an industrial management professor at Harvard Business School, Elton Mayo, and his protégé, Fritz Roethlisberger, began a series of large-scale studies on employee productivity. Their findings were some of the first to link the needs and wants of workers to performance. Not surprisingly, lighting had an effect on output. But so did a sense of community—and even more, a sense of responsibility to that community, what we now like to call purpose. It was the birth of the human relations movement.
Almost 100 years after Mayo and Roethlisberger began the conversation about human relations, a new iteration is taking form. Some call it “radical humanity.” Others use the term “humanocracy.” The essence remains. It is about purpose powering performance, rather than performance being the purpose. It’s a plea for businesses to put people and planet before, or at least alongside, profit. For leaders to have the courage to challenge old ways of thinking and to take on the big issues. It’s a yearning to use our creative faculties in collaboration with one another. A demand for empathy. For decades, workers have divided their identities into work and personal. Radically human workplaces, say the idealists, create the potential to harness the full expression of self for a purpose bigger than self. “It’s about a higher quality of existence,” says Jaime Maxwell-Grant, a Korn Ferry senior client partner.
After hundreds of interviews with executives and board members and studying a variety of metrics of some of the highest-performing companies, Korn Ferry researchers found that what makes for success in 2021 isn’t what once did. While many executives have spent their careers cultivating traits like stability, confidence, and detachment, today’s highly effective leaders habituate vulnerability, humility, and relatability. The best bosses empower rather than control; the most innovative companies are agile and customer oriented, and they invest heavily in research and development. As Microsoft’s Satya Nadella infamously said, “Empathy makes you a better innovator.”
And yet there is this inconvenient truth: another subset of the world’s most transformational, high-performing companies has found massive success relying on short-term performance and exploitation. Silicon Valley built burnout into the business model. Is not humanity, some would ask, the cost of progress? Maybe. But that brings up the issue of sustainability—how long can such a modus operandi last?
The ideas behind radical humanity are not new. Countless books have been written on psychological safety as the imperative to innovation. Starbucks long ago became the poster child for employee empowerment. But if ever there were a time for a radical realignment of purpose, this might be it. As Larissa MacFarquhar explains in Strangers Drowning, a book about extreme idealists, when people act altruistically, most of the time they’re dismissed as obnoxious do-gooders. But during times of crisis—say a global pandemic or a snowstorm in Texas that shuts down the state’s power grid—they are held up as heroes. They are followed into battle. “What’s been lacking is a way of multiplying our efforts—a collaborative endeavor large enough to overcome the gravitational pull of the status quo,” write Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini in the recently released Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them.
Most won’t deny that there are tectonic forces shifting below. Perhaps Mayo and Roethlisberger were simply too early and too modest. As we sought out examples of radical humanity, we found a handful who truly stand out. From the CEO of a global consumer healthcare company stripping away bureaucracy to empower employees to a momtrepreneur building a support platform for other working moms to a small franchise owner feeding the hungry during the pandemic, Briefings presents the brave few leading the way into the future with head, heart, and guts.
Did we mention he is also the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, the world’s largest consumer healthcare company, which serves 1.5 billion people a year through brands such as Sensodyne, Advil, and Centrum? McNamara has always been down to earth. When he was promoted to division head at his previous employer, Novartis, his colleagues erupted with the kind of standing ovation more often afforded to rock bands. But the past year, which in addition to navigating a global pandemic involved overseeing a merger with Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, has shown him the meteoric power of a few radically human hallmarks, particularly the dynamic duo of trust and courage.
“At GSK, like many large companies, at times we can be a bit bureaucratic and central in the way we think about things,” says McNamara, who took the reins in 2016. But as COVID-19 swept across the globe, he recognized that leaders had to empower local management to make real-time decisions and eliminate nonessential planning. GSK set three priorities: caring for its people, ensuring business continuity, and being part of the solution. Instead of grueling eight-hour planning meetings, McNamara’s leadership team began convening three times a week for 60 minutes, a time when connection is as imperative
as strategy. The outcome: the business thrived, delivering for customers and completing 80 market integrations between April 1, 2020, and the end of the year. “The investment in people-centered purpose allowed them to elevate out of a process-heavy culture,” says Kevin Cashman, Korn Ferry’s global coleader of CEO and enterprise leader development.
At the end of 2018, GSK and Pfizer announced a merger of their consumer healthcare businesses and decided to spin off that business into its own entity separate from pharmaceuticals. And this new venture required a distinct purpose: “Deliver better everyday health with humanity.” That purpose has become a north star, both inspiring and guiding. The destination McNamara envisions is one in which GSK Consumer Healthcare empowers consumers to take control of and manage their everyday health from end to end, while helping reduce the impact on global healthcare systems.
Brian McNamara wears a rubber Smile Train bracelet on his right wrist, he has a relaxed swagger, and with his dogs going wild in the background, he’s talking about how Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” is his life’s walkout song. (It should be noted that McNamara’s wife says her husband is far from being a simple man.)
By Meghan Walsh with Lexi Pandell and Peter Lauria
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IN THE
1920s,
When personal purpose and company purpose connect, man, everything just becomes so much easier.
The Problem
The Problem
The traits that guided yesterday’s leaders no longer work in today’s world.
WHY IT MATTERS
WHY IT MATTERS
If firms are going to confront the existential issues ahead, they have to pivot the approach.
THE SOLUTION
THE SOLUTION
Learn to harness the full expression of self for a purpose bigger than self.
Read the full Magazine
Demographics
Human trademark
Ability to empathize
and courage to stand alone
When personal purpose and company purpose connect, man, everything just becomes so much easier.
CEO, Dad,
Classic Rock Enthusiast
The nine-to-five workday didn’t accommodate her home life: She had to pump breast milk in the office bathroom or her car. And the tech-bro culture was alienating. “I knew I would burn out as a new mom if I didn’t make a change,” she says. When Markevicius shifted to consulting in web development and IT management, she ran into other challenges, like marketing herself and managing the nuances that come with running a business solo. Though she didn’t feel alienated anymore, that was partly because she was completely on her own.
Seeing other women facing similar struggles, the 35-year-old founded Allobee. The start-up vets female freelancers (nearly all of whom are caregivers) who are experts in everything from copywriting to podcast development to web design, then acts as a middle(wo)man, matching small businesses with those freelancers. It also offers a social network called the Hive.
Allobee launched in May 2020, when millions of women were facing layoffs or being forced to leave full-time work to facilitate homeschooling and care. Markevicius and her executive team (also all moms) knew it was a precarious time to start a new business, but, she says, “we were essential. We had to be there this year to support them.” Their approach paid off: Allobee raised $500,000 in early 2021 and is now preparing for Series A funding. As it has grown, the Allobee team remains 100 percent women. And to keep the pipeline flowing, they’ve partnered with Rewriting the Code, a nonprofit that supports young women studying STEM, to coordinate internships.
Brooke Markevicius seemingly had it all: a fast-paced job at a major tech company, her first baby, and a supportive husband. But it didn’t feel good.
Integrating the personal
and the professional
Start-up Founder,
Mom, Techie
Demographics
Human trademark
I knew I would burn out as a new mom if I didn’t make a change.
It’s a skill that would take her far, from the Texas prairie all the way to the back rooms of Silicon Valley and the shores of Los Angeles, where the 40-year-old now lives. As founder of the red-hot venture capital fund Backstage Capital, which invests specifically in people of color, women, and LGBTQ founders, Hamilton’s success is defined by her capacity to distinguish motives and potential—a foresight many of the deep-pocketed gatekeepers she once approached lacked.
Hamilton, a gay Black woman without a college degree, conceived of the idea for a fund that invests in underrepresented (and, as she says, underestimated) entrepreneurs in 2012. As it stands, more than 90 percent of venture capital funding goes to White men. At the time, Hamilton was homeless and sleeping in the San Francisco airport, after coming to Silicon Valley to immerse herself in everything start-up culture. Following three hard years of trying to bring the fund to life without success, she reached a crossroads. Was it time to move on?
Pacing the parking lot of the Comfort Inn motel where she was then living with her mother, Hamilton devised a litmus test for assessing value. She closed her eyes and imagined a world five years into the future where her fund didn’t exist. “My eyes shot open,” she recalls. “No, that’s a terrible thought. There was no question after that. It had to exist.”
Hamilton set a goal of investing in 100 companies by 2020, a marker she surpassed two years ahead of time, becoming the first non-celebrity Black woman to appear on the cover of Fast Company magazine. The $15 million fund has since invested in 180 companies and launched an accelerator. In March, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission expanded the crowdsourcing investment limit from $1.07 million to $5 million, Backstage Capital hit the cap within days. Instead of contributing to a specific company, crowdsourcing investors will earn a share of Backstage’s overall profit. “When we win, the crowd will win,” says Hamilton, who last year also published her first book, It’s About Damn Time.
As a young girl growing up in Dallas, Arlan Hamilton would wear six watches on her wrists, each set to a different time zone around the world, so she could imagine what people thousands of miles away were doing. Were they looking at the stars? Sleeping? What were their dreams about? She wondered that of the kids in her own dusty expanse of the world as well. During “Arlan’s Office Hours,” she would set up shop on the playground, calling her classmates over one by one to ask about their home lives, how they felt, what they wanted to become when they got older. “I don’t know where it came from,” she says, “but I have these early, early memories of being able to discern between what they were feeling and what I was seeing.”
Harnessing vulnerability
as strength
Venture Capitalist,
Author, Renegade
Demographics
Human trademark
I've gotten even more emboldened.
What many might consider altruism is simply the way he was raised: Tran’s family fled Vietnam by boat and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for several years before immigrating to the US in 1989. Despite their own struggles, his mother always helped others. “She made sure, whether we have a little or a lot, we still share with each other and with our neighbors,” he says, “especially when it comes to food.”
When the pandemic hit and Monster Pho, which Tran opened in 2014, shifted to delivery and takeout only, business took a nosedive. But when World Central Kitchen, a not-for-profit organization that delivers food to shelters and others in need, reached out, what started as a couple hundred orders soon exploded. To date, Monster Pho has served 25,000 subsidized meals.
But Tran wanted to keep giving, so he began offering free coffee to first responders. Then he started wheeling a wagon outside his restaurant each day with free produce. He gave away bags of groceries to local seniors, planted a small neighborhood garden, and ran drives where customers could donate personal protective equipment for emergency-room workers or blankets for the homeless in exchange for discounted pho. For Thanksgiving, Monster Pho gave away 1,000 free bowls of soup to anyone who wanted one, no questions asked.
Meanwhile, Tran’s finances faltered. He put his home on forbearance, delayed bills, and was unable to pay rent on one of his restaurant locations. “I really wish I could say I thought twice about doing this, but I did not,” he says of his sacrifice. Once, when he told a mother passing by with her child that the produce outside was free, “she broke down crying,” he says. “For those kinds of moments, it’s priceless. And it shows me why we do these things.”
When last year’s lockdown forced Vietnamese restaurateur Tee Tran to close the dining rooms of his Oakland, California, franchise Monster Pho, he didn’t know if his business would survive the pandemic. At one point, the 37-year-old thought he might even lose his house. Neither deterred him from showing up to the kitchen every day before dawn to prepare and give away thousands of meals to residents worse off than himself.
Giving as a means
to receive
Restaurateur,
Philanthropist
Demographics
Human trademark
whether we have a little or a lot, we still share with each other and with our neighbors.
Tran’s generosity, though, netted an even larger return on investment, both because the funds from World Central Kitchen allowed him to bring all his staff back on full-time and because the community in turn rallied around him. “They were buying two, three items, because they wanted to show their love and support,” he says. After hearing what Tran was doing, NBA player Steph Curry and his wife, Ayesha, gifted him $25,000 on The Tamron Hall Show. Tran, in turn, used that money to pass out 1,800 more bowls of pho. He simply gets more from giving than receiving—and because his mom works alongside him in the kitchen, she’s always there as a reminder of what’s most important. “During a pandemic, it only makes sense for us to take that money and turn it right back around and help the people who have more need,” he says.
Are leaders ready to redefine themselves?
The first time NBA players took the court after the death of George Floyd, they wore jerseys with messages like “Say Their Names,” “I Can’t Breathe,” and “Freedom,” among many others. Then, on August 26, 2020, players from six NBA teams declined to play the night’s playoffs games after police shot a Black man seven times in the back. They didn’t play the next night either. At that point, the league stepped in—but instead of forcing players out of the locker room at risk of forfeiture, the NBA’s Board of Governors, which includes league commissioner Adam Silver and the 30 team owners, offered their full support. “The NBA has a reputation for taking courageous actions,” says Delise O’Meally, CEO of the Institute for Sport and Social Justice.
Cynics might say it was all a tactic to get players back in uniform, except the league had halted games earlier in the year too. The NBA was the first to suspend play, on March 11, concurrent with the World Health Organization officially designating COVID-19 a global pandemic, significantly influencing public attitude toward the virus. The league led the way in instituting safety protocols and promoting mask wearing. Fast-forward, and the league successfully spent three months playing games inside the “bubble” without a single positive case. “Commissioner Silver is an incredible relationship builder,” says Jed Hughes, a Korn Ferry vice chairman and global sector leader of the firm’s Sports practice. “He was
able to present a unified response to the pandemic and
social justice activism that has reverberated throughout
the sports world.”
The league’s strongest dunk? After the lockdown began, New Orleans Pelicans rookie Zion Williamson donated $1 million to cover workers’ salaries at the Smoothie King Center. That was the catalyst for more than $100 million in donations. “The actions taken by the NBA to provide funding support, information, and connection was a true display of corporate empathy,” O’Meally says.
Athletes have a long history of using their platform to fight for social justice, from raising black-gloved fists during the 1968 Olympics to kneeling during the national anthem. But rarely, if ever, have pro sports organizations taken on such causes.
Taking a stand
Average-Height Suits,
Towering Athletes
Demographics
Human trademark
The actions taken by the NBA to provide funding support, information, and connection was a true display of corporate empathy.
While COVID prompted many people and companies to go in search of their own purpose, McNamara has been on that journey for 16 years. His path inward began the year he donated a kidney, his daughters were born 10 weeks premature and sent to the NICU, and his wife’s mother passed away. He’s always been a naturally empathetic extrovert, but he’s had to build the courage to stand alone at times and make hard decisions. “When personal purpose and company purpose connect, man, everything just becomes so much easier,” says the Simple Man.
Markevicius, who now has two children and lives in the tech hub of North Carolina, always considered motherhood a core aspect of her identity; now, it also informs how she runs a business. “We get it, we understand,” she says. She’s careful to point out that being a working parent is not an excuse—it’s a reality and a source of value. “I think that motherhood has made me a badass,” she says. “It helps me see a lot of power that I didn’t realize I had before.”
It’s clear: people want to be a part of what Hamilton is creating. She’s navigating a constant barrage of media interviews, business panels, and fundraising pitches. How does she hold onto the curious kid, the young woman who wouldn’t take no, and the citizen of the world who believes there is enough to go around for everyone? “I’ve gotten even more emboldened,” she says, adding that she still checks her bank account every day. “At the same time, I don't believe that I’m any less vulnerable, but I think it’s a strength to be vulnerable.”
in Leadership
100 years
A brief timeline of leadership’s evolution, from its ruthless primitive beginnings to today.
The Period
After the savagery of the Industrial Revolution, bosses learn that relationships and motivation influence productivity.
John. D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon
The Person
With rapid economic expansion, strategic development becomes the imperative. Concepts like organizational structure and quality assurance lead the way.
The Period
J. Paul Getty, oil tycoon
The Person
The “rock star CEO” takes center stage. Command-and-control and hierarchy reign. Growth above all else.
The Period
Jack Welch, GE
The Person
The Period
Jeff Bezos, Amazon
The Person
And suddenly in the 1960s and ’70s, culture counts. Leaders emphasize company as family. A shift toward knowledge management and expertise
The Period
Sam Walton, Walmart
The Person
People and planet before profit.
Leading with purpose.
Embracing authenticity.
The Period
You?
The Person
Early 20th Century
Post–World War II
The Tie-Dye Era
Greed Is Good
The Digital Era
Who can innovate the fastest? Move quickly and break things. Automation and engagement. Every nook of human experience is commercialized.
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