A Community of Humans

“Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.”

A client shared that quote with me a few years ago. I think it’s one of the best summations of the importance of consistent, timely and relevant employee communications, of using communications to build trust and strong, lasting relationships within an organization.

The quote was attributed to Arie de Geus, former head of Global Planning for Royal Dutch Shell, now a fellow at London School of Economics and MIT.

I got to thinking about those words and the sentiment they express the other day when I learned that The Rocky Mountain News was shutting down. To learn more about it, I visited its web site, which features a 20-minute video that, at its heart, I sensed, reinforces Mr. de Geus’ words.

The newspaper closed less than two months shy of the 150th anniversary of its founding. That’s a lot of history for any organization. In fact, the founding of the paper predates Colorado statehood by about 17 years. You can imagine the kinds of news it covered over the years – the settling of the Wild West and everything since.

The staff knew the end was near because The News’ owner, Scripps-Howard, announced in January that it was seeking a buyer and that, if none stepped forward within a month, it would close the operation.

The newspaper business in general has been struggling for some time now, having lost advertising revenue and readers to the Internet. But combining that fact with a dour economic climate, The News’ fate was sealed. The interim period gave the people the opportunity to prepare the paper’s obituary, so to speak, including this well-produced video and a 52-page history inserted into the final edition last Friday.

But it was the video that spoke to me and evoked de Gaus' words. Staff reporters and editors are interviewed and you sense the tears about to flow. It is a very sad wake, as though they had lost a parent too soon. It may even have been more profound than that.

These people lost not only a job, but they lost a mission they shared with dozens of other people within an amorphous entity called The Rocky Mountain News with which they all identified deeply, an entity they helped shape and define every day.

These are tough times for a lot of businesses. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. That video makes the effect obvious. Watch it and you’ll get a deeper understanding of what a lost job really means.

We commit the majority of our waking hours throughout our adult lives to our careers and jobs. We sustain a significant sense of self-worth and value from what we are able to achieve – each in our own way – on the job. Take that away from us and what are we left with?

This is the core question that people are asking themselves as they contemplate the potential loss of their own jobs. Sure, the lost paycheck is the big immediate concern. How will we pay the mortgage? How will we pay the bills? What about our family? Will we be able to find a new job in this lousy economy?

But the deeper pain and self-doubt arises from the disconnection from that “community of humans” that was the organization we worked for, that community from which we derived so much sense of satisfaction and our connection to the larger world, that organization we helped shape and define.

Managers and company leadership must think about this component of people’s jobs as they contemplate cut backs, lay-offs and the like, rather than seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet. They must continually engage their people to build trust and understanding – especially in difficult times – as they contemplate the extreme measures to take to accommodate slumping revenues and profits. They must convey an honest empathy with their people, and a sincere faith in the value and contributions those people bring to the greater whole that the company represents.

That’s what Arie de Gaus’ words are all about. Managers must focus their thinking on the reality of their organization as a community of humans first and foremost. If they do, if they have always done that, chances are that the fruitful and profitable economic activity of producing goods and services will follow.

Who knows? Perhaps the bite of a bad economy will have less effect on such a community of humans, and enable the organization to weather the storm and live to see better days.