The Next Management needs an honest investigation into human nature

(Dieser Artikel wurde für das 16. Global Peter Drucker Forum vom 14.-15. November 2024 in Wien erstellt. Die deutsche Übersetzung folgt bald)

The Next Management as a serious, multi-year commitment by the Global Peter Drucker Forum (GPDF) to take the discipline of management to the next level, is to be applauded. The need is undeniable. As Richard Straub has observed, the world faces several serious challenges, while at the same time the discipline of management seems stuck and many of our institutions are broken.

As of March 2024, at the time of the launch event, five pillars have already been identified which The Next Management will emphasize:

• innovation more than efficiency

• ecosystems beyond the enterprise

• societal enhancement vs. narrow gains

• technology augmenting (not automating) human creativity

• rebalancing art and science

These are good choices. If it is to help us master the challenges of the 21st century, then the discipline of management indeed needs to make substantial progress in each of these areas.

At the same time, I am convinced that the success of this entire endeavor hinges on one foundational aspect that must undergird all of the above: an honest investigation into human nature. Without that, it will fail.

Why do I say that? Here’s my case in five points.

Management is about human beings

First, the defining property of management is that it is about human beings. As Drucker has said so concisely, “Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. This is what organization is all about, and it is the reason why management is the critical, determining factor” (Peter F. Drucker, The New Realities).

If management is about human beings, then it seems only fitting that we have a proper understanding of the nature of these human beings: who they are, what they need, what they want, how they behave, what drives them, what they dream of, how they make choices, and everything else that makes a human being a human being.

Yet management isn’t human enough

Second, as much as we agree that management is about human beings, we instinctively know that most of our organizations are not really a good fit for human beings. It’s the reason why for decades, at every management conference, including the GPDF, we’ve been hearing calls for more *human-centric approaches to management*.

The launch event for The Next Management on March 13 was no exception. Upon registration, the participants were asked for their perspectives on both the why and what of reframing management for the 21st century. According to the summaries provided during the event opening, "human-centric management" made the top three in both categories. And when asked about the one thing that gets them most excited about The Next Management at the end of the event, participants flooded the chat with mentions such as “more humanity in our institutions”, “humane management” and “people-centric organizations”. Others focused on the desired outcomes of more human-centric management, such as “making the world a better place”, “doing well while doing good” or “a life worth living.”

Clearly, people long for management that is more human in some way. And that longing has been around for a long time.

But what does “more human” mean?

Third, and that is getting us closer to the crux of my argument, those who call for management approaches that are "more human", rarely carefully define what they mean by that. It’s as if we are all expected to know exactly what "more human" means.

Those noble exceptions, who do try to define it, typically limit their discussion to a set of desirable qualities that humans seem to possess. A good example is Gary Hamel’s and Michele Zanini’s book Humanocracy. In it, they describe humans as “resilient”, “creative”, and “passionate”. And then contrast that with our organizations, most of which are neither of those things. Don’t get me wrong. Gary and Michele are right to point this out. And I appreciate their effort to define what they mean, when they argue for our organizations to “become more the like the people inside them.” That’s much better than vaguely calling us to “remember what makes us human”, as so many less careful authors do.

Others, who have at least tried to define what they mean by “more human”, have highlighted empathy, compassion, or the need for purpose. The list goes on.

But are these things really true? And is that all there is to what makes us human? What (or who) defines human nature? How can we even know about human nature? Before I answer that, there’s a fourth point I need to make. In fact, it’s another question to ask.

Why haven’t we made more progress?

As we have seen, the calls for more human-centric management are not new. Neither are the calls for more innovation, more collaboration, more focus on societal enhancement, the responsible use of technology, and so on.

But here’s the thing. I would argue that we already know how to build organizations that embody such qualities (see also my post on the Drucker Forum #shapethedebate blog for the 2022 edition of the Forum). Drucker himself taught us most of that many decades ago. And those who stood on his shoulders (many of whom have contributed significantly to the GPDF over recent years, such as the late Clay Christensen, Roger Martin, Gary Hamel, Henry Mintzberg, Charles Handy, Rita McGrath, Amy Edmondson and many more) have filled in the remaining gaps and helped us apply Drucker’s teaching to our day and age.

If only we were putting that knowledge into practice!

Reflecting on my 30+ years as an executive and as a management consultant, I cannot help but observe that most organizations simply don’t. I’ve worked with large international corporations as well as SMEs, both public and private, and across a wide range of different industries and geographies. The picture is almost always the same. While their executives have all the right books on display on their shelves, their organizations operate by a very different set of principles.

And the phenomenon is not just a fabrication of my personal, perhaps subjective observation. Many objective measures, which can serve as good proxies for the human-centricity of organizations, point in the same direction. Engagement (Gallup) has been stagnant at dismally low levels for decades. Trust in business and business leaders (Edelman) is at an all-time low. More than 9 out of 10 CEOs are dissatisfied with their organization's innovation performance (McKinsey). The productivity of US public companies, as measured by return on assets (RoA), has been declining since the 1960s (Deloitte). I could go on.

Why is that? Why is there such a wide gap between what we know about management and what we observe as management practice in actual reality? Is management too hard? Are our theories not practical enough?

That clearly cannot be the case. After all, it’s not just the great thinkers we can turn to. There have always been exceptional organizations, standing out as practical examples and role models, showing us how it is done. Whether it was Southwest Airlines, Apple, or W.L. Gore in the early 2000s, or whether it is Buurtzorg, Haier and many others today. They are living proof that a different kind of organization is possible.

Yet, they remain exceptions. Just as we haven’t been able to learn from the thinkers, it seems we’re also unable to learn from the practitioners.

Why?

The truth about human nature

That brings me to my fifth and final point, the truth about human nature. It will help us answer the questions raised in the two previous points. And by doing so, I hope it will become clear why *The Next Management* cannot achieve its objectives, unless its efforts are grounded in an honest investigation into human nature. Allow me to explain.

Most people today accept the fundamental assumptions of secular humanism that humans are basically good by nature. Furthermore, they have the capacity within them to find the solutions to all of their problems. Humans will do what’s right, if only they know what that is and how to do it. In this worldview, man’s problem is fundamentally a problem of ignorance.

Ever since the enlightenment, man has been convinced that better knowledge, better science and better education will usher in paradise on earth. Hunger, poverty and crime will end, freedom will abound and wars will be no more. Indeed, there can be no doubt that advances in science and technology have brought enormous benefits to humanity. But have they brought about the promised utopia? No. We’ve gotten two world wars instead. Clearly, we also haven’t made much progress since. Just look at state of the world today. And the experts cannot explain why.

The same dynamic is at play in the world of organizations and management. Despite everything we know about innovation, teams, change and transformation, purpose, agility, organization design, performance, collaboration, and so on, in practical reality, we haven’t seen much progress over recent decades. Instead, management as a discipline seems stuck, and our institutions are broken. And again, the experts cannot explain why.

A case in point was the conversation between Michele Zanini and Tammy Erickson at the launch event. They were discussing the need for more innovation in opposition to the relentless pursuit of efficiency and scale. Now I may be repeating myself, but that is not a new conversation. What’s more, we know exactly how innovation works. Both in theory and in practice. Yet here we are, lamenting the fact that bureaucracy and industrial age processes are still getting in the way. At one point, Michele pressed Tammy for an explanation of why we are stuck. All she could say was, “we continue to apply industrial age processes.” Yes, but why?

I’m not picking on Tammy here. I simply use this exchange as an example of our utter helplessness in explaining the seemingly inexplicable. Michele could not answer the question, either. Could any other speaker have? Or a member of the audience?

You see, if humans are basically good and if the problem is fundamentally one of ignorance, then we shouldn’t have had two world wars at the beginning of the 20th century. But we did. Much less should the world be in the mess it is in at the beginning of the 21st century. But it is. By the same token, the discipline of management shouldn’t be stuck, and our institutions shouldn’t be broken. But they are.

The fact is, that secular humanism cannot account for any of that. So what can?

The truth can. The Christian worldview can. The hard truth is that man isn’t basically good. Yes, humans are creative, passionate, purpose-driven and all these other wonderful things. That’s because they are made in the image of God. But because of the fall, when man decided not to believe God, when he decided he wanted to be his own god, that image is now marred. Humans are still made in the image of God, but now they are also idolatrous, prideful, selfish, greedy, covetous and things much worse. They are capable of incredible evil. And they are so by nature. Whether we like to admit it or not.

So man’s problem isn’t that he lacks knowledge. The problem is not one of ignorance. The problem is a moral one. Drucker, who was very much influenced by the Christian worldview, knew that:

• “Management is deeply involved in spiritual concerns, the nature of man, good and evil” (Peter F. Drucker, The New Realities)

• “I’m only too aware that human beings perversely insist on behaving like human beings. This means pettiness and greed, vanity and lust for power and, yes, evil” (Peter Drucker, as quoted by Joe Maciariello in his lecture on Drucker’s Theology of Work)

Drucker’s honest understanding of human nature is very much reflected in his work. We can see it in his emphasis on governance and de-centralization (to combat man’s pride and lust for power), the organization serving an explicitly stated purpose beyond its self-interest (to combat man’s selfishness and greed), and moral character as the most important criterion for appointing leaders (because that’s the only thing they cannot be taught at that point in their careers).

With this, we can begin to understand why, despite everything Drucker and his successors have taught us, we haven’t made more progress when it comes to the actual practice of management. Why we keep having the same conversations. Why we have not learned, neither from thinkers nor from practitioners.

While this is not the place to answer such critical questions exhaustively, here are a few starting points:

• What if pride gets in the way (I know better)?

• What if laziness gets in the way (management and learning about management is hard work)?

• What if selfishness gets in the way of (my needs are first, team, organization, and customers are last)

• What if greed gets in the way of (all I care about is my bank account, and there are easier ways to fill it than to do what’s right)

• What if lust for power gets in the way (I’ll do whatever advances my career, I want to become CEO because I want the power and prestige that comes with it)?

Doesn’t it all make much more sense, when we’re honest enough to consider some not so desirable qualities, but which nonetheless characterize us as (fallen) human beings?

If we’re going to be successful, we need to do as Drucker did. If we frame The Next Management merely as a quest for a new set of principles and practices, we will fail. Because the main problem we’re facing is not a problem of ignorance. It is a moral one.

Johan Roos was onto something towards the end of the launch event. He reflected on how all the talk about people, values, community, ethics and so on, reminded him of the wisdom of the ancient philosophers, and Aristotle in particular. “Why did we forget about this?” he asked. That’s an excellent question, and certainly a good starting point for an honest investigation into human nature. But of course, it cannot end there. After all, the philosophers, ancient as well as modern ones, are themselves fallible and sinful human beings.

No, if we want to fully and truly understand human nature, we need to turn to the Bible, the infallible Word of God, our Creator. The Bible not only reveals our true condition as human beings and how it is manifested in the kind of problems we create with our behavior. It also offers the solutions. Think of the Bible as a user manual for human beings. Written by none other than the Creator Himself. It would be utter foolishness to ignore it.

Conclusion

In summary, I agree with the premise that the discipline of management is stuck. I agree that our institutions are broken. And I agree that we need to do something about it. But I disagree with the premise that what we’re facing is primarily or even exclusively a problem of ignorance. No, what we’re facing is primarily a moral problem. Therefore, it is a problem of which we can only get a hold of, if our proposed solutions are rooted in an honest, truthful understanding of human nature. And only the Christian worldview, based on the revealed Word of God in the Bible, can provide us with that.

"That’s biased", someone may say. Fine. Then bring out the best that human philosophy, psychology, sociology or any related discipline has to offer concerning the question of human nature. And then let’s reason together, look at all the evidence and see which view best explains what we can observe in real time and with our own eyes. Would you be surprised if the Word of God came out victorious? And if so, would you be willing to apply it to management, to our institutions, and most importantly, to your life?