Understanding Human Nature

In all our wisdom about management, and all our methods, sometimes we forget the simple truths, like the truth about human nature. Of course, understanding human nature is the subject of many books throughout history, so I doubt I can add something new.

What I can do is give you some straight talk about human nature and tell you why I think leaders and managers who understand it are better off than those who don’t.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines human nature as the sum of qualities and traits shared by all humans. Princeton University’s WorldNet defines human nature as the psychological attributes of humankind that are assumed to be shared by all human beings.

There are many, many people and events in our world that we try to influence, improve or control. For example, we have our children, our spouses, our employees, our companies, our business processes, our laws, etc.

The question is, when deciding on how to approach influencing, improving or controlling, do we recognize the need to be consistent with human nature? That is, do we take into account how people will react, what they care about and what motivates them – or do we drive toward our goals despite human nature?

Take for example a 30 MPH speed limit on a long, single lane country road. How many people really limit themselves to 30 MPH? Why don’t they? Are they all criminals? Is it practical to ask people to limit their speed to 30 MPH in the first place?

Some businesses have certain speed limits in place, like not allowing people to use the Internet at work, or not allowing them use their email for personal communication. It’s strictly for business use only, but why? Is it natural for people to go the entire day without communicating with friends of family?

In general, these same businesses accept that employees will use the telephone to call home or to call the doctor, if need be. So why not email? Is that different? Will email somehow take over people’s desire to do a good job since it’s more “hidden” than the phone?

Is it more human nature to do a good job at work or to blow off the job in favor of socializing through email? Maybe the answer is that “it depends.” And maybe if a company is worried about its employees chatting with email too much, they should revisit their hiring practices. Better to have motivated, honest workers than workers you have to control because you fear they will chat on line all day instead of work.

What’s everyone afraid of anyway? That human nature will mess up our best-laid plans? Maybe human nature is the very guidepost around which we need to build our businesses, because, after all, we’re all human. And the organizations we build exists for one ultimate purpose only: to meet human needs.

One of the services of my business is lead other companies through a process of change. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into a business and had the senior executives of that business tell me, “our people don’t like change. They’ll resist change to the end unless we force it on them.”

Then, I go out and talk to “the people” in the company. And what do you know, I can’t find a single person that I’d classify as resistant to change. In fact I usually find people excited about change. What they’re not excited about is being changed.

Think about it: human nature wants to change, but it doesn’t want to be changed. That’s pretty deep if you meditate about it from the standpoint of why humans have a free will to choose, and to make options for themselves.

In business, politics, religion and in life in general, we need to make sure that the influence, improvement and control we seek to impose on others is consistent with human nature. If not, we’re destined to fail.

Comments

[Rick Patri]

David - You mentioned that BMG has achieved significant growth over the past 5 years... What do you attribute to be the driving factors behind this growth and what differentiates BMG from other organizations who aim to be in your market space? Thank you.

[Joe Gliksman]

Interesting that David is discussing human nature when so many view Six Sigma as just facts and data without the human factor. Leaving out the human factor is a major cause of poor performance, and developing human capital is a key to success. Until recently, at my company, we would gather what we called "tribal knowledge" from employees about any process we wanted to improve. Sometimes their feelings turned out to be correct, sometimes not--but leaving out the human capital would be foolish. We ask what people think, and then go see if the data supports it.
It is human nature to be more willing to work on your own ideas. It seems to be human nature to fear data and measurement--because it may make you look bad. We need to understand and deal with human nature if we want to be more successful doing Six Sigma.