In Chapter 3 of Humanize, we challenge traditional thinking on management. We pick on three areas specifically: strategic planning, human resource management, and leadership. I always expected that we would receive some vocal push-back on these points. There are a lot of people who believe strongly in those three areas, but I haven’t heard much of a response from them. The quote below is from the section on Human Resource Management (p. 50), where there is ample research suggesting that our practices don’t actually work.

Let’s start from a more honest place: We don’t know the best way to hire people or to ensure that we have the people we need when we need them. This may feel disconcerting. We know it would be more comforting to follow a scripted list of steps that will get us from the vacancy to the perfect hire. But that is part of the big lie that are “best practices.” If we can give up this need for security and comfort, and be more honest about what we know and don’t know, then we might actually be able to discover some new practices.