Beyond the Transaction: Design Meaning into Work
Despite all the talk of machines and AI, at the core of the disruption that we are experiencing is: ourselves.
What kind of resource will humans be in the future? The answer lies in understanding the human and then designing work to be responsive to, and empowering of their story. It starts by identifying the intrinsic motivations of employees: their aspirations and anxieties, sources of energy, creativity, purpose and meaning.
How companies answer this question will have implications for recruiting, retention, employee engagement, productivity, and ultimately, long-run performance.
In the post-industrial age, the role of the human in work is shifting. Automation and AI (A+AI) are taking over manual labor in the field, in the factory, and even in the office. We are already seeing how A+AI will drive operational productivity beyond the frontier of human capabilities, deliverying short-term profits well-above what could have been imagined just a generation ago. The financial incentives of automation are huge - there is no going back.
The strategic question at the heart of every company facing this shift is: How will we stay differentiated in a world that is increasingly automated?
Continuous innovation, adaptive and nimble organization, and a sophisticated customer experience will be the driving factors of differentiation. These higher-order activities are based on talent, creativity and social interaction (or engagement) – they are all inherently human characteristics.
Labour: the ‘in-human’ resource
Historically, businesses have classified humans as ‘labor’ – a linear unit of production, measured by time and unit output. We labored in the fields, we labored in the factories, we labored in the office. For management, labor was seen as a resource to manage for maximum productivity – often at the expense of the physical and emotional well-being of the worker. Labor, by definition, was expected to be physically exhausting and mentally stressful. In labor-intensive business models, human characteristics were downplayed, or even discouraged.
The relationship was purely transactional. From the company’s perspective, it tried to maximize its profits by maximizing the per unit output it could squeeze from every worker. From the worker’s perspective, it tried to be compensated as much as possible, for as little work as necessary. In both cases, the terms of the contract were defined by purely extrinsic motivations, rewards and recognition: compensation, benefits, stature.
From farms to factories to office parks, in all but a few professions (artists, composers, writers some of the notable exceptions), this transactional relationship between worker and company has been the foundation of how we have thought about our work and how we have designed our teams, our workplaces, our organizations.
Labor is dying. Long-live the creative, social, purposeful human
Human talent is now at the center of corporate strategy and is triggering a shift in how we think about the future of work. If human talent, creativity and engagement will be differentiating factors of innovation and competitiveness, how can a company recruit the right talent and fully harness that talent’s creativity and engagement?
The answer lies in understanding the human and then designing work to be responsive to, and empowering of their story. It starts by identifying the intrinsic motivations of employees: their aspirations and anxieties, sources of energy, creativity, purpose and meaning. These insights become the foundation for a different type of relationship between worker, the company, and society – one based on wellness, inclusion, connection, and meaning.
Design beyond the transaction
Insights about the human at work enable organizations to breakthrough the old assumptions and constraints of labor.
In the old labor model, the terms of the contract were soley based on extrinsic motivation and the levers for enhancing that relationship: compensation, ease and comfort.
However, in the new model, where value lies in the human elements of creativity, empathy, and purpose the terms of the relationship must go beyond the transaction of labor and design for meaning:
How do we design for purpose and better align the employee’s intrinsic motivations with the purpose of the work?
How do we design for an inclusive organization that aligns the values and traits of the organization with that of the employee?
How do we unlock creativity in employees and teams by designing spaces and situations around their creative canvas(es)?
How do we foster energizing physical and emotional environments by designing spaces and interactions in more joyful ways?
How do we foster connectedness and shared purpose by creating opportunities for employees to meaningfully contribute on issues that they care most about outside their job descriptions?
These questions bring us to a very different set of organizational design solutions for employee motivation:
Despite all the talk of machines and AI, at the core of the disruption that we are experiencing is: ourselves.
What kind of resource will humans be in the future? How companies answer this question will have implications for recruiting, retention, employee engagement, productivity, and ultimately, long-run performance.
Justin Stokes is an advisor and coach to corporate executives, government leaders and social entrepreneurs. His expertise integrates Corporate Strategy, Social Value, Leadership Development. He is co-founder of Ananda Partners, a business strategy and collective action agency.