It's time to reinvent management. You can help.

Humanize the language of business

“The noblest human ideals must become the noblest business ideals.”

The goals of management are usually described using words like “efficiency,” “advantage,” “value,” “superiority,” “focus,” and “differentiation.” Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts. To create organizations that are almost human in their capacity to adapt, innovate, and engage, management pioneers must find ways to infuse even the most mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals and to develop an authentically homegrown vocabulary for communicating their ambitions. How you talk reflects how you think (and how your organization works). If you want to inspire people to extraordinary accomplishment, the language of honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management discourse and action.

32 Stories
87 Hacks
4 Barriers

Humanize the language of business

“The noblest human ideals must become the noblest business ideals.”

The goals of management are usually described using words like “efficiency,” “advantage,” “value,” “superiority,” “focus,” and “differentiation.” Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts. To create organizations that are almost human in their capacity to adapt, innovate, and engage, management pioneers must find ways to infuse even the most mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals and to develop an authentically homegrown vocabulary for communicating their ambitions. How you talk reflects how you think (and how your organization works). If you want to inspire people to extraordinary accomplishment, the language of honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management discourse and action.

Filter By:
42projects is an initiative across several teams at Microsoft to innovate in the way we manage by focusing on building trust, using games to increase productivity, and encouraging grassroots innovatio
Story by Ross Smith on April 11, 2010
 In 2009, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton issued a challenge: Make Citrix a leader of design excellence by transforming the traditional engineering-driven company into one whose very DNA is built on th
Story by Catherine Courage on July 14, 2013
What truly makes teamwork effective? It is about the perspective of the individual member not the managers.
Story by Jim McGriff, Jr. on July 2, 2015
Over-thinking is what I have done as a first line manager for my career. My main concerns were for our customer care, employee understanding, and department effectiveness.
Story by Jim McGriff, Jr. on January 23, 2016
 The first line manager’s responsibility is to keep a positive atmosphere in their work group. There is a saying that people do things for their reasons not yours.
Story by Jim McGriff, Jr. on December 1, 2015

Pages