The case for a management style evolution

The way in which humans physically perform work has evolved, but a lot of organisations are still applying the practices of managing a physical labour workforce to their knowledge-based workers.

This is limiting the achievements of complex socio-cognitive knowledge workers who have a higher level of human capability that is deeply rooted in human nature, according to James Pepitone, CEO of The Humaneering Technology Initiative (HTI).

“Most corporations continue to rely on industrial era engineering-methods for managing people. Human beings are not machine parts or inventory. People are people and their operating system is human nature. That may sound really obvious, but it’s incredible how often it is overlooked in business settings,” he said.

Originally the work of professor Joseph Tiffin of Purdue University, “humaneering” is about transforming human science into management technology with the goal of maximising the economic value of 21st century “human work.”

Tiffin determined in the 1930s that the root cause of organisational ineffectiveness and inefficiency was suboptimal decision-making about employees, resulting from lack of “scientific quality” in managements understanding of human nature.

In his book Post-Capitalist Society, Peter Drucker also touches on the subject of managing knowledge workers: “It is the individual knowledge employee who decides in large measure what he or she will contribute, and how great the yield from his or her knowledge can or should be. Loyalty from now on cannot be obtained by the paycheck; it will have to be earned by proving to knowledge employees that the organization which presently employs them can offer them exceptional opportunities to be effective.”

HTI is applying Tiffin and Drucker’s findings to develop a new way to manage knowledge-based organisations.

“Our objective is to establish a unified applied human science to improve and simplify decision making for the human side of business, meaning that part of business governed by human nature—something that mainstream corporate management theory has largely missed in the last century,” said Pepitone.

HTI has just released its fourth major version of humaneering technology for application with its development organisations who range in size from 3,800 to 200,000+ employees. Version four progresses the development toward expanded application testing.

Ultimately, humaneering provides management with a single, synthesized and applied science to guide decision making, according to HTI.