I'm all for humanistic management (consider the opposite for a minute!),
but we have to think fundamentally about the purpose of business. I have
no doubt that process matters a lot in volunteer groups, where meeting
social and psychological needs are stronger motivations than achieving a
given purpose. I think this is happening in business, too, but to its
detriment.
Let me not just gripe but present a reasonable alternative. I've been
studying productive collaborations lately, and almost to a one, they work
because the collaborators share a goal and enjoy (even argumentatively)
working together to achieve it. Not one citation I've studied discusses
culture or process one bit. In fact, sometimes these collaborations are
quite contentious, and sometimes they involve very authoritarian elements.
But they work because the parties are invested in and focused on what
they're trying to accomplish. I think it's not only OK but necessary for
a business to be focused on some external goal (i.e., profit targets,
market share, product release, winning a customer, etc.) vs. obsessing
about an internal goal (i.e., employee satisfaction, costs, process
metrics, etc.). It's not that the internal goals aren't important, it's
that they aren't as important as the external ones to achieving business
purposes.
Businesses are social constructions, but they have historically been as
focused on productivity as on social enjoyment. Tipping the scale the
other way (toward social satisfaction) will not be humanistic in the long
run -- it will lead to failure of the business.
Dave Clarke (W.L. Gore Co.)
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