Leadership development for the 21st Century
We’re in the process of changing the way we think about leadership. One key principle of the leadership we’ve moving toward is that people are at the center and should be treated like people.
Frederick Winslow Taylor had a huge impact on the way we think of leadership. He imagined a world of work where people were interchangeable parts. All you had to do was train the person to do the job and plug him or her into the workflow.
That worked when the work was routine and repetitive. But today’s work is anything but routine and repetitive and tomorrow’s will be less so. Peter Drucker’s famous term “knowledge worker†only begins to capture the challenge.
Work that knowledge workers used to do is increasingly being done by software. Robots increasingly make physical things. More and more leaders expect people to strike out boldly, take initiative, and innovate. People will do that, but not if you treat them like parts or “human resources.â€
If we’re really are going to have leadership for the 21st Century, we’ll have to call Human Resources something else. You may not think it matters much, but what we call things makes a difference.
Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by another name might smell as sweet, but if the name is “stink bush†we’re not likely to lean in and breathe deeply. Would we crave beef as much if we called it “cowmeat?â€
Leadership development develops people who lead people
We don’t develop leaders to lead “human resources.†“Human capital†is a term only an accountant could love. So let’s call the department where leadership development resides something else.
What would you call HR?
