Ep. 207: David R. Edwards – Drive Your Values, Not Your People

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Connect with David: https://www.davidredwards.com/contact-us
Check out David's book: https://www.davidredwards.com/about-newyouwhoknew

Full Episode Transcript:
Adam:

Welcome back to Count Me In the podcast that explores business and leadership topics from the management accountants perspective. I'm Adam Larson. I'm joined today by David Edwards to discuss how organizations and leaders can overlook the human when dealing with human capital. In other words, businesses can often see their people as assets before they see them as, well, people. David explains how this mindset often backfires on organizations and why focusing on values that motivate human beings provides a more balanced and effective approach to collaboration and productivity. And just a reminder, David,has a new book out entitled "New You! Who Knew: Surprising foundations to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world." There's a link in the show notes, so make sure to check it out. Let's start the conversation.

Adam:

So David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're really excited to have you on. And today we're gonna be talking about people and the value they bring to organizations. And traditionally, as we all know people have always been looked on as assets. And through your book and through conversations that you and I have been having, you don't agree with that. So let's start there. Why don't you comment on that?

David:

Yeah. So if we go back into history, right, we haven't actually literally had people on our balance sheet for since 1860 roughly. But we treat people still very much like their assets. And you might recall, I mean, we go back into, just in my career for example, Jack Welch he made famous this kind of policy where they took the bottom 5% of their performers and then summarily fired them. And you know, and you don't wanna be in the 5% obvious, the bottom 5%, you don't want to be anyway. But you know, if we look at math, there's always gonna be a bottom 5%. You know, by default there's gonna be the top 5% and the bottom. And so, you know, this is a way of looking at human beings that says you're an asset. We look at how corporations over the years have, you know, you just move people around or we used the word drive.

David:

To me, this is non-human. So for example, I was looking at a job description the other day, and it, and it said, you know, drive, I think three times, we are gonna drive innovation. You're gonna drive change, you're gonna drive performance. So since a corporation is little more than a collection of human beings who have come together to accomplish some common purpose, right? So as a group of human beings moving towards some goal, trying to accomplish some purpose, if we think about working with human beings or as human beings working together, let's think about you, Adam. Are you married?

Adam:

Yes.

David:

If you go to your wife and say, Sweetheart I hurt my knee and I need you to drive me to Home Depot so I can get a new ladder. And if you drive me there and get me there, hmm, let me see in the next 15 minutes, you're a good wife, I want you to drive me there. So how is she gonna respond to that?

Adam:

Not very well.

David:

Not very well because you're treating her as if she was the car, right? You can treat your car that way and if your car doesn't get you there in 15 minutes, you can say bad car, you suck. And might have some other more colorful language, but you would never do that to a human being, at least I hope not, right? Because we're not machines, we're not assets. We are in fact human beings. And if we want to be successful in business or in life or in any relationship, right? We would want to say, Well, what are the principles not of a machine, or not really even business principles, right? You can't ignore business principles, but how do we want to engage with fellow human beings? And that should by definition make us more successful.

Adam:

So if we wanna be more successful, you mentioned something about principles, maybe we can dig into that. What are some of these principles that we should be implementing till we can be better human beings.

David:

So I think one of them that works very nicely as a human being as well as in business, and I'll kind of go on the business side at first. How many businesses do you know, have a statement that says, these are our values.

Adam:

A lot of them do.

David:

Right! Maybe even a majority of businesses have gone to that effort, right? So let me ask you, in your experience or talking to people or just in your life and career, how many of those businesses, I'm getting a little distracted here, but how many of them have a statement? But you know, that company well enough to know that they're not really living those values?

Adam:

You know, I can't say that I've taken the time to look at value statements to to, to pay attention well enough to know whether they are or not.

David:

Yeah. Or maybe another way to look at it is, is you've ever gone into a business and been a customer of a business. And if you ever have anybody, you know, listening or watching has had this experience where they go, you know, I don't know what their values are, but they're not, at least not today. Yeah. I mean we've all done that, right? We've all had that experience.

Adam:

We've all seen that, of course.

David:

So values as a company, I believe are extremely important because they set boundaries, right? Businesses by definition have some goal that they're trying to accomplish. And inevitably they wanna make a profit, right? This is kind of, it's part and parcel of every business. And so what values do is they set some boundary within which that company has said, we're gonna set some boundaries or limits around how we pursue these goals, right? Our business goals. And that's good, right? Because you really don't want to be operating and like anarchy basically, right? Anything goes, you know, whatever it takes. I mean, we've seen that it's happened in business probably not infrequently. People like Enron and you know, some of these kinds of, you know, famous examples, but where they go, hey, there's no boundaries. We don't have any values. We're just gonna go make a dollar.

David:

And you know, that's all that matters. However we do it, you know, that's, we don't care, right? The means justify the ends, that kind of a thing. So values are important in that regard. And it also is one way that we start to engender trust, right? If we have values and we're actually living those values, there's greater trust in between individuals and trust, right? As I think Steven Covey's son wrote the book, "The Speed of Trust", right? And if we don't have trust, you know, we pay a tax. None of us likes taxes, right? So I mean, we pay a tax for that. The same with human beings. And that's why I think values in a business as a collection of human beings makes perfect sense because values as human beings make perfect sense. And so we think of them as a constraint sometimes or as barriers, but it's much like the freeway.

David:

We've decided a long time ago that if I'm gonna be going 70 this way and you're gonna be going 70 in the opposite way, that having a big concrete barrier in between those lanes is a really good idea, right? Because it makes us safer, because it makes us more confident,...