Many business owners and CEOs of small and midsize businesses are wondering whats going on in their business having it done all, and yet success is not where it is expected. Thats why many of them as well believe that they have a lot more potential than their real world results are showing. If you are one of those leaders, let me tell you that you are absolutely right! What it takes is just recognizing the power of the Human Dimension. What do I mean with Human Dimension? The Human Dimension is probably the most unknown influential fact in our society, being totally underestimated in the best case and ignored in the worst case. This has mainly to do with the development of our society in the modern age towards a blind faith into technology believing that we had all the necessary tools at our hands. In our modern age driven by the ever advancing technologies being available to us we lost contact to the human beings in charge of carrying out the day-to-day tasks in their working environment and beyond that in their daily lives. We made people believe that in our technology-driven society there is nothing, which could not be handled and managed. The promise was given that Growth was almost guaranteed and basically everybody willing to work would have a decent job with a decent pay thus providing prosperity to our society. This was true in the years following right after WW II. With all the accumulated needs the economies of the western world literally sky-rocketed. The governments in the different countries were able to provide sometimes vast networks of social security. But soon the first roadblocks appeared and the system started to stumble as many of us still recall. Nevertheless nothing but cosmetic changes were done, telling people that this temporary economic glitch would soon be overcome. Instead unemployment started to grow and reaching numbers never before expected. But our leaders still believed in the concept of the ever growing economy, responding to crisis with huge cost cutting programs, subsequent lay-offs and other collateral damage. In order to do damage control and go back on course methods of modern management were introduced to deal with the growing challenges. Processes were created, so complex even for mere administrative tasks, because we believe that control down to the nitty-gritty detail is mandatory to exclude an even remote chance of human error. Astonishing enough we are not quite successful with it, but relentlessly pursue our route. Even facing the fact that errors and mistakes made by human beings in the process didnt diminish at all, seemed not to concern anybody at all. What we got is a growing poverty in our societies, a steady increasing number of people no longer needed in the working process. Productivity increase is the goal and yes it was increased, unfortunately the number of customers being able to purchase the products is shrinking on a daily basis. We should of course not forget the many blessings we got too in the beginning of our Modern Age, but an approach leaving out the most important factor, namely the Human Dimension, is sooner or later doomed to fail, to collapse into the reality we nowadays have. It is not my aim to abolish the Modern Age with all its advances and benefits, however an understanding what they can be accomplish and what not is absolutely needed. However I believe that we need to develop our society integrating the missing pieces, integrating the Human Dimension into the picture. I personally believe that we have an enormous potential in front of us, a potential beyond our imagination. What it takes is accepting this challenge and this immense task of transforming our society, transforming the mindset of our leaders, and having the persistence even in the face of doubt to uncover this huge goldmine. Now, whos that Human Dimension in your company? It is everybody, each human being in your company: your employees, your leaders, and yes, you also. According to a Harvard Study 75% of the value of a company cannot be found in the balance sheet! Whys that? It is the Human Dimension, the human beings in the company with their knowledge, their know-how, their experience, their very own talents and skills. The mixture of that is unique for each company, setting your company apart as well. It is a hidden treasure waiting to be dug out, but by whom? By you and your leadership team! Ever wondered why all these great and necessary processes dont seem to work that smoothly? Ask your leaders, hold them accountable and watch your employees! Heres a clue for you: Human behavior is not governed by logic, rules, obligations, constraints and prohibitions; it rather is governed one hundred percent by feelings on a number of different levels. The interaction between human beings thus is governed also by feelings and not by some imposed artificial rules or language used. Leadership and Communication are the key issues here! The fact of the matter is that communication is much more complex than most of us assume in our daily life. It is impossible to not communicate! Every moment, every second we are all communicating on quite a number of different levels, most of them are taking place in our sub-consciousness. A human being is a complex system sending out and receiving all kinds of stuff, since our sensors are all over the place called our body. Each and every tiny little piece of information is going through our filtering process taking place in our mind. The pieces are analyzed checking if they are complete stand-alones or if they conceivably are part of a bigger picture. Once recognized as a piece of information it is then compared against our filters consisting of experiences, cultural background, learnings and expectations. During that process missing parts are added, others are taken out and replaced with what makes more sense for our mind. After that the message is being recognized as such in our consciousness and has very little to do with what was originally sent. Now you might argue that therefore we have a language and can communicate verbally and making our message clear! And yet I must say to you that there is no such thing as a clear message! Whatever you say will be joined by all the thoughts and feelings you might have towards this person, so a very complex pattern is received. Even your wording being, clear for you, wont be understood as intended. A single word could just mean different things to different persons, could be charged with some experiences the receiving person had way back then, and within the sentence again will have a different meaning. If you now take into consideration your tonality used, which for you might be just normal, this could mean everything to the receiving person, from anger to aggression, to boredom, to hate or to love, to name just a few. Now imagine the potential damage by multiplying this lack of understanding of the Human Dimension by the number of human beings working for your company! Positively spoken can you imagine the incredible potential to increase your success and your profit and subsequently increase the number of jobs you have at your hands, making it a win: win for everybody? To be continued. Walter H. Groth
Institute for Life and Career Transition |
