Leverage and people

In organisations dealing with the people is always about dealing with all that is not secure! With all that is ambivalent and difficult to quantify– leadership, culture, values, management, motivation and morale, attitude, training and development, performance and so on. And the thing about these elements is that they are highly ambiguous. What is it about people that makes them so intractable?

If we think about it, it is because life is really like that. To live is always to be aware of inherent difficulties (including death) whereas human civilisation and mankind's intellect tends to want to mask over that with its certainties and constructions. Thus, profoundly, in dealing with the people aspect management is never enough: leadership is required with all that that entails Leaders – real leaders – are the only ones who can create 'leverage'.

What do I mean by 'leverage'. First, let me say that we need to be clear about the tricky nature of language itself – when we say people are an 'asset' we are of course speaking metaphorically – we are saying they are 'like' an asset in some important sense; but with all metaphors nothing can be pressed too far. To say people ARE an asset isto practice a fundamental literalism that will lead us astray – and has led bad leaders astray: assets can be wasted, so 'waste 'em'!

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the real point about leverage is, I think, to understand the essential benefit point between leaders and the staff. And this point can be summed up in one word: performance. It is vitally important to the organisation that people perform, but it is equally vital to individuals that they perform because their own self-esteem is correlated to performance; and whether they are aware of it or not, the strange fact is – every single human being is consciously or subconsciously making an assessment on every other one every moment of the day as we interact. If the post doesn't arrive – we're not happy – if the waiter doesn't attend our table, swiftly and respectfully, we don't rate that restaurant – if our partner doesn't demonstrate love sufficiently we start thinking about someone who will – AND, so it goes on. Thus it is – every one of us needs to feel we perform: at work, in relationships, and in our own internal being. This performing creates value that leads to even higher levels of achievement, and degrees of life satisfaction.

So, to leverage staff, to return to the business, is about enabling them to perform at a high level whereby they achieve objectives whilst simultaneously building up their own self-worth and self-satisfaction. This kind of leverage enables the Pareto Principle to work: when this level of performance kicks in, the organisation experiences a productivity from an individual which is four times higher than the average, and sixteen times more than the lowest performers. Quite frankly, it is absolutely worth the investment in time, money and effort to leverage staff – and to do this by investing in leadership, real leadership.