Pundits Work Want To Deny These 3 Things About Human Nature. They’re Way Off Base.
Humans have evolved a lot over the past few thousand years. We no longer depend on our own muscle power, use technology to overcome barriers of time and space and have gained significant control over our surroundings. Scientific studies that track shifts in our DNA find a surprising degree of variation from our ancestors.
That’s probably why it’s become fashionable for pundits and gurus to talk about “new eras” that will shift human behavior and reshape organizations. We’re told that we live in a VUCA world, that our organizations need to be flatter and that if we just engineer the right systems, we can let market and technological forces do the rest.
None of these things are true. While it is true that humans and our societies continue to evolve, human nature has mostly stayed the same. Our brains were not designed out of whole cloth, but formed on top of what is already there. We are, much more than we’d like to admit, driven by primordial urges and, to be effective, we need to be more aware of our own natures.
1. We’re Hierarchical
For a while now, management gurus have been advocating for flatter organizations, yet there is little evidence that eliminating leaders is a viable model. In fact, when Wharton…
