Human Potential: A Playbook for the Next Century
What if it is time to reexamine what work is for — what the worker is for?
“We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?” — Dorothy Sayers, Why Work?
By Shannon Mullen O’Keefe
Work, as we know it, is changing before our eyes. This isn’t new, rather, how we work is perpetually under scrutiny. Since long before the machine swallowed the comic actor Charlie Chaplin, we’ve been trying to improve our work lives.
Nowadays the likes of Charlie Chaplin won’t need to worry about getting swallowed by the cogs of a machine on an assembly line though. Soon the machine might do the work for Charlie, so he can head home.
This imagined future in which robots, or some other form of technology, take over work has been out there for a long time, even the cartoonists have portrayed it.
If automation replaces work, maybe we’ll just need a CEO assigned to the enterprise — they can be “the human in the loop,” leading the artificial workforce.
The rest of us can do something else.
What else will that something be, though?
We are working for some reason, aren’t we?
What is work for, anyway? What is the worker for?
It might not be all bad to move the worker out of the picture. To get rid of work altogether.
Things in the workplace could be better. The latest engagement data says that employee engagement has stagnated in the U.S., for example. And this is after a lot of years of trying to engage ourselves. Some are doing it well, but a majority still haven’t figured that one out.
What are we missing?
If we want to salvage work and make it better, maybe we just need another technology interface. Something like the SmartCap. It is a wearable device created for truck drivers to alert them to fatigue — that they may need to rest. Maybe it’s not driverless trucks we need, but just drivers wearing SmartCap devices.
Maybe that will make work better (at least for truck drivers).
As HBR points out, that technology already has another purpose though. It may track our brain waves to alert us (and our managers) to our need to take a break — or to meditate. They suggest this may help ease burnout.
While the device will monitor our brainwaves for sleepiness — it will probably also notice when we’re — off task; like Charlie Chaplin was. Distracted and then the assembly line mechanism swallowed him and he found himself caught up in the cogs of the machine until his colleague rescued him.
But it might also identify ‘slackers’ (like The Artist Formerly Known as Prince in his song, Raspberry Beret, when he admits in the lyrics of the song to “doing ‘something close to nothing,’ at work.) That SmartCap device might identify fatigue— to help prevent worker burnout — but it probably won’t overlook downtime! That will enable managers to move slackers like The Artist Formerly Known as Prince out (the door) quickly. (Why was he slacking by the way — was he not inspired?)
And soon it will help with the efficiency of work too. If we don’t replace workers with robots, then at least we can monitor brain waves to ensure productivity stays at peak levels.
And then we can stay in the cycle of work that has inspired songs like “Manic Monday.” The artist in that song wakes up from a dream and realizes it is Monday and wishes it was Sunday again, so she wouldn’t have to worry about getting to work on time. (Her workplace sounds energizing.)
So, should we just throw in the proverbial towel? Move the humans out. Streamline everything? Quit work altogether? That is where this essay started.
No. We shouldn’t. Here’s why:
I’m going to try a new theory here about work.
It goes like this: We’re getting the purpose of why we work wrong.
Maybe work isn’t about the enterprise. Maybe a worker isn’t a means to an end.
That means SmartCaps or other technology devices — even Artificial Intelligence (AI) aren’t likely to help. At least until we reimagine what work is for.
Until we answer those questions, I posed earlier about work.
What are we are working for? What is the worker for?
Enter a reimagination of what work is for
Let’s consider these questions about the purpose of work that might help to invite a different perspective:
What if the purpose of work isn’t only to get a job done for a company?
What if the purpose of work isn’t mostly to bring home a paycheck?
What if, rather, the purpose of work is primarily to express our innate human capabilities while we’re alive?
What if work really is “love made visible” as Kahlil Gibran the poet wrote in his poem, The Prophet?
What if the purpose of the enterprise— isn’t shareholder value — but, rather, that it might be one vessel — among others; to channel human potential so that it might flourish?
What if the purpose of work is to get the human being done?
These questions invite an idea that is rooted in the belief that each individual is unique and has something unique to offer the world. It links to the concept of vocation — a strong feeling of suitability for a particular trade or occupation. That a human is like a puzzle piece in a larger rather profound puzzle of life and that what human beings do matters, no matter what they are most capable of doing.
Beings matter. Being matters.
This isn’t my idea, obviously.
Variants of this idea that work is meant to “get people done,” (and not the other way around) have been floating around in some religious traditions and in human management circles for a long time. Getting people done sounds rather crass, actually. Like the purpose of work is to put people on a barbeque and to roast them or something.
But that isn’t it at all. It’s something more profound, this idea of imagining that the most important output of an enterprise–or any workplace for that matter — or our lives — might be to fully engage the potential that lives within each human being.
That work itself might be among the best ways for humans to “apprentice [themselves] to the complex poetry of the human endeavor.”
That rather than aiming to get ‘something close to nothing done,’ or dreading ‘manic Mondays’ that when humans leave the office, or the shop, or the kitchen, every day, when they turn off their laptop, swipe their badge, power down the PowerPoint, hang up their muddy boots, wipe down the greasy floor, put a lid on the pot of soup, that they feel like they have lived out their potential — no matter what their work is.
What would that world look like? A world in which every person was incentivized to live out their potential?
This would mean that all along the way, as a society, we’d look directly into the eyes of each person and ask questions like these:
Who are you? What do you bring? In what work will you flourish?
We wouldn’t stop there, though. We’d make sure that there were paths and avenues and education and incentives to align with our care for each person and their development.
Dorothy Sayers, English writer, poet, playwright, and essayist, writes about this concept in her essay, “Why Work.” She wrote this essay in 1942. The ideas within the essay are well worth considering.
She begins her thesis by examining how the purpose of work seems to change in a time of war. Suddenly, she proposes, the work getting done isn’t any more about goods to be made for consumption, but the stuff of war. Arms, for example. When this happens, she says, the purpose to produce is no longer consumption, but a public need — defense.
The purpose becomes about an aligned human aim (no matter how sad the aim).
She wonders why this is the case only in times of war. Why is it we focus our work on the overall public good — on public works — on (all of) us — only when we feel we need to defend ourselves?
She doesn’t stop there, though. She asks:
“We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?”
If some of you think that by answering Sayers’ questions, this would mean a radical reevaluation of how we view work entirely.
You’re right.
She flips the script on the purpose of work. She says:
“…work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction…”
Whoa.
That’s a big shift. Work as the place to find spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction?
Right now, remember, we’re aiming at things like productivity, shareholder value, and efficiency in our workplaces. The bottom line is that we’re managing to the bottom line.
And we’re excited about how new technologies like the SmartCap and AI might help us manage our workplaces more efficiently.
Were we to imagine that the human and their connection to a sort of work that might inspire them to live out their human promise every day were to matter the most? Well, that shifts a lot.
Sayers admits to not being an economist, but she takes a stab at what a reimagination of this might look like:
“There is, for instance, the question of profits and remuneration. We have all got it fixed in our heads that the proper end of work is to be paid for — to produce a return in profits or payment to the worker which fully or more than compensates the effort he puts into it. But if our proposition is true, this does not follow at all. So long as Society provides the worker with a sufficient return in real wealth to enable him to carry on the work properly, then he has his reward. For his work is the measure of his life, and his satisfaction is found in the fulfillment of his own nature, and in contemplation of the perfection of his work.”
So, our structures and incentives may need to change in a world that values human potential and each person’s development over everything else.
A new paradigm for work
What might change?
Hiring decisions might become about whether a company can offer what the worker needs to grow within their portfolio of service offerings — not what the job is to be done.
Career ladders would cease to exist, I imagine. Or there might be specialized pockets where they serve a purpose. Rather, the rigid rungs would fall by the wayside and a spider’s web might better describe how humans could approach their career development. Imagine a web-like structure that would cross industries and sectors and enabling people to move horizontally or vertically in their career development alongside their potential, with the flexibility that a web crafted in silk enables.
Some bouncing and stretching as they seek the place to fulfill their own potential. (And a long silk thread to catch and prevent a treacherous fall every now and again.)
Structures of development might take precedent in societies, perhaps with education and training of all sorts standing out amongst other fields. So, maybe our developmental framework might instead look like an Aspen tree forest, with green tree growth and bright limbs sprouting from patches that are interconnected through a root system that ensures each tree (enterprise) stays connected to the rest. The pathway for workers and their potential following the path of water in a root system — until they find the tree in which they will sprout.
Web or roots —the system ensures sufficient return in real wealth no matter the direction or turn for the worker.
This shifts everything, doesn’t it?
Sayers’ vision is that workers might use their gifts and their talents to pursue a trade or a profession that might enable them to express themselves as an artist might do.
And the important outcome becomes, as Sayers points out, the worth of their work.
Is the work well done? Is the human fulfilled in doing the work?
This is a good thing for companies needing workers as this sort of system, well implemented, will serve up those people whose interests and abilities serve the work. And if the work doesn’t fulfill the potential of anyone…
That’s a problem.
Maybe that’s where the robots can step in.
This does indeed put a radically different spin on how we might think about emerging technologies, too. Rather than aim them at the potential for the corporation, the efficiency of the work process or the business, their purpose becomes enabling and augmenting human worth and human value. This idea wouldn’t seem to prevent technological innovation or progress, but it would seem to invite a pivot into a more specific purpose for and use of technology.
That means keeping our human interests at the center and at the edge of everything we invent.
The good news is that this is our choice.
We can create the work worlds we want to inhabit.
And the world we want to inhabit.
Maybe the purpose of work is our ability to live out our potential.
Maybe work is our purpose.
What is work for, anyway?
The worker.
What is the worker for?
Work that fulfills her potential.
PS. There may be a limit on many resources, but potential isn’t one of them. We won’t come up short on human potential. What if we were to realize all of that potential? Imagine the ROI on that.
Shannon Mullen O’Keefe is curator for The Museum of Ideas, a project that invites leaders, thinkers and everyday experts to express the ideas that will shape our better future. She is also a thinker, advisor, strategist, and writer, dedicated to imagining what we can build and achieve together. She is a founding member of QCollective and co-author of a new book 10 Moral Questions: How to design tech and AI responsibly. She practiced the art of leadership for close to three decades, leading workplace engagement and culture change initiatives. She has served in leadership and executive roles in a global professional services firm and in a nature-based nonprofit organization. Find her leadership thinking on linkedin.
