Have processes started to overtake the need for real human relations?

It is a reality of life that organisations are built from the people within, and indeed from outside the organisation, and that for an organisation to work effectively the ability for those people to communicate effectively is paramount.

However effective communication is built on the ability of people to have good relationships with each other, relationships that acknowledge the differences in opinions, the differences in individual needs and objectives, the different ways people achieve the same goals, the different skills, knowledge, personalities, and then celebrate the differences and build on them to enhance creativity and innovation.

So why do organisations try and reduce the way they want people to be with each other to a documented process?  To encourage sameness, to standardised ways of working, to try and write rules for how people should work together, communicate, share information?  Whilst I acknowledge the need for processes in a business, it is very easy for organisations to try and replace the essential human interaction with rules for being in relation to each other.

Take the typical yearly review.

How often does your yearly review become an exercise in completing the form and ticking the boxes rather than an honest conversation about how to improve, meet the next years objectives, agree development goals.  How often does the focus become ‘completing the process’ rather than genuinely talking about how to work better together, think how to get the best out of each other and actual figure out how best to be in relation to each other?

It seems to me that the processes that have usually been developed to serve the business, and help it improve, often become the way of working not a way of guiding and supporting people being in relation to each other.  If you want to reduce your organisation to a series of processes then also think about the implications of trying to reduce all your people, with all of their vitality, difference, and energy, to a common, homogenous mass.

My belief is that the way to business excellence is to recognise each individual, with their strengths and weaknesses, and treat them as individuals.  Recognise that their motivation, values, beliefs will be different and be in relation to them to figure out how you can get the best from each other.