A different possibility is emerging in the employee-employer bond for joint development. Most CEOs in different countries consider the importance of people in a new way and associate it directly with the generation of value. For their part, people go their own way, discover other ways of thinking, talk in a different way about work, their professional career and the meaning of life.
In both parts another curiosity appears, which is nurtured by information and global changes, and allows an unprecedented perception of the environment, history and the future.
This opens up a different opportunity for CEOs and people. The impact both could have on the organization and its bottom line is beginning to be imagined. Along with this, there is the suspicion that this path could be facilitated if there were a design that would benefit them equally, inaugurating a new style of integration between organizations and their employees with the potential of a strategic variable.
This challenge points to the reworking of the employee-employer bond that seems to be occupying the center of the scene.
By thinking of people in a post-industrial way rather than seeing them as cogwheels, ways of intervening in their development emerge that can address neglected aspects. Until today, organizations train their people considering them "a resource" to carry out the task. This style of training requires a new framework, a new language that triggers an involved way of doing in each person, or in other words, that allows each one to express themselves in their way of doing; that makes the diversity of your human being happen as a differentiating contribution. This implies considering it “a person” who will use the resources to carry out a challenge. Thus reinterpreting people from "resource" to "person", and their function from "task" to "challenge".
This double concept of person and challenge is something very different from that of training and efficiency, it provides another meaning to the function and fosters the opportunity to design a methodology for diversity.
Although it seems contrary to the predictability of the processes, diversity conspires in their favor, it is the channel in which they happen, it ends up being the ingredient that empowers, updates and unites them, shaping the characteristics of each organization.
This ingredient appears when the individual imprint is released in a management framework that is constituted in its channel.
The “diversity methodology” places its specific focus on “being”, on the individuality of each person as a source of differentiation, and it is a concept that is just emerging.
The organization "is" in a way that relates directly to its people. That proposes a new space and triggers this curiosity: how much more powerful would the organization be with all the generative capacity of its people deployed?
There is a latent opportunity in every organization and every person, who is waiting for the necessary transformation to happen. It is being delayed by the need for a visible change in reactive positions that obey cultural patterns. These are things that people do automatically, stemming from the way the game between organizations and themselves has worked. Behaviors that have been evolving and establishing themselves within social culture, and from there they respond to that environment, and within it to the business world, letting them know what they think about the place that is available to them in that game.
The man we have in organizations today reflects the social environment from which he comes. A medium that silently installs well-determined, well-specific attitudes, which are then triggered without asking for permission. They are a social reflex act.
We know when they come, they are predictable, expected, and we have learned to live with it. The phenomenon can be observed in different examples. One of them occurs when the boss says something that the employee does not like, and in general he feels rejection, looks for a culprit or denies it. If, on the contrary, he makes a favorable comment, even if it is inconsequential, he accepts it with pleasure. This is just one example of a long list that seems normal to everyone, they judge it natural… reactions like: if you don't like how I did it, let him do it for that, he's the boss…, I did my part… etc., are typical expected attitudes that generate little surprise and less input.
The "social reflex act" eludes the choice and without asking, takes control of what happens. This social parameter not only establishes attitudes, it also establishes responses.
Of course, we do not need to listen to another person to know what the culture tells us, we already know that and we even have it recorded, the interesting thing about talking to another is accessing their diversity, another point of view, a different possibility, although many of the times we only achieve the established position, the answer already known before speaking, which the culture imposes as a response.
Novelty is missing, a fresh look, surprise, and those creative attributes are natural to man. People have realized those two things. He knows that many times he does not choose what he says, what he thinks, what he decides, and he also knows that the offer of a job aligned to what interests him in his life is not common currency, and only a good pay is less and less. enough. So cautiously a new concern is expanding, why not do it appears… it is something that people are wondering, instead of just completing the task, why not dedicate themselves entirely to something that makes sense to them? It is a question that they will have already noticed and it begins to be common in employees, and it installs a distaste, an opportunity of meaning waiting to be attended to.
This is how things can be seen, on the one hand people are interested in developing personally and on the other working on something that makes sense with their life project, and this constitutes a clear opportunity.
In general, the internal proposal of organizations prints the challenge of their vision with greater success in their structure than in their employees. They generally rationalize their challenges, they see them as interesting as they are alien. The role that they play is almost watertight, although it offers them a professional career many times it impacts only one aspect of their development, work, and perhaps it is because the cultural model from which they are nurtured is becoming too small for them.
In general, the way people do everyday is a suit that is too tight that barely lets them breathe, moving in only one way, limits their personal development. It is as if it took them more time to fit right into the model than the opportunity to generate new options. As if the company expected from them a silhouette suited to the organizational suit, something like getting people who fit the bill.
At the same time, organizations are trying to differentiate themselves in their market, surprise prosumers * and satisfy their consumers. A new game is being proposed and with the current rules it does not work. A game that is now alive and mutates in an irreverent way. A game that needs rules that can be in tune. People are disoriented, they are not sure what to expect of them. While executives continue to talk to them about processes, efficiencies, results, objectives, profitability, they lack room to breathe, to flourish, to happen as people.
It is time to start talking about that: promoting individual development, positioning them as strategic generators of value, and giving people their space.
For individual development, let's focus on boosting people's generative capacity. It is not about training, but rather that they notice the existence of specific distinctions that will stimulate their curiosity to observe their task, to detect opportunities, those of their market, their own and the organizational ones. They need tools designed to trigger the development of their skills in relation to the environment, effectiveness, specific focus on action, and meaning, purpose, transcendence, belonging.
For that it is necessary that they have access to the distinctions that allow them to create their own toolbox and then intervene according to their choice and commitment. We talk about these distinctions: listening, enrollment, sense, common purpose, alignment of interests, delegation, possibility, context, authenticity, among others. Then with these tools, they will be able to develop and use these new skills in their task for themselves and for the organization.
Regarding positioning as strategic generators of value, it is time to connect with the generative capacity of people. The size of the organization every day is more related to that and differs more from the commodity. Today, from equipment, infrastructure, technology, systems, information, to MBA's, they are bought by the kilo, with their undeniable value and utility they are not enough to generate the differentiation that organizations are seeking, and neither do they what is lacking happens.
It is not just about gray matter, extraordinary discoveries, sending rockets to the moon or developing a feasible strategy supported by the most reliable processes. It is about an awakening of people and their participation by choice, making things happen, taking ownership of the processes, intervening with their contribution, and transforming - by design - each one of them into a strategic generator of value.
That is what more and more people are interested in. What they want is a leading role in the film, that instead of telling them what to do, they listen to them. People want to say what they have to contribute, they want to discover new options at every step, they want to have their own space to take ownership of the process. You want to have a generative responsibility of value.
Anyone can connect with this desire. We have perceived it in several thousand people with whom we have worked in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, and with people of different nationalities, even the most developed, and it is always a constant, even with the cultural differences that are observed, that common thread is present. People want to participate, they want to appreciate their work, generate value, that their work task makes sense in their life plan, that this task contributes in some way to the social environment, and that their contribution be recognized. In this framework, it seems that the difference between one organization and another will be increasingly made by people.
Regarding spaces, people want to occupy their own. Be very clear about your place of intervention, contribution, development. He also wants to see the entire game, understand the purpose of the organization in which he participates and how its entire operation works, understand what his part is in that game, see what it affects, where it impacts, what possibilities it allows, see what It stimulates him, invites him, wants to feel desired, valued. He also wants to know coldly and exactly the measure of his efficiency, improve his performance, and take the risk of being a great player.
In our experiences, everyone is interested in their daily task making sense of their life plan.
All that possibility is waiting to be capitalized on as a design result. That is the challenge. From teamwork to integrated value generation, it's a design challenge. A work generated with the participation of each individuality, a methodology for diversity. It is not about the presence of an extraordinary designer to be commissioned to tailor an organizational suit. It is about permanent work with people to bring them closer to the aforementioned distinctions, give them access so that they become familiar with them, recognize them and can use them in a continuous process that, added to that of others, and in a path traveled by choice, generates transformation. cultural required to make all of that happen.
So far we have "the one" where almost all of us will surely agree. The issue is to deal with "how" to make all of that happen.
Well, the how that is emerging is based on recognizing the existence of these "social reflex acts." That first step, that of your recognition, opens the way for transformation to happen. We speak of transformation because of the impact that awareness of these reflex actions produces on people. When this happens, they notice their freedom of choice tarnished, they discover that on many occasions they reacted automatically, almost without realizing it. Suddenly they are aware of that, they are amused by those reactions, that discovery, and they begin to go through another stage, that of realizing it.
That opening is what provides a different optics. They then consider what is happening as a source of information, and instead of judging it as good or bad, they wonder what to do with it.
This is when the process takes action. You begin to listen to the other with a genuine interest, a curiosity that seeks to build in common, anticipate, make agreed decisions, capitalize on the other's point of view, and in all this happening the path to diversity is inaugurated.
It is possible to work on the construction of this new stage in a relaxed way and supported by another solid cultural base. One that is missed and chosen is a known path that we have traveled by desire with choice, the path of games.
They transport us to a state of commitment and joy, of full and vital participation, of fun and learning, of challenge, choice in the face of risk and achievement, of camaraderie, of participation, of help. The space that games keep in our cultural base, we have incorporated. Starting from that base, a playful framework allows granting people access.
It is not about understanding, that is not enough, it is about being able to do.
Thus, people, in addition to knowing and incorporating these distinctions, work with them as their usual tool, pouring out their generative capacity in the organization in a pleasant and convincing way.
To work with people, we will need people.
The greater their awareness of these social reflex acts and the way in which they influence their decisions, the greater the possibilities of generating their contributions in them regardless of the prevailing paradigms. They recover their ability to choose and their ability to act, becoming strategic generators of value. They want a leading place. They become aware that it is not about work but about their lives.
Along this path, other aspects of his humanity can simultaneously develop that allow access to "his intuition", an appreciably human ability that constitutes a capacity to connect with what is happening including an objective look, which at the same time allows him to see himself and himself. impact of their presence.
A skill that allows you to connect with the composed scene together with others, and places the task in a common challenge.
Ultimately "the how" is to build a way that gives everyone access to enjoy what they do, that it makes sense to carry it forward with others, and that is a challenge. Instead of going to work in terms of heaviness and effort that only denounce nonsense, we will go to do something that interests us, something that we choose, and that by design has a cocktail of elements that trigger the participation and vitality of the task. stimulus lived in our games.
As we think, and we are not alone in this, the greatest opportunity for organizations is in the generative capacity of their people, and an interesting way for it to flourish is to methodologically promote diversity.
* Prosumers are those opinion makers who are at the forefront of detecting new technologies, products or services, which with their recommendation to others are becoming needs.
