BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

The Essential Human Resources Problem To Be Solved

Forbes Human Resources Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Pravir Malik

In the past decade, the question of human resources relevancy has forcefully come to the surface. It has been proposed that HR needs to have a seat at the table, needs to become aware of business, needs to speak in the language of business. But in my view, this is missing the point and building unnecessary complexity where simplicity should exist. It would be much more valuable for HR to speak in the language of humans and human potential, and in doing so remind businesses, leaders and organizations in general of what it means to be human — and how this needs to be factored in to manage business context and possibility.

Reigniting The Living Dialogue

It has been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and that if you look into the eyes of a child you will see a spark there. This spark is an original and natural curiosity and wonder for everything around. It is this wonder that fuels a spontaneous dialogue with life and a trust in its goodness. In that dialogue, qualities such as joy, creativity, humility among many others come forward and are nurtured by life.

But then as the child gets older, very often that spark is subdued, and something else begins to appear in the eyes. This may be the result of the many things the child is told they are doing wrong. It may be the result of scolding or of fear, or just a compensation to please those around it. Often the child gets exposed to a thousand rules — from teachers, from parents, from older children — and pretty soon all that natural wonder has receded into the background and the beautiful instincts that can make all the difference have been lost.

In addition, natural instincts are gradually replaced by programmed behaviors. We learn to like things and do things that are out of sync with that natural dialogue with life. In life, there is a huge amount of diversity and uniqueness; no two things are alike. In nature, uniqueness is allowed to flourish; there is a natural and deep interaction as collectivities develop together in complex ecosystems. There is a notion of be and let others be. But among humanity, such natural laws get replaced by a plethora of rules so that we learn to only see the world around us through our own filters, instead of what the world is really offering. We interpret, judge, behave based on a narrow point of view, where the wonder that existed as a child is often no longer there.

It is then that 18th century political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s insight into humans being born free and yet everywhere being in chains becomes true. And with the advent of technology and the ubiquity of AI-enabled devices, the chains, though more subtle, become even more binding.

This is at the base of the essential human resources problem to be solved: to bring back that natural wonder, and to coax that spark to reappear in the eyes of an adult. For if this were to happen, the living dialogue would begin again, as everything would be seen again with freshness and joy.

Managing Complexity Of Human Beings

But dealing with humans is fundamentally hard. Each person is different and can be open to an entirely different set of informing forces and assumptions. People see differently. They learn differently. They experience life differently and want different things. People have preferences in whom they associate with, and have different expectations of what success is, what failure is and what they want from their own lives.

People often make assumptions, which they may not always be aware of until that assumption is challenged in some way. People have fundamentally different ways of processing the world that can be mutually exclusive and range from having urges and desires, feeling a variety of emotions and having different kinds of thoughts. For some people, urges and desires are most important. For some people, avoiding negative feelings is most important. And some people thrive on having a particular type of thought. All the complexity of all of life lives within the range of the human species.

To therefore imagine that there is one way of addressing a problem, or one way in which a person may get motivated, or one way to get a person to act, is shortsighted. Yet this is often how we expect to get things done in organizations.

So, rather than deal with this incredible complexity, it appears to be way easier to avoid the issue altogether and to begin to rely more on “objective” data and algorithms instead. Rather than create a solution to administer to the complexities of humans and the possible variation in response to the same signal, human solutions, human development and human culture can often easily be side-tracked by focusing on data and algorithms instead, often by offshoring to some third party data-processing company elsewhere.

We must look at HR from first principles and know how to solve complex organizational problems. What I propose is simply a remembrance, or a resetting of what human resources should be about. This will also confer HR with power, and business with a much-needed navigational system that will create enduring sustainability at multiple levels: those of humans, the organization and our world.

Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?