Hack:
Unleash Human Capability – Remove Management Power and Control by Implementing Authentic Trust Based Model

The Problem

According to (Stephen R. Covey, 2004), one simple overarching reason why so many people remain unsatisfied in their work and why most organisations fail to draw out the greatest talent, ingenuity and creativity of their people and never become truly great, enduring organisations, stems from an incomplete paradigm of who we are – our fundamental view of human nature.. The failure to recognise the four dimension of life; Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit. These four human elements also represent the four basic needs and motivations of all people. As these four elements are neglected, people have choices and will make these choices accordingly. The fundamental reality according to (Stephen R. Covey, 2004) people are being treated as a ‘thing’. And with this ‘thing’, management resort to power and control (carrot-and-stick approach) to manage and motivate. Cultures of fear and mistrust are well imbedded in the domain of organisational behaviour and systems for centuries with full awareness of those very souls that were put there to keep it out. Although not always intended, Managers often resort to this culture as means of exercising power and control, while others in frustration take desperate measures resulted in short term reactionary solutions with high risk failures. Attempts to address problems of fear and mistrust only scrape at the surface while the underlying core issues permeates deeper and ferociously to every layer of the organisation condemning it to a slow but certain death. The paralysis state of these organisations rendered them incapable to cope with the speed of environmental and global changes, and in many cases survived only for as long as there is demand for the inventories. Power and control is now amok as the only solution known to managers. Despite genuine effort by a few decent managers for management intervention, failure is inevitable as systems become paralyse so the next best option is to abandon ship.

The underlying problem is pointed to a very basic error in how organisations view human engagement and the nature of relationship required for this engagement. As (Stephen R. Covey, 2004) argued, while it is important for organisations to identify profit sustainability as a primary focus, profit alone is incongruence with trust concept because such concept requires adoption of the whole person paradigm approach. Organisations abandoned all efforts to nurture this human element in pursuit of profit sustainability, and the consequence is total collapse in integrity values and trustworthiness principles. Moral values take a beating as managers adopt intimidating tactics to curb the spread of the problem. That while the structure maybe of sound and robust physically therefore appear healthy, there is an underlying deep internal problem of mistrust and deceit. The emotional impact starts to affect social capital and both physiological and psychological effects emerge to the surface with the most destructive force that no organisation can escape.