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MANAGING CHANGE
Conversations On The Leading Edge Of Knowledge and Discovery With Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS Reprinted with permission from Thinking Allowed Productions MISHLOVE: So it sounds as if two things that you're saying, are, number one, you have to acknowledge emotions. Whatever is going on, you cannot treat your business simply as a mechanism, as a process devoid of human feelings. And the other thing I hear you saying is listen; you have to listen to people. SCOTT: A lot of managers think that listening is doing nothing, and I think it's doing something very important. So you zip yourself into your tomato suit, and you go listen. If you really want to be powerful, you tell them about your own experience, you tell them how it is for you. Because oftentimes what the Tarzans do is they go through that experience, but they do it at Pajaro Dunes on a weekend, and they never tell anybody. You see, I believe that they go through that, but they just don't tell anybody. What I think you're talking about is the heart. The change is made, but the heart never arrives. And if you want to deal with productivity in business, and you want to find out why people don't want to work anymore, it's because the heart has not been allowed to come into business in a way that is professional and that really takes into account people's passion for their jobs. MISHLOVE: In fact I'm sure that most people sort of feel that they have to work to earn a living. It has nothing to do with their heart, with their passion in life. Most people have outside interests that satisfy those needs. SCOTT: I think that's a model that used to work, and I don't think it works so well anymore. According to the Gallup Poll, forty-five million people hate their jobs. And we think the productivity crisis is about the Japanese. It's here, in the structure of the organization that we build, where people can't put their hearts. In my clinical practice I had a guy recently who said, "I am dying to find a place where I can put my heart, and all I'm offered is a job." That's where the productivity crisis is. We are making that up all by ourselves, it's not the Japanese. So as we don't include the heart in business, then we are leaving out a great potential of people's creativity. And we want innovation, creativity -- without the heart? MISHLOVE: Well, it sounds like ultimately the greatest change, the greatest crisis, which is confronting American business and industry is to align our entire economic structure in such a way so that people really do find meaning and purpose and passion in their work. SCOTT: That's what they want. And if people have that, you can't stop them. MISHLOVE: Well, I would think so. Obviously, our greatest resource is our people, and to the extent that we're not utilizing that resource we can't compete. SCOTT: We have a very interesting idea that the heart belongs at home, and the head belongs in the office. And until people can feel both of those things, they aren't fully productive. I think the greatest management challenge for the next ten years is to learn to manage human capital from a heartful perspective, and to understand that the productivity question is about motivation from the inside, and meaning. If you can make meaning for your people, at any level -- it is not about top jobs, either. I've just spent a week with people in hospitals. From top to bottom, they understand what they are doing there in that business, that business of health care. They are healers, and they understand it much better than people in another company that I was at, that doesn't understand that. So I think if you can make that meaning for people, you'll have them. MISHLOVE: I sense, though, that this discussion can be very threatening to people, because if they begin to look very carefully at the possibility that they can align their passion, their life purpose, their meaning, with their work, they think, "Well, if that's the case, I'd better quit, and then what am I going to do? I won't have a job. SCOTT: Well, I don't know that they all have to quit. The biggest risk is to stay. The biggest risk is to stay and change your job from the inside out, because often in those conversations I say, "Well, have you talked to your boss about what you really care about?" "Well, no, I couldn't do that." "What prevents you?" "You know, I can't do that." I say, "Why? No mouth? No language? What is it?" They haven't even tried. I think in some ways it's an easier trip through the door than it is to stay and transform your work from the inside out. But I find that more managers are becoming more and more open. If you can couch it in the language of how it affects your productivity, and how it can enhance what you're doing, there's much more openness to that now. People are desperate; they'll try anything. MISHLOVE: But it still seems, you know, in the world of business, the bottom line is profits, the bottom line is productivity. SCOTT: Absolutely. If you want productivity, you'd better find a way to put people's hearts to work. I think it's very profitable. The organizations that I work with that start to do that kind of thing -- it's not only in the health care costs, you see, because you pay for this, you pay for the lack of heart in your work. You either pay it in Workers' Comp costs, stress claims, or you play it in health care benefits. So you look at the reduction of risk loss in accidents in your organization when people love what they're doing. You're saving money. You just have to translate it a different way. MISHLOVE: Well, I would think there's a much bigger cost, truly, in the creativity and productivity of a company. Health care costs are enormous, but they're probably small compared to the -- SCOTT: But they're easier to measure. And they're much more clear on the pocketbook. Productivity is one of those things that's hard to put your hands around and sort of put a figure on. But if you can reduce, even everyone taking one less sick day next year, you've saved a lot of money. END PART III
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