About a year ago a film was released in Buenos Aires in which we can cut four different stories from which I want to make some reflections.
The film shows a young girl who owns a small neighborhood bookstore, installed many years ago in the same place, who sees her livelihood threatened by the installation of a mega bookstore on the corner of her premises (a very current story, a mega-enterprise endangering a retail business).
On the other hand, a handsome son of the owner of the mega bookstore who casually begins a bond, via chat, with the young girl (another very current story, e-relationships).
Of course, a romance is established between young people (a very old story, the love between two people with a conflict of interest) - the way in which the conflict of interest is resolved is not very original either: love conquers everything.
So, we have a love story, a story of a problem in the economic-commercial field and a story of technological advancement in the media for communication between people.
The fourth story, to which I am going to dedicate myself, is that at various moments in the film the young businessman, after listening to the claims of his "victim and lover", and with his best smile, tells the young woman: "They are business, it's nothing personal.
"It's business, it's nothing personal."
What does this widespread and widely accepted statement in the business world mean?
To put it bluntly: business and people collide.
My purpose is that all of us who are involved in business (businessmen and company directors, managers and middle managers) become aware that the concept that business collides with people responds to a cultural duality based on the premise «or this…, or the other… ».
And that we can very easily fall into the trap of this dilemma, so much as to come to believe that one of the parts is more true, convenient, advantageous or useful than the other.
Many companies make significant investments to make changes that solve problems: developing a new business strategy, new management, a restructuring, a reengineering process, a merger, or purchase of another company, or a change in their computer system, or the upgrade their telecommunications system to respond to the new speed of communications in the world, or have started a quality management process to keep up with strong customer demand, or want to optimize their logistics system to improve relationship with its suppliers, or any change of another nature.
Now, why often, once implemented the change that was thought to solve problems, add problems to it? Why do the expected results not occur?
Are the answers to these questions related to some of the comments I usually hear? Some businessmen in informal talks or social gatherings tell me: «We are growing a lot, we would need to prepare people for everything that is happening, but we don't have weather". Or: "we are making a lot of changes, people are half lost, we would have to do to integrate people, but we have a lot of work to do."
Is it necessary that a good business does not take into account the people, the "personal"? Or will it not be broader and deeper to ask ourselves: How can we make business and "personal" come together?
The problems that we find most easily in our companies are: stressed entrepreneurs and managers, if not in a bad mood, neglecting their family and health, working many more hours than common sense could consider, maintaining conflictive relationships with many of their employees. peers and subordinates who work under the same conditions.
Unmotivated people, in a bad mood, exposed to contracting diseases that they cannot pay attention to because they cannot leave work.
How many Work Programs are there that address human relationships at work?
As human relationships are natural, universal and spontaneous, it seems that it is not necessary to deal with the treatment of these relationships at work.
Next, let's see some examples of situations in which problems in human relations at work are manifested, which directly affect the functioning of organizations, reducing their productivity.
Bad relationship: mutual distrust, concealment of relevant information, suspicions of "sabotage", among the managers of a service company, with an enormous loss of time and energy in inoperative meetings with the logical consequence of a wear and tear in motivation and commitment of the protagonists.
Relational clumsiness: lowering of instructions by inappropriate means, poor acceptance of questions and clarifications about them, intense reproaches in the face of minor faults, in the management of the links between bosses and subordinates in work teams of a company that produces health supplies.
Suspicious and competitive attitudes: fears, mistrust, suspicion, between groups of different work areas belonging to the same company (them and us) that causes delays and a decrease in the quality of service in a telecommunications company.
Difficulty in managing relationships with difficult people: exhausting ties, excessive consumption of human energy for simple interpersonal procedures, in many companies of different sectors.
Working involves a coordinated action of people who understand, oppose, fight or agree on the basis of principles that not only have to do with technique, but also with ethics, values and beliefs.
We believe that the task of education, training, and training is to train people that anyone else can trust and respect, who are capable of thinking and doing what needs to be done with responsibility, and who are capable of integrating harmoniously with others, in groups and work teams.
Fortunately, a greater awareness of this situation is developing, in such a way that more and more companies are approaching seeking to unify the two parts of the duality: business is personal matters.
Articles from The Wall Street Journal Americas and The Economist (both for La Nación) point to health and ethics as the topics that have grown the most in the attention of businessmen in recent years. I believe that human relations at work complete those issues that today mark the competitive differences of companies.
"Promoting physical health and reducing stress is no longer a matter of philanthropy by a benevolent employer and has become part of good management style" (The Wall Street Journal Americas, Tuesday May 2, 2000).
“Companies face more ethical dilemmas than ever before. Competitive pressures force firms to treat their staff in ways that differ from past practices. If you add that they are increasingly under the scrutiny of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), it is not surprising that responding to ethical questions has become part of every boss's job ”(The Economist, Saturday 22 April 2000).
With policies that address human relations at work, companies would achieve enormous savings in money, time and energy, not only as a graceful concession from a sensitive entrepreneur but as an authentic management tool that produces a notable reduction in costs..
