A little kindness at the workplace boosts revenue

The signature of my first book, In Search of Excellence (written with Bob Waterman), was a six-word phrase: “Hard is soft. Soft is hard.” As Bob and I examined the problems besetting US corporations circa 1980, we believed they and their advisers had got things backwards.

We said that in the end it was the supposedly “hard numbers”, so readily manipulable as we have seen of late, and the “plans”, that are so often flights of fantasy, that were soft.

And the true “hard stuff” was what the business schools and their ilk undervalued as soft: people issues, character and the quality of relationships inside and beyond the organisation’s walls.
Thinking about all this led me to the softest word of all — and the word with perhaps the most lasting impact in dealings among humans: kindness.”

TOM PETERS, Financial Times (August, 23 2010)

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Kindness? In the workplace? Is the fiery, in-your-face Tom Peters getting soft in his old age? Of course he isn’t.

Kindness is one of the most underrated qualities at work, one that you should be thinking a lot more about after reading this.

As Peters points out, “Hard is soft. Soft is hard.” The numbers in our plans that we see as “hard” really are not.

They are conjectures, calculations, suppositions. They may or may not be true.

Yet most corporations run their businesses on an “it’s all about the numbers” ethos. What numbers? Those things in your spreadsheets that may not even be true?

What, in fact, generates the numbers? Ah, that would be the “soft” things: people, motivation, inspiration, service, relationships, character.

Now those things are really hard — which is why so few of us are able to get them right.

Back to that word, kindness. Are people kind in your organisation?

I seriously doubt it. Most modern organisations tend to be cauldrons of intense personal competition, back stabbing, political intrigue, gossip and deceit.

Cauldrons of competition