Collective Café: People – More than Just a Human Resource

"People who need people / are the luckiest people in the world.” Barbra Streisand.

Last week, I discussed a universally important topic in our daily virtual coffee, the Collective Cafe, which takes place Monday - Friday, 8-9am EST in Discord: People, and what they mean to us.

I began, as many consultants do, with an acronym of my own invention:

COST – Cultural, Organizational, Strategic & Tactical.

This refers to the relative importance of these items in the hierarchy of decision-making. Strategy informs tactics, but it also affects the behaviour of a company on an organizational level, which in turn is affected by, and affects, the culture in which it sits. All these things are interrelated.

You can’t institutionalize at an organizational level, or properly employ people if you don’t have tactics led by strategy. For continuity and consistency you need a corporate culture which infuses everything – like Nestle, Coca-Cola or General Motors. All of the above must be well-defined and consistent.

Thus, ironically, C.O.S.T. creates huge benefits. And ultimately, it all breaks down to one thing: people. Everything from patents, to USPs to values… they all emerge from your employees.

Failure only occurs when individuals get in their own way, preventing success. As an analogy, consider the NY Yankees, who despite spending vast sums of money trying to optimize the team, have not won the World Series since 2009. You can’t simply buy success: it requires chemistry between players, which makes a winning team.

A team of middling individuals who cohere brilliantly as a team will always beat an incoherent group of individuals who are in it only for themselves.

So, what causes people to stymie their own success? The championing of individual glory over team success. In other words, politics. Or more positively, people make the difference between success and failure. Often venture capitalists make this explicit: they finance the entrepreneur, not the idea.

Why are People So Important to a Company’s Success?

Even the most coherent team can be tested, when faced with disruptive reality. A weak company will not survive a recession, whereas one which is striving together, will weather the storm. And people make the difference.

Your most valuable spokespeople are your employees, so empower them, and give them a voice. Developing staff is a win-win situation for both employer and employee. What threaten this process is insecurity. When your people feel ignored or repressed, they will leave, and you’ll lose their talent.

The notion of seniority can be a damaging one. You need to hear the voices of the 20-year-olds in your team at meetings. Encourage employees not to feel insecure, and enable their contributions. The benevolent, generous leader knows when to be quiet, and to listen.

Another way to put this point is that you can judge the strength of a company by how it treats its lowliest junior employee, on whether they can see a route to advancement and success.

The harsh truth is that most start-ups don’t make it beyond the first year. Think of the hottest new thing in Web 3.0 – NFTs. Most of those communities didn’t make it to their second year, because of poor people management.

SMBs attempting to grow need to attend to the C.O.S.T. framework. But they also need to consider how they treat their people, in terms of communication, collaboration, compensation and recognition. The C of C.O.S.T. – culture – is so important. Creating a winning attitude through a culture of collaboration and mutual support.

Leading, Coaching and Parenting: Lead by Example

The cliches of bad parenting are tempting – “do as I tell you.” Or “don’t do as I do, do as I say.” It’s much easier to pull rank rather than lead by example. The same applies to coaching sports teams or leading companies, where it’s tempting to assert authority to make those in your charge do as you’d like.

However, you gain real respect by exhibiting great leadership. By being supportive and encouraging. In parenting, you have to balance criticism with a lot of validation, or the result can be damaging. Experts suggest that for children, the ratio of praise to criticism needs to be roughly five to one.

Interpersonal skills are invaluable for leaders. Don’t tell people you’re smart, be smart. Don’t tell people you’re a good person. Be a good person.

Recent calamities in NFTs and crypto have demonstrated poor leadership. Poor communication, weak leadership and teams that don’t cohere. Founders that jump ship at the slightest sign of a storm ahead.

For leaders, introspection is vital. You can’t be honest with others until you’re honest with yourself. And when, as founder, you have to make a drastic change, it’s time to be honest. Can you adapt to the necessary changes, or is it time to let go? Can you find a place in the new culture? Again, people make all the difference.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb

Listen to the full Collective Café to Go podcast featuring this discussion here. Subscribe to the podcast for FREE. Or join our sessions LIVE Alpha Collective for daily insights and community.