A true story about how one person’s life was changed for the better. And for the business’s benefit too. Although the story talks of just one person, there are dozens of stories about people responding to challenges, growing in ability, confidence and self-worth. Imagine what that astonishing level of commitment does to your ability to manage the team, and to your productivity and profitability.

People work for money obviously! We all know the answer to that don’t we? Our team leader, supervisor and manager training courses tell us? People go to work for money to keep a roof over their heads, raise a family and enjoy a few luxuries. We are trained to regard human resources, units of labour, as primary inputs to getting the job done. We are taught to measure their performance against target, train them, and manage their performance. The Human Resources Department provides all the legal tools that allow us to do that legally. Isn’t it a shame that all that misses the point. People do go to work for the money, but what they do at work, depends on something else. There are selfish, very human, reasons why people work. Let’s explain these.

Change I am sure you experience a lot of change in your organization, although I am surprised at how many businesses still have fax machines. We gave up our fax machine after three years when the only messages were adverts for fake Rolex watches. Change is everywhere, some successful and some not. Have you considered changing your change process to make that better too?

What are you doing to prepare for the future? Do you think this could be the most elaborate April Fool’s Day joke ever? Better than the spaghetti trees and the new species of flying penguins put together? Are you assuming this is, in fact, the case and that on April 1st 2019, David Cameron, Teresa May and whoever, is going to pop up and shout “of course Brexit isn’t happening – April Fool!”. Or do you think Brexit is actually happening, and despite the alternative future trading relationships extremes being readily discovered, you have decided that doing nothing is the best way forward.

The right attitude Everyone in business should have a commercial attitude. It’s all about delivering a customer need and getting paid for it. Do you treat your employees in the same way? Do you think of your salary costs in terms of getting the most work done for the least cost? Would you be surprised if your employees think they should do as little as possible for as much as possible? Is that your experience? Whose fault is that? It isn’t very effective, is it? But you probably don’t know any better! What has gone wrong with people management? You have suffered successive onslaughts of HR flummery: employee engagement solutions, rewards and benefits, workspace design, CSR, culture change programmes or training as a good thing for heaven’s sake! All this, and more, has led to the horrors of matrix management, and the consequent politics. Who carries the can when matrix management goes wrong? Who is responsible? Care to guess? It isn’t all bad That is not to say that all that flummery doesn’t contain a seed of value, but it needs fertile ground, not the desert of commercially-based employee relations. Otherwise, it is just conscience money spent for public relations. […]