Is Your Workplace Industrialized or Humanized?

The soul-deadening nature of traditional management practices is an easy target.

In fact, it has become a cliche. Insensitive bosses with anger-management problems, inflexible rules, calcified procedures and an overarching culture ripped right out of 'Father Knows Best.'

It is hard to know to what extent that ethos has survived the past 20 years of technological innovation, globalized competition and tsunamis of downsizing that have left a few stunned survivors to complete with the help of a random laptops the tasks that dozens used to accomplish. Certainly the selfishness of senior executive compensation in the face of almost universal economic suffering suggests that the mindset exists even if the practices have been papered over by facile references to team work.

But those who work now, even in the hip, open, collaborative workplaces personified, at least theoretically by Google et al, also risk a different kind of threat. It's root is that very technology and the flexibility it offers. 24-7 can be an opportunity to manage one's own time - or it can mean always on, always tethered.

The notion that Apple products somehow represent freedom of thought and action is more than somewhat diminished by the knowledge of incandescent Jobs-ian verbal abuse of underlings and his demand for total control of the business' every aspect.

The stories coming out of Zynga about megalomaniacal founders and the equally searing management horror stories from a host of other allegedly 'new economy' avatars suggest that the twists of human personality and emotion can transcend even the coolest, most bleeding edge atmosphere.

Technology can set us free. But it can also enslave us. Whether it humanizes or industrializes a workplace has less to do with the devices than with the mindset of those who use them. JL

Jody Thompson comments in the Cali & Jody Blog (hat tip Greg Satell):

Are you a PC or a Mac?

You remember those commercials, right? Talk about the ultimate way of "humanizing" your company. Apple personified it's product as a hip young person you could relate to (at least, who their target market would relate to), and personified their competitor as a stiff, boring spreadsheet geek who didn't "get it."
Social media and the internet have changed the way consumers feel about brands, and it's changed the way people make purchasing decisions. Humanizing your brand is kind of the thing to do if you want to stay relevant.

How do you do that, though? Obviously it’s not just a matter of firing up the Twitter machine and cranking out YouTube videos.

Humanizing your company starts at the foundation. I think it starts with your workplace culture and the way you treat your employees. Even more basic than that; it starts with the way you think about how work gets done.

Park Howell was talking about this very thing recently, and I loved the infographic he made to contrast Industrialized vs. Humanized companies. You can see why my ears perked up, so to speak, when I saw the first line:

9-5 vs. 24/7.

Cold industrialized businesses are trapped in the old-fashioned constraints of 9-5, while personable, humanized companies are living in the 24/7 digital age of social communication.

Here's what Howell has to say about the book that inspired his infographic, Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World:
"[Humanize] explores how corporations and large organizations are trapped in antiquated management practices that are more than 100 years old. These “Best Practices” were developed as we industrialized America and overlaid the same assembly line thinking to how we treat employees, customers and the community.

It’s all about command and control. Centralized thinking. On a “Need to know” basis. “You’re an important cog in our machine.” Etc.

*Standing Ovation*

Exactly. Companies can talk about utilizing social media and building trust and connecting with their customers until they're blue in the face. The businesses who really get it are the ones giving their employees freedom and autonomy to get the work done whenever, wherever, and however gets the best results.

To fully realize this kind of workplace culture, however, we have to move beyond telework and flexibility programs. It takes a complete focus on results, and only results.