When 2014 started, I began a little personal experiment to see how good people would be at remembering my birthday. Not very, I discovered. I'm not on Facebook so that goes against me, I'll admit. But when I make it a point to send somebody an email, sms, whatsapp message, the tone of the majority of responses has been ho-hum and hardly anyone has reciprocated by asking me when my birthday is. Apathy? Lack of manners? Something else?
Is sending good wishes to people on their birthday falling out of favour? It makes me question renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman who, in his book Social, said that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter.
Take a look at Peter Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself article from Harvard Business Review. In fact, read it often! But here's an interesting snippet from the article: "Manners - simple things like saying 'please' and 'thank you' and knowing a person's name or asking after her family - enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this. If anaylsis shows that someone's brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy - that is, a lack of manners."
Let's take the steps to make our organisations, as Gary Hamel says, "fit for humans."
Is sending good wishes to people on their birthday falling out of favour? It makes me question renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman who, in his book Social, said that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter.
Take a look at Peter Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself article from Harvard Business Review. In fact, read it often! But here's an interesting snippet from the article: "Manners - simple things like saying 'please' and 'thank you' and knowing a person's name or asking after her family - enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this. If anaylsis shows that someone's brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy - that is, a lack of manners."
Let's take the steps to make our organisations, as Gary Hamel says, "fit for humans."
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