Looking up the word “Resources” in any dictionary and you would find a stock or supply of money, materials and other assets. All such assets are disposable and the same applies to human beings under this definition. It all started with the management practices inherited from the industrial Age which herded humans in the production lines and turned them into cheap disposable cogs.

What is the problem?

The problem is the mentality of the industrial age where the sunrise and the sunset were the siren of the day for people to stand in a row to enter the factories’ production lines and mind the 10 – 14 hours shifts. Those who had challenged the system would have been whipped into order to comply. Till the moment, nothing has changed. People’s mobiles ring at 7 o’clock every single morning declaring the beginning of a new nine to five cycle where people labour in silence, bow their heads down to the bosses and obey their orders. When anyone raises his or her voice to challenge the system, everyone around shouts in a one unified voice “Do you you think you would be able to change the system?

The industrial and postindustrial educational system is the problem.

In a previous article titled “what is the root of our thinking?Pre-programming people to comply. “Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adults it needed”. Mass education has produced people that fit the factories’ model. Cogs in the machines which are disposable and replaceable anytime. The term” Human Resources” has conveyed the spirit of the system and made it the groundwork for most of the teaching curriculum in colleges and universities around the world which teach that people are resources like raw materials and stock. They teach capital management, warehouse management and human resources management.

This educational strategy scaled very well and amplified the message that “Humans are resources and resources are disposable”. HR is the most dehumanizing term that ever-described human beings. Most educational institutions want people to subconsciously view themselves as disposable assets that can be thrown away when unneeded. This is the main cause of the suffering. Most business schools spread the idea that layoffs and redundancies are the business solutions.

What is the solution?

At the end of the day, the corporate world is the result of the educational system through which people learned what they wanted them to learn, followed the instructions they wanted them to follow and did the work they wanted them to do. The idea that people are replaceable in times of certainty and uncertainty in the corporate world became a reality in people’s minds. The corporate education and the corporate cultures have discouraged most leaders from making any serious attempt to carry out a major transformation.

This is the most important failure for most leaders today is that they are overtaken by a mechanical and corporate system that has succeeded only in dehumanizing the human nature of people as human beings.

How many leaders in the business world who challenged and continue to challenge the system? They are hand counted. To me, the unwillingness to change and replace the industrial and its successor, the capitalist system demonstrates that there is a weak leadership model and those who call themselves leaders are non-leaders. They are just talkers who fall under the category of bad managers.

Re-humanizing the term “HR” and all the dehumanized aspects of corporate environments are the leaders’ responsibility. Embracing the purposeful and humane model of leadership is the only solution to deconstruct the industrial model of management. And people are human beings who do not need to be managed, just inspired and empowered.