People management

Imagine a single mother who starts her day six in the morning as the new-born cries for food. She hurries to take the baby out of the cradle and carries him to the kitchen. Single-handedly she mixes the baby’s porridge on the stove while changing his diapers simultaneously. She hears loud noise from the living room where the two-year-old has managed to turn on the DVD player and is watching a Schwarzenegger action flick. After turning the TV off she runs back to the kitchen to steal back a fork that the baby-boy is shoving down his throat. Porridge boils over on to the stove as the two-year-old starts to cry showing a yellow pond on the floor.

After feeding, cleaning and changing it’s time to go out. While preventing the baby of inserting his tongue into the electric socket mom struggles to fit on the shoes for the elder brother that just stands dumb without a response to mother’s pleading for some initiative. As soon as they reach the playground the baby pukes all over his carriage making the mom busy cleaning again. Meanwhile the big brother is wobbling down to the road and in a split second the mom needs to be there rescuing him from an approaching truck… and so the day continues.

This heroic mother is not one in the million. These epic stories can be heard all over the place. These stories are what people management is at its best. Full stop.

People management is a term that can be found in as weird places as Harvard Business Review website, a name of a seemingly reputed magazine, and so on. How do these scholars and professionals even dare to use those two words together. Isn’t it evident that adults are not to be managed, but to be led? Meetings can be managed, projects can be managed, and planning can be managed, but not people for crying out loud!

The lingo that we use defines partly the culture that surrounds us at the working place. Do we speak about subordinates or team members? Do we have human resources or people? Are we really managing our people?

The harsh reality is that sometime we are. We spoon feed people with right answers to “save time” without challenging them to think. We see them in trouble and as great patriarchal managers we go and save the day (preventing them from learning how to get things done). We go and turn off the TV if the information is not suitable for their eyes

Think about it. Are you leading or managing?