Off the Grid
I took a few weeks to step back and think about the past few years of blogging, writing and participating in business community discussions on KM, Cloud, SOA, Technology and the subject of people. My last blog post provided an unreal feedback loop that literally had me responding to people for weeks. In fact, I am still responding to messages from that post.
I pulled back from writing because I want to make a positive difference in the world and not just mechanically write something. I have a passion for work in the area of Knowledge Management because it really covers so many channels. The concern that I have is that organizations don’t really care about people as much as we would like to believe they do. That being said, I think we need to have honest and open discussions of what this means and further what the implications are for business.
My post about resumes was powerful to people because whether they are working in a company or looking for a job they feel trivialized. They feel that companies do not respect them and that they are alone. What I find most interesting is that people inside companies doing their jobs to the best of their abilities feel the same way.
This is a common conversation that I have over and again with people who reach out to me. We need to focus on our humanity and our relationships relative to life at work as well as at home. Companies need to realized that everything begins and ends with people, not “the help.”
I am not going to write as much as I did before moving forward because I want to write when I feel that I should not when I scheduled myself to. If there is a topic that someone wants me to think about and write about, I will do that.. otherwise… stay tuned but expect less!
~Howie
The Cohenization Project 
One of the best book’s i have read is “Leadership and Self Deception” by the Arbinger Group. The book digs into this issue in great detail–it’s easy to fall into the trap of treating people like objects versus people with needs/feelings/desires. It’s not just at work, it’s in school, at home etc…
I hope all is well man! Keep up the great work.
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Howie, maybe the non-caring from leadership has something to do with political correctness. What I mean is that if you are not involved with your people’s personal lives, inner wellbeing or their passions, there tends to be a feeling of disconnected that relates to a safety space for leadership to not be liable or responsible. This non caring IMO is caused because they perceive only the headaches of dealing with the others because they are too busy being concerned about their own lives and positions within the organization. To me this is leadership’s responsibility but if you ask many in authority today, they will just tell you that would be overstepping their boundaries. IMHO this is a cover-up for lack of abilities to have the necessary capabilities to be a good leader. I have seen within the past 20 years this pattern develop in the workplace. You don’t see this attribute when looking at resumes.
When I worked for Monsanto many years ago (1970’s), they had a philosophy that each person no matter what job they were in was to try and work themselves out of these positions. We were even rated on this attribute. What this did was force us to share with others to take our place when we moved up or else we will stay in this same position. This is something that KM might think about, how to instill sharing of knowledge because it isn’t only a good idea, it gets you promoted.
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Family first always! When doing anything becomes a chore it is time to take step back, good for you, you’re taking that step. I will continue to look forward to your cohenization project writing as they always give me something to think about and more of a understanding of who you are and how you think!
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