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In the People Business By John Waid
How Human Are You? Prioritizing People over Profits H
ow human are you? At work, do you care more about profits or people? In sales, are you and the company more interested in making quota than taking care of the customer?
If you’re being honest, business today is about profits over people and quotas over customers. So what is missing in peo- ple that keeps them from striking a bal- ance to make companies and sales more human? Have we lost our humanity? If so, how do we regain it?
The intense pressure in companies for short term gains leads to a focus on profits over people. That focus on profits leads to selecting people that will gener- ate them. Managers generate profits in the short term so they’re placed in lead- ership positions. These results-oriented managers squeeze the people to gener- ate profits which can lead to the dehu- manization of organizations.
We’re Only Human It’s estimated that 95 percent of busi-
nesses would experience huge advantag- es by injecting some humanity in their operations. Take for example a company that was doing really well with its employ- ees and profits and decided it needed to undergo a higher rate of growth. The top decision makers installed a tyrannical mi- cro manager to lead the business with a finance person as second in charge. The decisions the company made started to change.
They started to cut benefits like Christ- mas parties, incentive trips and began to see people as numbers in a spreadsheet instead of creators of value. This led to the best people leaving, and instead of viewing this as a warning sign they saw it as a great gift as they could replace these people with others that were younger and cheaper. People became expendable. What has this change for the sake of growth caused? The company is now half
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the size it was in profits, earnings and people, with previously valued employees departing in droves. This company went from great to mediocre by bleeding out the humanity. The lesson learned should be that if you remove the humanity out of a company the humanity will leave, lit- erally; and by the way, so will the profits. Here are a few practical ways to bring the humanity and profits into balance. 1. LIVE THE PEOPLE-FIRST MENTALITY. Un- derstand that no matter what business you are in, you are really in the people business. Focus on employees first, cus- tomers second and profits third for more profits. 2. FOCUS ON THE VALUES AND BEHAVIORS
(CULTURE) OF YOUR PEOPLE AND HIRE AND FIRE FOR IT. Select people for attitude and train for aptitude. Become a culture-driv- en company. 3. REMEMBER THAT BUSINESS SUCCESS IS
ALL ABOUT PEOPLE AND HOW THEY BEHAVE. Provide a transcendent purpose (other than money) and let this and your cul- ture drive you. Your employees will serve your customers and your customers will buy more.
How Human are Salespeople? There is a classic joke that goes like
this, “How can you tell when a salesper- son is lying? His/her lips are moving.” Salespeople have gained one of the most inhuman reputations out there. The barrage of unsolicited phone calls these days continues to erode the rep- utation of the sales profession. One of the Noble Prize Winners of 2018 in Economics did not answer the phone call from the Nobel Committee that called to congratulate him because he thought it was a sales call and did not want to answer it. To some, salespeople are viewed as not just inhuman, but subhuman. To make this worse, most of the sales train- ing that salespeople receive is based on processes that make the whole thing feel “robotic.” So where has the trust and humanity gone? By squeezing salespeo- ple with sky high quotas that force them to do everything under the sun (includ- ing even unethical things) that further erodes their reputation. Wouldn’t it be nice for the entire sales industry to undergo a transformation based on hu-
January-February 2019 • AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING