Challenging ourselves to change business-as-usual
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 16:43:14 +0000
As the global public navigates a widespread crisis of confidence in the values and integrity of business, what are the leverage points for deep change? What could happen if we elevated our strategic priorities to include the protection of dignity, the promotion of human flourishing, and the creation of optimal work conditions? What do these ideas mean and what would they look like in our businesses and organizing practices?
These questions brought top executives from several of Spain’s most progressive enterprises together with global management experts and researchers this summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the inaugural Humanistic Management Workshop. Working collaboratively with this path-breaking cohort, we developed an applied understanding of the requirements and responsibilities essential for leading people, defining strategy, and managing processes based on the foundations of dignity, human well-being, and best-in-class work.
The workshop challenged us to co-create transformational change in management mindsets and business narratives. We focused on re-conceptualizing the business ideals of maximization, optimization, effectiveness, and value. What would it take to maximize and optimize dignity, measure effectiveness in terms of human flourishing, and equate value with well-being?
Presenter Dr. Donna Hicks (Harvard University) stressed the importance of making meaningful human connections as a bedrock of dignity. Dignity in the workplace has its genesis anywhere there is recognition that we — all, each and every one of us — matter and that we all want and deserve to be treated well. We matter intrinsically, simply by our unique presence in the world. When we are treated well in our organizations, as if we matter, we flourish. When we are treated poorly in our organizations, as if we don’t matter, we suffer.
Cultivating a dignity work culture involves seeing and treating others as invaluable and irreplaceable, and is achieved by loving, caring for, treasuring, and protecting each other. Honoring dignity brings out the best in ourselves and others, with positive ripple effects in our organizations and through our stakeholder relationships. We were coached to activate and amplify dignity by inquiring: Are we seeing each other’s preciousness? Are we recognizing each other’s fragility?
Presenter Sharif Younes (co-founder, OptimalWork) shared findings about optimal work and performance conditions as a platform for advancing well-being in and through the workplace. Optimal work enables enhanced meaning and connections to higher ideals of dignity and flourishing. Understanding work conditions and behaviors that support our own and others’ best work efforts, as well as what detracts or distracts from such efforts, is important for the personal growth and leadership development of humanistic managers.
We were introduced to three virtues to practice and habituate: being organized, being focused and applying full effort, and being consistent. Younes encouraged us to employ a personal work strategy, the Golden Hour, to advance individual growth, efficiency improvement, and meaning-making by pursuing and accomplishing one specific ideal-driven goal in a given amount of time. We learned to reorient toward optimal work by reflecting on the questions: What if every moment is precious? How would this awareness change our work?
Presenter Dr. Tyler VanderWeele (Harvard University) shared insights on strategies for promoting human flourishing. Defined as complete human well-being, human flourishing is a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good. Based on Dr. VanderWeele’s research, we discussed five universally desirable domains of human flourishing: physical and mental health, happiness and life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. These domains are useful for defining priorities, possibilities and access points of complete well-being across diverse workplace settings.
We were taught to support flourishing in our organizations and promote complete human well-being through asking: Are we practicing acts of kindness? Are we showing gratitude? Are we promoting our own and others’ best possible selves? Are we encouraging the identification and application of character strengths?
Anchored by additional insights from Manuel Guillén (founder and director, IECO), Michael Pirson (founder, IHMA), and Danilo Petranovich (director, AAI), our learning lab concluded with a final session to generate ideas and share insights for leading organizational transformation that prioritizes dignity, flourishing, and optimal work. We made commitments and practical resolutions to implement humanistic management — organizing to protect dignity and promote well-being. With significant goals to work on during the coming months, we are energized to make meaningful progress, generate further momentum, and hold each other accountable as we look forward to reconvening for the 2020 Humanistic Management Workshop.
Executives interested in joining the Humanistic Management Workshop IECO-RCC Harvard next year, or learning more about professional development opportunities with a focus on protecting dignity and promoting well-being in organizing, should contact rita.jacome@uv.es. This year’s workshop was organized jointly by the Institute for Ethics in Communication and Organizations (IECO) and the Real Colegio Complutense (RCC) at Harvard University, in partnership with the International Humanistic Management Association’s (IHMA) Centers Consortium and the Abigail Adams Institute (AAI).
Erica Steckler, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management in the Manning School of Business and co-director of the Donahue Center for Business Ethics & Social Responsibility at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Rita Jácome, Ph.D., is the executive director of the IECO and the IECO business ethics chair at University of Valencia (Spain). De La Salle University is part of IHMA.