Say you owned a business that made widgets. In order to produce those widgets you bought a widget-making machine. Pretty smart. Now I’ve got a question for you. Imagine that machine had a knob on it which controlled the quality of your widgets. Turning the knob up or down did not affect your cost. Would you turn the knob down and lower quality?
Of course you wouldn’t. That would be silly. You would want to produce the highest quality widget while holding cost constant. You would want to get the most out of your widget-making machine.
Then why are you treating your people worse than your machine?!
Your people are capable of so much more. They have capabilities that you haven’t tapped. In fact, you are actively thwarting their attempts to give you the very best of what they have to offer. Your processes, your rules, your hierarchy… All of this shuts them down. They yearn to give you so much more. They actually want to give you more money and you are shutting them down!
I know. I don’t understand your business. It’s complicated. Blah blah blah.
No. I do understand your business. It is you that doesn’t understand. Your business is about people. And the laws of human psychology do not cease to exist because your 20 years of climbing the corporate ladder have given you tunnel vision. People want to explore. They want to create. If you help them find the resources and provide them with just enough direction, they will produce magic for you. Not every person. Not every time. But over a large enough group of people and enough time, you will win. And win big.
If you don’t think that business model makes sense, you might want to check out these things called casinos. They mint money.
Bank on the human soul and you will too.
