The Human Side of Enterprise
Responsibility and Caring as the New Roles of Corporations
By D. Trinidad Hunt

People: a commodity that remains constant regardless of the economic tides. Without people, any business, especially small business, will cease to exist. However, we are not only talking about customers. Employees want and need to be treated with the same respect they have been instructed to pass on to their valued customers. People are no longer willing to be managed as part of the machinery of business. Anew cry echoes on an old familiar frontier: People count! There are no organizations without people!

Employees seek motivation in their work and teamwork. Employees seek ownership, taking pride in their product as we]] as their place of employment. Employees seek empowerment.

Everything is Changing
Today, there is a high premium placed on a person's ability to adapt, innovate, grow, and change. With the Industrial Age behind us and the Information Age well underway, we have found that our focus has shifted from moving mass to moving information. Where once the U.S. Steel Corporation was the giant of the Western world, today the microchip industry, the mass market for information management, has become the focus of a new generation.
Course curriculums in universities across the nation and the world reflect this new interest in information exchange. Entire departments have been established to study communication at the personal, business, and community levels, as well as at the national and international levels. Simultaneously, the old-world order based on personal agendas and control is collapsing on every front.

Families are going through renewal, organizations are restructuring, and countries that were once diametrically opposed are now communicating with one another. Throughout the world people and relationships are emerging in a new way. A wave of transformation has begun.

For the first time in written history we are standing at the threshold of opportunity, viewing a new horizon of stunning potential and breathtaking possibility. Behind us, the limited scope of the past, before us, the unexplored possibility available in human experience. The horizon is as compelling as it is provocative in nature, for it holds an opportunity to make a quantum leap into a totally new way of being. We are standing in the face of a very real question, "What does it really mean to be a human being?", not as an extrapolation from the past, but as a possibility for the future: a possibility for empowerment.

The New Workplace
The workplace has become an experimental laboratory, the crucible within which the possibilities of our humanity are being explored and tested. The transformation is exhilarating, if not somewhat heady, in that all of the features of the old paradigm have been totally dislocated in time and space. It's as if we turned the old model inside out and upside down - managers are no longer at the top of the organizational pyramid-and then we refracted the timeline by stretching the hourglass out to the lines of infinity. For transformation is seen as an ongoing, endless, dynamic process which is never complete.

The workplace has become an experimental laboratory, the crucible within which the possibilities of our humanity are being explored and tested.

In this blueprint for change, people and organizations are becoming the new domain of possibility for human development, creativity, and the exploration of human interdependence. Within the world of work, the alchemical combination for the full potentializing of the human being seems to lie in the process of discovering our purpose and then realizing that purpose and vision together, as a team.

This new wind blowing across the landscape of business brings with it a powerful axiom. That which is unconscious runs our behavior. However, once the unconscious is made conscious, it can become a source for inspiration and growth. Man is the only creature we know of who can not only learn from his mistakes, but can also turn those mistakes into the fuel needed to bring about a quantum behavioral shift.

In the physical universe, change is a constant. The ocean of life is always in motion, and if we don't direct change, change will surely direct us.

Awareness & Vision
Attention is all there is, and attention has shifted within the organization. The two primary focal points at the heart of new awareness in American enterprise are: a belief in the inherent worth of all human begins and a recognition of the inter-dependence of everyone, both the customers and the team that serves them.

Organizations everywhere are starting to give birth to a truly self-actualizing spirit, a spirit that is inclusive rather than exclusive in nature. Everyone has a part to play, and every person's unique qualities are necessary to create the much-desired smooth-running organizational engine.

On this path of transformation, vision gives birth to our mission. Mission takes the vision out of the thinking or dreaming stage into the action or activity stage. Whether a vision be personal, organizational, or national in scope, it has the power to uplift and protect us from the bumps and stuff of daily living. It is a tremendous motivator, having the capacity and power to bring an individual or group of people to a place they've never been. It makes tasks bearable, persistence easier, and gives a sense of exhilaration to the work at hand.

It's been less than a decade since this transformation began. It began as a whisper in the back courts of business and slowly roses to a heightened pitch of dissatisfaction and malcontent at every level within the organization. Tell-tale signs appeared on the business horizon: employees were no longer willing to work for paychecks alone, and more and more employees were demanding meaning and satisfaction from their work. Meanwhile, other visible signs of unrest were becoming increasingly evident within the organization, stress was on the rise, and individual personal health was suffering. As absentee rates soared in thousands of businesses across the nation, the experts began to realize that the pulse of American business was shaky, at best.

Questions, Questions
Questions echoing in the halls of American business, in the late 70s and early 80s, rang in the same tone whether in large or small enterprise, whether in huge corporate structures or at "Mom and Pop" corner stores: "Why don't employees take directions well anymore? What is the source of the decline in productivity? How do we motivate people?"

Suddenly consultants became students of excellence, exploring possible new ways for the future of American business. The challenge of change was stimulating. Men and women everywhere began asking new and refreshing questions, questions that dug beneath the surface soil, and tugged at the roots of American enterprise. Why were organizations created in the first place? What was their original purpose? Why were they here? And they began awakening to some simple discoveries, discoveries which said that, in concept, at least, organizations and businesses were created to meet the needs of individuals.

Free enterprise was created to serve free individuals. Yet somehow, while we were busy taking care of the daily activities, caught in the mundane habits of action and second and third level goals, the direction of destiny shifted, and man had become a slave, trapped by the very thing he had created to serve him.

Turning the Tide
Breakdown comes before breakthrough, and in hundreds of organizations across the nation1 the collapse was imminent, the catharsis had begun. In one small organizational corner after another, individuals re-entered the "womb" of training, seeking in innovative ways, the metamorphoses needed to bring about a rebirth of hope and wonder at the level or organization.

The entire staff must be educated in both behavioral and technical skills that promote and reinforce the new methods of human interaction inherent to the new paradigm.

Once it began, it moved rapidly, possibly not from our vantage point, (if you're the one giving birth, the labor often seems painstakingly long) but from a historical stand-point, viewing it in the light of the last one hundred years. Its birth is taking place in the fusion of technology and wisdom: high tech merged with high touch.

Humanity has begun to come home to itself; we discovered that we were our own worst enemy, and now we must become our own best friend! Thus, the long awaited time has arrived, and it has arrived not only in the hearts and minds of our spiritual visionaries, but right smack in the middle of the American dream, in the heart of American business.

At the heart of the new model rests possibility in its most awesome context. The basic tenets that support this new model are the principles of equality, inclusiveness, unity, and a commitment to a win-win philosophy. We are shifting our vantage point from that of the individual to that of the group, from I to We.

The "New Paradigm," as we call it, embodies a whole new set of operating principles. Because of this, it {demands new supporting behavioral skills. A metaphorical example of this concept of new skills that are necessary to sustain this new model is the difference between the Lone Ranger approach of the past, and the Ninja-Turtle Team approach today. A new generation is being born and it is affecting every aspect of __________

Organization Paradigm Shift

The model establishes the conceptual framework for the transformation that has been occurring in business over the last decade. Individuals will move toward the new paradigm at different times, moving through the barrier of their own attitudes and beliefs that have been steeped in the old mode. In other words, some individuals, deeply entrenched in the ways of the traditional paradigm, take longer to adapt to the new ways. Others, not so deeply inculcated in the traditional methods, find that they are able to move through their attitudinal barriers more rapidly.

We are talking about the "human side of enterprise." At the organizational level, the entire staff must he educated in both behavioral and technical skills that promote and reinforce the new methods of human interaction inherent to the new paradigm.

The Learning Environment is an internal model for the work environment. This model is both integral and central to the discussion of the human side of enterprise. With human beings and human relatedness as dominant themes in the new domain of business, such things as trust, empowerment and support environment. Training programs now focus on skills that are necessary to develop responsible, accountable, and highly creative teams able to respond to external challenges of a dynamic and ever changing ness environment.

There is one simple universal law needed to precipitate any organizational change: Attention = Energy. Where we put our attention is where we will obtain results. The question then for every leader is, where is my attention now and is what I am doing to move me toward my organizational vision?

Businesses are now facing the challenge of change in new and innovative ways, and at the center of this radical transformation lies a land of new possibility. In short, an exciting new generation is developing in American business, a generation that is rapidly becoming the spawning ground for possibilities not yet dreamed of in human enterprise and in human relationships.

D. Trinidad Hunt is dedicated to assisting others in achieving their maximum learning potential in life's laboratory. This author and active public speaker offers organizational trainings for the 21st century through her company Elan Enterprises. She can be reached at 47-430 Hui Nene St., Kaneohe, Hawaii 96744, 808/239-4431, Fax 808/239-2482.