- in times of change organizations need a true north
- with so many things shifting it can be bewildering for both leaders and their followers on how to lead a company, beyond product & financial decisions. what about culture? how does one steer a company’s soul through the changes?
- and times are a-changing massively, so this true north had better be good* * our focus is on units of humans called where one can decide the norms and values and people opt-in or out, like companies, organizations and teams (vs society or family where one does not get to choose the people and need to accommodate multiple ways of seeing the world simultaneously)
- this gives business leaders a unique opportunity to decide behaviors which get rewarded and those which don’t
- times of change are of extraordinary opportunity and risk, both at the same time
- if you don’t have a route through the change you are at much higher risk of hitting the rocks, but if you get through the rewards are o so much greater if you can make it
- a successful business in these times seems to consist of full-throated pursuit of winning + meaning
- but staff, customers and communities are unhappy. what’s missing? no company is immune.
- the missing component is the human element
- meh, you’ve got to be hard to win at business is what the books and MBA says
- there’s an ancient idea about one’s true worth and resultant entitlement to good treatment
- the romans named it after discovering that there was more to a person than denarii and soldiers
- they named it dignitas which gives us the english word dignity
- you can tell which words are important in a language by how much they don’t change - blood, death, flea, shit, fuck, etc.
- dignity is one of these - almost unchanged for 2500 years
- everyone from BLM to MAGA are complaining about this
- people want to be seen for what they are, not what they are not
- all a company needs to understand is: what can this person do for our mission?
- we suck at measuring humans so we’ve replaced it with opinions
- unfortunately all humans have a different life experience, and therefore, different biases
- let’s avoid at the current time labeling these malicious or non-malicious. sorry to anyone accused of bias or who has suffered from it. in a company setting — not society — we can simply say: where is this bias? what impact does it have on our decisions? how do we correct for it?
- we know humans are flawed, given the opportunity, which company would not want to reduce this inherent weight on decision making, especially when it comes to our most valuable resource: people?
- if we can tackle this as a business issue, and get better at seeing the true potential of other humans, quite simply we will be a better business
- this works both ways — seeing too much potential can be as damaging as seeing too little
- once we get this right, we get more talent, for less, more quickly and work better together
- this is not about being woke, or moral, or “right”, or anything like that. we are simply addressing a detectable problem — that we are crap at correctly assessing human capability — and working to reduce the weight of that problem on our organizations
- when we get it right, we get some clear benefits
- more talent, for less
- quicker hiring & promotions
- fewer mishires/over promotions
- less loss of staff to other places which do recognize their potential
- more flow within an org
- better decision making
- a culture of dealing with reality “radical candor”
- more resilient organization
- and many others
- in addition, dignified staff tend to treat customers with more dignity, avoiding the shortcuts which may provide short term results but ultimately damage the franchise
- nothing comes for free - the cost is higher demands on leadership - no more shortcuts through the mud of blaming underlings, exploiting communities and deceiving customers
- at the core is a commitment to accurate measurement of difficult to measure things, especially people. it’s easy to gloss over stuff, that it’s difficult to measure is precisely why we should redouble our efforts.
- the benefit is a more talented company with happier employees for a lower unit cost, and a more intimate and sustainable connection with customers and the communities they operate in, plus better decisions and products
- it also provides a scalable and measurable framework for dealing with matters of inequity, bias and other pressing challenges businesses are facing
- we feel the case is clear for dignified leadership and have developed a framework consisting of three legs:
1 constant improvements in measuring and managing humans
2 nourishing dignity through the identification and mitigation of “ODHD” type behaviors
3 an authentic and meaningful commitment from senior leadership to run a dignified organization - a company that operates this way used to be called a meritocracy
- unfortunately this word has become tainted with dominant group thinking
- well meaning companies, often the subject of undervaluation themselves, learnt to recognize people like themselves and provide great opportunity
- unfortunately they missed out on similar talent from groups unlike themselves
- In a meritocracy the dominant group bestows merit on those deemed to have met the criteria
- We need a system where we recognize a broader definition of talent which can include groups unlike our own
- We call this a dignitocracy.
- no one group owns the definition of worthy, we move to a more data driven method of measuring success and recognize both that there are many routes to the summit of the mountain and that reasonable people can disagree on this, just lets get to the summit eh?
- at dignitocracy.org we will take you through three perspectives for each subject connected to this: first, the philosophy, second practical and realistic implementation methods and finally, third, real world examples of it in action, or not, as appropriate
- what this is not is: political, judging, exclusive, silver bullet. it’s simply one way of navigating the current challenges so one can focus on aggressively building a great business
- it’s also a philosophy that has ancient roots and constantly adapts to contemporary values, contribute
- finally, you don’t have to do it all. even some of it should help.
- as a business leader you can change what ‘normal’ behavior is. join our movement at dignitocracy.org and help make this a reality in more companies.
The Business Case for Dignity
Written by
Startup person, father of three, former Brit, formerly known as Founder & CEO @Cloudability
