Having a job - and with that feeding a family - no longer has the intrinsic value it used to have in our society. Being employed is not something people necessarily take pride in anymore. The times that people got a job and stuck to it for the rest of their lives are also over.
Small or large, the success of a company - and even its sustainability - is primarily determined by the quality of the work done by its people and their ability to rise to challenges. To succeed, companies need their people to do their very best. In the current economy people coming in 'just to do their job' is simply not good enough.
To do their very best is something people need to choose for and that - like any other choice - is based on reasons: emotional or rational, conscious or not. In the past, 'belonging to' was a very powerful motivator; being part of the work force, a company, a union, a guild etc. was reason enough to take pride in a job well done. With the embedding of individuality into the social paradigms and the decline of the sense of community 'what is in it for me?' has become the major consideration, with financial and career incentives as prime motivators. Current trends in society and in social thinking have created a climate in which those incentives alone are not enough any more.
It is then no wonder that companies are facing a deep motivational crisis – just as society as a whole does. How deep the issue runs in today’s corporate world becomes blatantly obvious when looking at the hundreds of books and thousands of ‘experts’ and specialists dealing with the subject. How crucial the question of motivation is to companies is evident from the staggering amounts of money, time and energy invested in those experts and their programs.
Without going into all the long stories, deliberations and theories, what it boils down to is that the difference between being highly motivated and not really, is basically determined by how much people personally care for their work; not from a financial or career-management perspective, but from a very personal care for and involvement with what they are doing. It is the personal caring and deep involvement that motivates people to do their very best. Without that it is just another job and that – as said before – is not motivation enough.
In fact, what companies need are people who care for and are involved in their work with their hearts and souls. That level of involvement and caring is therefore the core issue and determiner of corporate sustainable success in today’s world. People engaged with heart and soul are the most valuable asset any company can have.
Many companies are aware of this and are therefore integrating so called ‘human-oriented thinking’ into their corporate strategy; some even realise that appreciating people as the asset they are goes much further than being "nice" to them as a motivational incentive; it adheres to a scientific understanding of businesses as complex adaptive systems. But even companies with human-oriented thinking have difficulties shifting from seeing their people as resources (and defining their people from within their business strategies) to valuing them as assets (and therefore defining their business around their people strategy).
The essential difference between assets and resources is that resources have no value outside the (business) process they are used in, whereas assets have an intrinsic value not necessarily related to that process. A resource is managed (maintained, developed, invested in) in order to be used. An asset is managed in order to increase its intrinsic and potential value. Investments in people from a resource-management orientation, however big, extensive and well-meant, will never tap into their true intrinsic and potential value. Any investment aimed at enabling people to work better, rather than supporting them in becoming better will not touch the hearts and souls companies so desperately need to engage.
Managed as resources people do what resources do: they become depleted or absent – they burn out or move to another company (unlike other resources, humans do have a will of their own). Managed as assets they flourish, growing in value for themselves and from there – engaged in heart and soul – add value to the companies (and all other communities) they are part of.
The first step in developing any asset is to recognise and comprehend what constitutes its true value and potential. To keep its sustainability, therefore, the corporate world needs to recognise and understand what makes us humans tick. Any company wanting to engage the hearts and souls of its people must grasp the true nature and workings of both heart and soul and then align itself and its strategies accordingly.
Personal caring and deep involvement spring from two sources: how we as humans think and feel (heart engaged) and who we are as humans beyond our personal emotions, thoughts and belief systems (soul engaged).
The level of the heart has been extensively researched within the corporate world context over the last 25 years. The importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) for bottom-line business results is gradually gaining a wider recognition. This "science of the heart" is being embraced by leading companies in the corporate world to such an extent that they deem the application of it beneficial enough to invest fortunes in emotional intelligence training for their (future) executives. The next step to be taken by the corporate world is to implement the "science of the heart" as a company-wide, core strategy for their human asset development.
When we talk about "soul" or "human spirit" we relate to something that goes beyond rational thinking (IQ) and even beyond emotional intelligence and belief systems (EQ). We relate to that intelligence that searches for and gives meaning, that occupies itself with vision, ethics and values, and that makes us uniquely and typically human. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) has only recently begun to gain recognition in the Western world, based on scientific findings about the workings of the human brain and consciousness. The corporate world (and society in general) will have to become adept in the "science of the soul" to gain the understanding and capacities necessary to fully support the development of its human assets.
