“We JUST need to engage our heads and our hearts in a leadership process that validates the worth of every individual. Where everybody matters.” (My emphasis) What do you make of that statement? Do you agree?
You will not be surprised that I do. It comes from a Bob Chapman TedTalk that I found incredibly inspiring and I thoroughly recommend that you take 22 minutes to listen for yourself. Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn-lIEv1LU&feature=youtu.be A key takeaway is the phrase, “Everybody Matters.”
The conviction that people matter is the distinguishing characteristic of most truly great leaders and “people matter” should be the mantra for all aspiring leaders. Perhaps that is what is wrong with modern leaders. They focus on measurements, with money as the key measure, and not on people.
For instance, I know from personal experience that banks look at their business and ask, “What service do we currently provide that we could charge for?” “What else can we do that we could charge for?” That is the kind of thinking that has led to the massive fines levied on the banks for mis-selling products and rate fixing. They simply see the customer as a sponge to be squeezed for money.
Nor is this mind set unique to banks. You need only consider how many sales calls you get in the evening (and often despite call prevention listings!) or on your mobile phone? This advance on sales techniques pioneered in encyclopaedia and insurance selling, and the butt of many jokes, has now become ubiquitous; justified by a universal marketing wisdom that you must reach people wherever and whenever you can. The implication here is that the customer is too stupid to identify their own need and follow-up. And that is exacerbated by the fact that now there isn’t even a salesperson! Instead you simply get a recorded message. This adds insult to injury with a subliminal message; “You aren’t important enough to justify the expense of paying real people to talk to you. We can make more money and save sales commission by using technology instead!”
We do appear to be reaching the danger that Einstein predicted when he said, “I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Or, even worse as Omar Bradley voiced it, “If we continue to develop technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.”
Avoiding this fate requires leadership. A true leader cares about people. This is the foundation of success. It is not all about the bottom line and the extent to which it grows year by year; it is about the purpose of the business. After all, a business is created to meet a need; to offer a service. You build on very weak foundations when you forget this. When profit becomes paramount everything gets perverted. As a leader, you are the person who prevents that perversion. To maintain a sustainable organisation and avoid the spectacular collapses that it ultimately causes you must hold up and adhere to the mantra, “People matter.” You will, won’t you?
Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, a company created to help larger small to large business organisations to properly value their people and thereby inspire them to optimise their self-worth and so engage them that they transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”