or conscientious.

The lesson in all of this is that your vendors are humans too. And just like any human, you should treat them as the individuals they are and not as the individuals you assume them to be. Yes, you need to protect yourself and get the best prices. Yes, you need to do your due diligence in order to know what it is you are buying and why and whether the prices are good. But you should do all that BEFORE placing an order and always remember. Good people HATE being treated as if they are criminals and if you insist on treating your vendors like disposable trash because you believe they are all interchangeable, you may just find that the best vendors will refuse to do business with you at all.H

The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You

File this under Humanistic Management

As much as we would like interoffice and intraoffice communication to go smoothly, the reality is that we humans aren’t robots. We are real people with real issues, real dreams, real desires and real insecurities. This means, a simple communication to ask a co-worker for some help can often be viewed as a form of power struggle between competing rivals.

Look.  We all have a tendency to read into emails and letters what was left unspoken.  Some of us are better at this than others, meaning that what we read into things is accurate. Most of us, however, are REALLY REALLY bad at this and read into things stuff that isn’t there.

What dictates our success or failure in this area is whether or not we are taking into account the actual motivation of other people or their perceived motivation. To help you reach the actual motivation, it is helpful to remember that the world doesn’t revolve around you. This person has their own issues and concerns that likely have nothing to do with you. Once you realize that, it puts you in a position to actually be helpful instead of competitive. And that will help everyone be more successful.

Compassionate Customer Service

File this under Humanistic Business Management

When you apply Humanism to business, one of the first areas affected is that of customer service. The best way to improve your customer service is to recognize that your customers are real live human beings. When selling and marketing to people, the number one thing you can do to improve your sales is to treat them as the real human beings they are and not just as another target. Treat the other person as you would want to be treated if you were on the other side of the transaction.

All things being equal, the real person who really connects gets the business. After all, who would you rather work with? Someone who barely notices you except that you exist and might be able to spend money on them, or the person who is real and who treats you as real?  Yeah – you want to give your business to the person you connect with on a human level and who is ethical, honest, compassionate and responsible.

What better way to brand yourself and your company in a competitive market than to truly be the best most ethical person you can be. This is not something you can fake by the way. You either are a good person, or you are a bit or a lot slimey. Your customers expect you to be a good ethical person. So be who they want and need you to be.

An Imperfect Balance

A lot of the stress of life involves us not finding a good balance between our work, our personal life and our interpersonal relations and societal obligations.  (which I’ve written abouthere).  The other part is knowing when good enough is good enough.

The Harvard Business Review  had a great article about how balancing life is always an imperfect activity.  The lead quote  is “You can have it all. It just won’t be perfect.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/08/the-imperfect-balance-between.html)

The article then talks about the need to outsource your tasks to free up more time for yourself and how that requires you to give up control. The article is also about how to not get stuck in the trap of thinking if everything in your life isn’t perfect all the time, you have failed.  It’s this last part I agree with the most.

Life is messy. It’s imperfect. Our solutions to the problem of finding work life balance is always going to be, to a certain extent, out of balance, requiring constant re-adjustment from us. And yes, this is frustrating. If you’ve ever played a Wii Balance game you know, you have to constantly re-adjust your balance to do well.

So instead of getting angry that you can’t set your life on autopilot in order to enjoy it. Accept that life requires your active and intentional involvement to work well. Not perfectly, but well. This knowledge will help you free up your mind precisely because it is reality based.