Why You Should Never Use the Term “Human Resources” Again

The most common ways we refer to people at work are possibly the most destructive business terms ever devised. It's time to purge them from our terminology.

 

A few years ago, Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry Wehmiller, asked a military general,"How do you train or condition people to kill other people?" His answer was, "We don't. We teach them to take out targets that make bad decisions." Chapman went on to rightly observe, "The military uses language to dehumanize the taking of lives. We do the same thing in business." When we refer to people as "head count", "human capital", and a "human resource" we unintentionally dehumanize them as well.

 

How Did We Get Here?

In his 1909 groundbreaking paper titled, "The Principles of Scientific Management" Frederick Taylor developed the idea of "task allocation", which broke work down into the simplest, most mundane tasks ("put this nut on that bolt"). This intentionally took all the thinking out of work, turned it into a rote "task", and in the process, fully dehumanized the worker. Charlie Chaplin described the result as, "Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts."

 

Slave, Stiff, Cog, Hand...

The very concept of an employee came from the Factory System period of 1850-1970, which not so subtly turned employees into "stuff". The factory system needed people to run the machines, but the less human they acted and the more they resembled machines, the better the system worked. We've left the machines behind, but it's still convenient to see people as "stuff", as extensions of machines. When you search the thesaurus for synonyms for "employee",  some of the more disturbing synonyms listed are things like "slave", "cog", "hand", "hired gun", "desk jockey", "hireling", and "working stiff." What we call people at work doesn't have a respectable history. With that legacy in hand, it's very easy to see how we got here.

 

Things That Dehumanize

A common definition of racism is, "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone on the belief that one's own race is superior." When we refer to people at work as "head count", "cogs", "work force", "capital", or as a "resource", we conveniently reduce them to something inferior and less human. We did this to people for centuries to enslave them. Doing it to people to dehumanize them at work is nowhere near as egregious, but it is built on the same principles of false superiority and inferiority. If we don't have to see people as fully human, it makes it easier to make decisions that negatively impact them.

There are a number of ways we refer to people at work that are deconstructive. All of them should be as off-limits as any racial slur, not because they are on the same level, but because both are dehumanizing. Here are some of the worst:

Head count

Work force

Human capital

...And the most subtle and insidious of all, "human resources", which reduces people to the level of a chair, computer, forklift, or other business resource.

All of these terms make it easier to see people as "cogs in a wheel", allowing us to make decisions without as much regard for the individual human beings involved.

As with most legacy terminology, we don't think about the roots of such terms and usually don't mean to use them pejoratively. But words are powerful and communicate; or with repetition, actually determine what we really believe. So let's ban terms like these that make people seem less human, and that are worn out in exhaustion in our time. We can do better.

If you have a Human Resources department, it's time to change the name to something that emphasizes humanity and deemphasizes people as a resource. The very existence of such a department might be a related problem we can talk about in another post.

I'm not human capital, or a human resource. I'm a human being. Going forward, please refer to me that way at work.

 

Article as seen on Inc.com

Get Off the Treadmill With the 7 Stages of Business Ownership

OK, so you're building the business of your dreams. But do you have any reference point for how your business actually affects you personally? If you don't, you just might be building a trap for yourself, not the business of your dreams. If you don't have a handle on the Seven Stages of Business Ownership, you're likely to flame out personally, even if your business is successful.

Will You Be Owned By Your Business? Just about every business founder/owner makes the mistake of assuming that if they build a great business, they'll automatically get a life, too. Big mistake. If you're building a business, you need to be as intentional about eventually getting a life as you are about building the business. Building the business always comes first, but if you don't intend to USE your business to build your ideal lifestyle, you won't own the business; the business will own you.

There are plenty of tools to grade what stage your business is in, but none for measuring how your business is impacting you. Here's one from our book, Making Money is Killing Your Business that focuses on what the business is doing for (or to) you personally. As you read through the Seven Stages of Business Ownership, ask yourself,

1) What stage am I in personally, and

2) What stage is my goal? You can stop anywhere from Stage Five through Seven. But if you stop at Stage Four, which most business owners do, you will always be a hostage to your business. Stages One through Four are about generating money. Stages Five through Seven are about ensuring your business generates both time and money for you.

Get to at least Stage Five so you can have both.

Stage One--Start Up

Pouring time and ideas into creating the business & getting it off the ground. This is fun!

Stage Two--Survival Survival is everything; funding is drying up. Urgently driving sales. We burn a lot of fuel on takeoff. I didn't think it would be this hard."

Stage Three--Subsistence Regularly breaking even--woo hoo! But the business is totally dependent on me. Tension..."If I stop, the business stops. Must keep going...

Stage Four--Stability (& Growth)Regularly profitable, finally. The "American Dream!", followed in a few years by quiet desperation. Outwardly successful, inwardly deflated. My business owns me."

Stage Five--Success Now others can "make the chairs." The business makes money when I'm not around and I don't have to stitch it back together when I return. Only 5%-ish of business owners ever get to Stage Five. You can make millions and be stuck in Stage Four for decades because you have no time to enjoy the money. The reason only 5% make it? The Big Mindset Shift. They decide to demand that their business give them BOTH time and money, not just money. It's that simple. "I'm off the treadmill!"

Stage Six--SignificanceLeadership inplaceThe owner is about vision and guidance, not production. "I'm focused on making a difference, not making a chair."

Stage Seven--SuccessionLeadership incharge. The owner delegates guidance and focuses on vision, passing the day2day torch of leadership to others. They become "the myth"--when they walk in, people whisper, "Hey, that's the person who started it all." Leadership--"I used to solve and decide. Now I ask questions."

Beware Stages Four and Six Stage four is the most dangerous stage. The urge to escape any future risk to get to the next stage keeps us on the treadmill for years, if not decades. But stopping at this stage ensures you bought a job, not a company, and will ensure you regularly fall back into Stages Two and Three.

Stage Six is the second most dangerous stage. If you go off and "play" too quickly at this stage, you will come back to a disaster. Focus for just a little bit longer, and make sure someone else is giving day-to-day guidance, and reporting transparently to you.

Which Stage is Your Objective? Where are you? What's the one thingyou need to donowto get to the next stage? There's a hundred things you could do; just do the next one. If you can't get past Stage Four, it's head trash. Nobody is as good, competent, experienced, committed, etc. You made that come true. Stop it.

If you're in Stage Five or greater--congratulations--take the next month off with pay. They won't miss you!

Article as seen on Inc.com

Why Self-Managed Teams Are the Future of Business

Could you build a business around teams of people who have no manager and who report to no one up a "food chain"? If you want your business to thrive going forward, you just might want to

Self-Managed Teams Are Already A Proven Success

A recent Harvard Business Journal article was titled, "Are We Ready for Self-Management?" as if this is a new, experimental thing. The fact is that many large, highly successful companies like W. L. Gore, Semco, Barry Wehmiller and countless others have been structured this way for up to fifty years.

Command and control freaks still talk as if this is some kind of fringe thing. But self-managed teams are time-tested, proven and here to stay, and a tidal wave of companies are moving in that direction, because the data on why you should do it is irrefutable.

It's Not The Team, It's Ownership

The magic isn't in the concept, but in the principle behind it--ownership stemming from the power to make decisions. When people are encouraged to bring the whole, creative, messy person to work, and make important decisions, they take ownership in ways they never would before. That's important, because ownership is the most powerful motivator in business. A business that motivates everyone to take ownership has found the holy grail.

Responsibility, Not Tasks

The archaic Industrial Age system employed by most companies today would have you believe that a single manager is better at making decisions than the ten people who work under them. But in the emerging work world of the Participation Age, a company believes that the ten people most affected by the decision will be better at making it. The result of both mindsets are revealing. The Industrial Age manager takes the responsibility to make the decisions, and then doles out tasks for the team to complete. But the Participation Age company delegates responsibility to the team, for them to make those decisions. When you assign tasks ("put this nut on that bolt"), people feel used, but when you delegate decision-making responsibility ("make a great washing machine"), people take ownership. Of course this only works if you believe that one manager is not smarter than ten people who are closer to the problem. As Janice Klein of MIT found, a few companies attempted a form of this in the 1980s, but didn't dismantle the management structure that would have reduced their command and control. It's not a management tactic as they discovered, but a culture shift. If you're not totally convinced, don't attempt self-managed teams. You'll just get hives and make a mess of the whole thing.

More of Everything

Many companies have benefited for decades from giving people back their brains. These companies grow faster, are more productive and more profitable, have lower turnover, and have increased longevity. As more and more owners and investors see the numbers, they will demand that their companies move in this direction.

It's Simple, Just Not Easy

Are you motivated to enter the Participation Age with self-managed teams? It won't happen overnight. A century of "bosses" have taught people they are not quite as smart and motivated as managers. You have to reverse that notion, and it will take time for people to trust you really are doing it.

Here's how:

1) Form a team around anobjective(i.e. 4-12 people) 2) have them FIRST clearly define the desired result, 3) then the process(es) needed to get that result. 4) Then THEY set metrics for steps in the process and 5) for pay based on the result desired (quality, quantity, speed, etc.,) 6) finally THEY decide what happens if the metrics aren't met and how to move team members along if they are not contributing appropriately. 7) Leadership approves. 8) Run it.

Safeguarding Your Future 

In the Participation Age, people don't want jobs that just pay the bills, they want work that allows them to be fully human, make decisions and own their stuff. As more companies leave the Industrial Age management structures behind and invite people to decide, they are more likely to retain the great people they have. Giving people their brains back is becoming a necessity for keeping them. Self-managed teams is one great way to do that.

Why You Need to Become a Prisoner On The Road To Business Freedom

Want freedom? First, you must become a prisoner to your business, which is why most business owners never achieve freedom.

Research published in Harvard Business Review reveals something very telling about the way we work; we're too busy to follow the rules. And ironically, that has a profound impact on whether we will ever stop being so busy.

Don't Kid Yourself, You're a Hostage

Almost every founder, CEO and business owner I know is a hostage to their business. I was through six businesses until I learned to move from hostage to prisoner. Six months as a hostage can have more lasting negative effects on someone than years in prison. Why? A hostage is not in control of anything, the rules are always changing, others seem to be calling all the shots, all we can do is react, and worst of all, a hostage never knows when it will all end. Welcome to owning or running a business. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Want Freedom? Become A Prisoner

In Simple Rules for a Complex World, Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt make my case on why we need to become prisoners if we truly want freedom. They found that companies that flourish through hard times, do so because they are following a few, simple rules while others are flailing around with what I call the Random Hope strategy of business. It makes sense. A prisoner has a few simple rules they need to follow, and most importantly, they know when it will all be over. It's difficult for a hostage to be encouraged and have hope because the future is a big unknown.

Just a Few Specific Rules

Simple Rules says the fewer the rules, the better. Here are my four simple business rules, which I published in my first book, Making Money Is Killing Your Business. We call them the Four Building Blocks of success:

1) A Big Why

Your Big Why is something you can never check off as completed; being a lifelong learner, being a great mom, giving back to business owners, solving poverty. A Big Why motivates a business owner to filter daily decisions through how they help solve problems and create freedom.

2) A Strategic Plan (not a business plan)

A Strategic Plan will keep you clear about where you want to end up three years, twelve months or three months from now, and will motivate you to figure out the one or two things you need to do this month to obtain the freedom you've described.

3) Freedom Mapping

This is where the rubber meets the road. Everyone in our business (especially the founder or CEO) needs to get the brilliance out of their head and onto a piece of paper so others can do it. There have been many copies of famous paintings, like the Mona Lisa, that were so good that art experts couldn't tell the difference. If Da Vinci can find someone to paint the Mona Lisa for him, you can find someone to train to be better than you.

4) Outside Eyes

You can do the above three on your own, or you can get help and accelerate the whole process exponentially. I was an 18-20 handicap in golf for twenty years. Then I got a coach and in two years I was a two. I can't imagine how much time and money I wasted doing it myself. I'm talking to you, Mr. Rugged Individualist.

I'll Get To That Tomorrow...

Here's the kick in the head. You can go an entire forty-five year career and never do any of these four simple things, and most founders do just that. They don't know why they are in business, how they plan to use their business to accomplish that, or how to create the Freedom Maps to get them off the treadmill. And they aren't about to ask for Outside Eyes to accelerate the process.

Choose

Founders and CEOs who employ the Random Hope strategy of business will never get off the treadmill. Those that create a very few, measurable, specific rules, and follow them slavishly, can create a business that makes money when they are not around. He who makes the rules wins. What are your few simple rules? How are they ensuring you will experience freedom? If you have them, and follow them carefully, who knows, you even might get out early for good behavior. Article as seen on Inc.com

One Learned Skill Contributes to Success More Than Any Other

The CEOs of the fastest-growing companies in America have a single, learned attribute that makes them more successful than anyone else. You can learn it too.

For decades while helping founders build their businesses, we have told them the number one attribute of success is Speed of Execution, which is the practical outcome of being willing to take risks. Entrepreneurs and founders who exhibit Speed of Execution are able to do so because they move on an idea without having enough information to know for certain the idea will work. While others are researching and doing case studies, they are already turning the idea into reality. They can do this because they have learned by experience that the only way to perfect an idea is with movement, not planning.

Planning never creates movement, but movement can create a great plan.

The Data Is In--Moving Fast Works

New research confirms this is the path to success. Gallup, which built the popular StrengthsFinder assessment, recently developed an online version specifically for entrepreneurs--the Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder evaluation. They invited the founders of the 2014 Inc. 500 fastest growing companies to take the assessment, and discovered that the number one attribute, shared by a whopping 85 percent of the founders, was the willingness to take risks.

Our Beliefs Determine Our Behavior

Risk-taking is the belief system, the mindset. Speed of Execution is the practical outcome of that belief system. Risk takers believe that moving quickly with all the information will work better than trying to get it all figured out before you move. They understand that you don't get comprehensive information in an ivory tower, but from experience. Those who move on an idea quickly in the trenches, always get information not available by analysis.

The number one indicator of success in an early stage business is not how good your product is, or how smart your marketing is, or your uniqueness, or your funding, or any of those traditional ideas of what makes for success. The number one indicator of success in early stage business is simply Speed of Execution. Get an idea and get moving on it. You will find out if it's a good idea or not much more quickly and reliably by moving on it than by musing on it.

Steering Your Business

How do you steer a ship? The logical answer is with a wheel and a rudder--that's wrong. The intuitive answer is, "Get it moving." Movement steers a business in the same way. Moving the rudder on a ship dead in the water does nothing to change the direction. Only movement will affect change.

Planning is your rudder. I would never advocate putting a boat in the water without a rudder. But most people are sitting around building hand-carved, silver inlaid, 100 foot tall rudders to stick on the back of their 12 foot dinghies, and wondering why their idea sinks before its launched. Get a simple piece of metal (a basic idea), stick it on the back of your boat, and get out of the harbor.

Move Fast. Break Things.

The faster you move, the less rudder you need. Bill Hewlett famously said, "When I talk to business schools occasionally, the professor of management is devastated when I say we didn't have any plans when we started. We were just opportunistic. Here we were, with about $500 in capital, trying whatever someone thought we might be able to do. So we got into this thing not by design but because it worked out that way."

For HP, considered by most to be the founders of Silicon Valley, movement created the plan. For the first ten years of Facebook's existence, Mark Zuckerberg echoed Bill Hewlett, and led the company with the mantra, "Move Fast. Break Things. If you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough."

Stop thinking. Stop planning. Your plan, like Bill Hewlett's, will form as you move, not while you're reading case studies. Get a nice little rudder, stick it on the back of your business, and get moving as quickly as you can. It's counter-logical, but to the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, it's very intuitive.

Implement now. Perfect as you go.

Article as seen on Inc.com