by Therese Johansson

"You do not own the person, you pay the person for 8 hours per day and you need to work with the free will as the person owns and designs his own life."

I heard myself say this on one occasion in my consulting life and my thoughts began to buzz over what I had just said. What I came to was that the subject is complex and that it requires awareness and development to put together what I said above. At the same time, the person/employee must realize their responsibility in delivering exactly what the company needs delivered in that particular minute, hour, day, week or year. That is the reason why we as people have a job, because as employees we must deliver what the company needs us to deliver.

Take the metaphor of NLC buying an excavator for the company. NLC has absolutely no use for a digger in the company as we work with business, organization and leadership development, which means that the company receives an unnecessary cost that does not generate any income. It is the same with people/employees who do not deliver what the company needs. It becomes an unnecessary cost for the company that does not generate any income, "waste" in LEAN language.

Follow along below as I speculate on how we make 1+1 become 2.

Humans as a resource

What I mean by people owning and designing their own lives is that we as entrepreneurs/managers do not have the right to manipulate or dupe people where we want them to go. With a mature and developed leadership, we need to motivate and respect people in a way so that they want, with their own drive and power, to get where we think is best for them and for the company. This is why I consider practicing leadership to be an art, it is what makes leadership so exciting.

Each person is unique and requires their own handbook for us to understand what drives, develops and motivates them. We can use "evil" methods to dupe people to where we want, but then I can guarantee a bad work environment and that people with highly developed personalities leave the company, which generates that the company only gets "trash". 

The secret is that people should go home after a day's work, feel good with the ones they love and do what makes them recharge their batteries so they come back to work the next day in balance. This, in turn, requires that people feel good in what they do during the day and that they have an awareness of what makes them feel good in their free time.

I believe it is a challenge in today's society because man has lost his naturalness. The basis for naturalness lies in good sleep, good nutritious diet in regular meals, daily exercise/movement of the body, recovery in nature and with good and close relationships, all this in conscious presence, then we give ourselves the conditions to be in balance.

Soft factors lead to hard factors generating profitability.

Reason for having employees

Companies hire people to perform tasks that lead the company to profitability. That's the reason to invest in people or some resources to be super clear. If we have no profitability in the company, we cannot pay salaries. It should be in the interest of all employees that the company makes a profit.

Money rules the company because it is with money that we pay our costs and a big cost for the company is paying out salaries. I get so frustrated at the lack of understanding on the subject that business owners and their managers/leaders are "mean" who fire people or don't hire a certain person. It is nothing personal towards these people (there are exceptions with dysfunctional situations but I am not writing about these today), it is based on the entrepreneur/manager's job description to make the actual decisions that are best for the company's well-being.

The secret is understanding

To bring these two components together requires understanding, acceptance and respect from all sides. People need understanding of what applies in the company, accept what applies and respect what applies. The company needs understanding, acceptance and respect for the person/employee. You can choose to go either way if you want different things, my point again is free will. It is best for both the person/employee and the company to go their separate ways when the mutual lack of understanding, acceptance and respect does not exist.

When likes arise, the magic occurs in the teamwork between the company and the person/employee. Here, the foundation is laid for a good working environment, which is the breeding ground for good profitability. Satisfied employees are the company's best ambassadors to the company's customers, and it is our customers who create the revenue.