Take the guesswork out of managing people and organizations
With humaneering, you manage people confidently and achieve much more with your organization
Results in major companies show that with humaneering you can finally
- Understand and resolve all people and workforce challenges
- Increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention
- Cash out of organization inefficiencies from years of ambiguity
- Accelerate responsiveness, innovation, and digital adoption
HUMANEERING: AN INTRODUCTION (3-min read)
SECTION LINKS: 1. There Is This Problem 2. Look To Science 3. Why It Matters 4. Consider This 5. It’s About Time 6. Humaneering Works 7. How This Started 8. Watch It Work 9. Opportunity Knocks Once 10. Additional Insights
THERE IS THIS PROBLEM
Any executive running a business that depends on people has a problem. Let’s call it under-performance — achieving less than the potential of the people employed. Often 50% less, or worse.
It may surprise you to learn that the people are not the problem. More than 80% of the people hired are more than capable and eager to do their new job.
The problem leading to this underperformance is:
- The ambiguity of what is necessary to develop a highly effective business organization
- The incomprehensibility of the collective advice now directed at management
This essential knowledge is not taught in B-school and is too complex to be learned from the business press or thought leaders. These sources share well-intended ideas, but executives quickly learn on the job there are no bad ideas, just bad decisions.
This leaves executives guessing. Intelligent guessing, certainly, but far from the fact-based rational decision-making and problem-solving most executives would prefer.
LOOK TO SCIENCE
Today’s human sciences explain people very well, but this knowledge has limited use to management in its current form:
- inconvenient sources
- foreign language
- fragmented insights
- siloed disciplines
- untested applications
- no accountability
But what if this knowledge was continuously combined, translated, and synthesized into business acumen, and then field-tested, applied, scaled, and optimized within the real-time operations of major companies to simultaneously meet the needs of executives, managers, and workers?
That’s humaneering. Imagine the potential for businesses, executives, managers, workers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.
Then imagine what’s possible if you could create a digital twin of your organization to optimize its design for improved operational performance and to diagnose and resolve unwanted outcomes.
Or imagine linking to a new fact-based digital global talent marketplace capable of matching a fact-based representation of your jobs with a fact-based representation of the people available globally. The executives already using humaneering tell us the potential seems endless.
Humaneering will do for the human side of your business what engineering has done for the physical side — answer the question of what is necessary — thereby enabling much greater human and organizational achievement with much less waste.
Both engineering and humaneering are unified technologies of applied science, however humaneering is based on science that explains human nature whereas engineering is based on science that explains physical nature.
WHY IT MATTERS
The evolution of human work during the 20th century and since — from repetitive physical work to responsive knowledge work — has shifted the focus in human work to higher level human capabilities that are deeply rooted in human nature.
The effect of this shift in human work and its importance to management cannot be overstated. All employees today are knowledge workers, yet most continue to be organized, managed, and generally treated too much like factory labor, which naturally shuts down most of their achievement potential.
Resolving this misalignment is a huge business opportunity.
“It is the individual knowledge employee who decides in large measure what he or she will contribute, and how great the yield from his or her knowledge can or should be.”
“‘Loyalty’ from now on cannot be obtained by the paycheck; it will have to be earned by proving to knowledge employees that the organization which presently employs them can offer them exceptional opportunities to be effective.”
Post-Capitalist Society (1993, p. 66)
CONSIDER THIS
Humaneering synthesizes:
- All relevant B-school teachings and management literature
- Up-to-date insights from 200+ relevant science disciplines
- Findings from controlled real-time application experiments in major companies
- Results from scaled applications across operations, industries, and regions
Executives and managers get unprecedented situational clarity and precision guidance for designing, organizing, and managing human work to exceptional levels of business performance and employee satisfaction.
HTI’s Development Partner Organizations, who have access to humaneering during its development, are routinely avoiding or quickly resolving today’s seemingly intractable people-related problems and creating spontaneous improvements to employee engagement, productivity, job satisfaction, and more.
Furthermore, the financial impact is so substantial that several Development Partner Organization CFOs created a managerial accounting entry, Organizational EBITDA, to isolate, track, and manage the financial value created simply by reducing or eliminating operational inefficiencies that arise from suboptimal organization-management systems and practices.
IT’S ABOUT TIME
Humaneering was conceived at Purdue University in the 1930s by Professor Joseph Tiffin, an industrial psychologist and pioneer in the creation of job-placement methods, and his colleagues.
Tiffin determined that the root cause of organizational ineffectiveness and inefficiency was suboptimal decision-making about employees resulting from lack of “scientific quality” in management’s understanding of human nature, which Tiffin said arises in several ways:
- Knowledge consists mostly of hasty generalizations
- Cause and effect are expressed with imprecise terminology
- Managers fail to recognize problems current decisions create
- Managers use a problem-solving methodology based on things (i.e., physical nature versus human nature)
He concluded that unifying the human sciences into a management technology — humaneering — could guide management to more effective organizational decision making and problem solving.
“The 19th century was marked by great achievements in engineering. Advances in psychology, sociology, and physiology should lead us to as striking advances in ‘humaneering’ during the twentieth century.”
The Psychology of Normal People (1940, p. 24)
HUMANEERING WORKS
Humaneering demonstrates what Peter Drucker (i.e., knowledge work is deeply rooted in human nature) and Joseph Tiffin (i.e., humaneering will enable more effective management decisions about people) were telling us.
Field tests, experiments, and scaled applications within the people-dependent operations of HTI’s Development Partner Organizations confirm the cause of today’s organization challenges and demonstrate a surprisingly simple solution.
Today’s diminished employee engagement, productivity, and satisfaction, and derivative challenges with hiring, performance, and retention, are rooted in today’s holdover management methods, which were conceived in the Industrial Era to manage employees performing standardized physical task work.
These methods have always limited the achievements of complex sociocognitive knowledge work. Now the evolution to knowledge work is so far along that this negative impact is pervasive and too costly to ignore.
It should come as a relief that today’s organization challenges are caused by nothing more than a misalignment of management methods, which management controls.
McKinsey puts it this way. “CEOs need to find a new plan of engagement . . . to think hard about the office of the future, a place where worker’s want to be . . . and find enough meaning in their work. Do these things well, and you’ll find your retention problems are eased” (What matters most? Six priorities for CEOs in turbulent times, Nov. 17, 2022). Humaneering expedites the creation of that new plan of engagement.
HTI’s Development Partner Organizations demonstrate repeatedly throughout their operations that just resolving this misalignment and the problems it is causing revitalizes their organizations and achieves performance levels far exceeding management’s imagination.
HOW THIS STARTED
HTI was imagined in the mid 1980s, conceived in the late 1990s, and formally launched as an independent, self-funded nonprofit organization in 2002 by a small group of organization executives, professionals, and scholars.
They, like so many others, were frustrated by the endless ambiguity, incomprehensibility, and ineffectiveness of the best available advice for how organizations could most effectively capitalize the potential of their employees.
HTI follows Apple’s playbook for secret R&D operations. This work has involved to date more than 1,200 scholars and hundreds of organization executives, managers, consultants, and practitioners, with everyone contributing their time, knowledge, intuition, and wisdom toward humaneering’s development.
Disciplined testing in real-time business operations differentiates humaneering. Each new release expands proven applications and increases accuracy and impact:
- v1 (2005-2008) focused on work content, work design, job design, work systems, talent requirements, and solving work performance problems
- v2 (2009-2014) focused on organization design, organization management systems, organization culture, and solving organization problems
- v3 (2015-2021) focused on resolving disengagement, low achievement, stagnant productivity, talent retention, organization agility and responsiveness, and financial performance optimization
In January 2023, HTI formally launched v4 for application between 2023 and 2027, focused on providing humaneering technology as a service to
- Improve and optimize people-dependent business operations
- Reduce or resolve people-related business challenges
- Increase organizational control, responsiveness, productivity, agility, and overall effectiveness
- Simplify, accelerate, and improve organization management (i.e., digital transformation)
WATCH IT WORK
Humaneering’s development model – studying controlled applications in real-time business operations –is creating a technology for the human side of business. In addition, it is rewarding HTI’s Development Partner Organizations with sustainable operational and financial advantages that are mostly undetectable and inimitable by their competitors.
HTI’s Development Partner Organizations typically progress through three stages, yet the program is entirely customizable to address management’s objectives.
Phase 1 begins with several “proof-of-concept” improvements to resolve “people” problems, demonstrate how humaneering works, and convince the cautious.
For many executives, this is their first and best opportunity to discover that today’s conventional organization design and management practices are outdated and have not kept up with the evolution of human work
Phase 2 capitalizes on these cases with a threefold emphasis:
- Creating organization breakthroughs to support key strategic objectives
- Making humaneering available to unit managers eager to solve problems and seize opportunities
- Developing the organization’s people to apply humaneering without HTI’s support
By Phase 3, Development Partner Organizations are using humaneering independently to resolve problems and improve operations across their organization.
In addition, Development Partner Organizations influence HTI’s direction with humaneering, remain informed of new developments, and routinely get opportunities to pioneer emerging solutions.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS ONCE
Enrollment is now underway for executives to enter their organization into the HTI Development Partner program and get early access to humaneering. Enroll now and delay your start date to as late as Q4 2025 if that works best for you.
Development Partner Organization executives get:
- Full access to humaneering and HTI’s humaneering professionals
- Field-proven solutions, methods and guidance
- Spontaneous support for your executives, managers and other humaneering practitioners
- Money-back guarantee if not fully satisfied
- Strict privacy and confidentiality
Existing Development Partner Organizations include some of the most recognized names in business. They range in size from 3,800 to over 200,000 employees, include market leaders and industry disruptors, represent most sectors.
This may be the last open-enrollment opportunity to get early access to humaneering prior to its open release, now scheduled for the early 2030s.
HTI does not have a sales force, mailing list, or promotional budget, so interested executives will need to take the initiative to request participation.
This strategic partnership is for forward-thinking executives determined to lead their industry in
- Increasing the productivity of human work now and continuously in the future
- Transforming their organization, management, and HR for the 21st century
- Breaking through the workforce challenges that plague most organizations today.
Schedule a conversation with HTI’s Director of Application R&D to discover how your organization can become more responsive and productive and easier to manage with humaneering.
ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS
These published articles, while they do not teach humaneering, will help organization executives, managers, and professionals develop insights into why humaneering is so powerful and how current Development Partners are capitalizing on their early access.
Available for download for a limited time. No registration required.
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A Case for Humaneering (IIE Solutions, May 2002)
This article appeared in the member magazine for the Institute for Industrial Engineers, a U.S.-based professional organization concerned with the application and profession of industrial engineering.
Business Process Humaneering (Management Services, Spring 2017)
This article appeared in the member magazine of the Institute of Management Services, a U.K.-based professional organization concerned with the practice of management and improvement of productivity.
HR 'Special Forces' (Management Services, Spring 2018)
This article appeared in the member magazine of the Institute of Management Services, a U.K.-based professional organization concerned with the practice of management and improvement of productivity.
Create a Platform for Continuous Organizational Innovation, Improvement and Change (Management Services, Summer 2020)
This article appeared in the member magazine of the U.K.-based professional organization concerned with the practice of management and improvement of productivity.
Productivity Mystery Solved (Management Services, Autumn 2021)
This article appeared in the member magazine of the U.K.-based professional organization concerned with the practice of management and improvement of productivity.
How to Improve Knowledge Work Productivity (Management Services, Winter 2022)
This article appeared in the member magazine of the U.K.-based professional organization concerned with the practice of management and improvement of productivity.
