Leadership · 4 min
Resource or whole being? Two views of humans in a scale-up
Most companies have inherited a view of humans they never chose. Here are the two, set side by side.
If you want to build a company better aligned with how humans actually work, it starts by making clear what it means to be human. Not as values on a wall, but as the assumptions your systems rest on: how you hire, measure, hold meetings, give time off, talk about mistakes.
There have been a lot of misconceptions about what drives humans. Science has helped us redefine and update them. Management practice typically trails a couple of decades behind.
The table
Read each line and notice which side your company actually operates from — not which side sounds better.
- People are referred to as employees, staff, resources — or as whole beings.
- People are not self-motivated and need controlling — or self-driven, trustworthy, and want to do the right thing.
- People are rational creatures — or psychological creatures.
- Motivation comes from salary, bonus, competition, promotion — or from care, autonomy, meaning, connection and purpose.
- Emotions can be kept outside work — or should be understood and made welcome.
- Performance happens under control and close oversight — or when people are given trust, autonomy and clear containers.
- Energy develops linearly — or in pulses.
- People recharge on holiday — or in breaks and downtime.
- Breaks and downtime are wasted time — or productive time.
- Growth is career advancement — or personal development.
- People should not make mistakes — or should be encouraged to fail.
Why it matters to you
This is not a moral exercise. It is an operational one. If your organisation assumes linear energy, it plans around a human who does not exist — and then fluctuation becomes a discipline problem instead of a planning condition. If it assumes breaks are wasted time, it pays for exhaustion with one hand and asks for creativity with the other.
And there is an uncomfortable detail: the view of humans you run on yourself is typically the one you run on your people. If you push yourself like a factory floor, the organisation does too, whatever the onboarding says.
Try this
Answer the eleven lines for your own company. Then ask three of your people to answer the same ones. The gap between your answers and theirs is your real view of humans — not the one you hope for.
Then take the single line where the gap was widest, and make one concrete change for a month. That is enough to begin. I would like to hear what happened.