Many executives tend to think of their company as a vast machine that they need to control. This naturally reduces employees into faceless cogs where nobody is indispensable, and everybody is as replaceable as a spare part. Individual initiative, goals, and desires are considered to be completely subsumed by the demands of the corporate machine.
Managers who like the machine analogy tend to create rigid teams with rigid roles and rigid functions. Managers and workers alike become convinced that change is very difficult, similar to retooling a complicated machine.
Such managers tend to think of themselves as “controllers” whose job it is to make sure that people follow the rules of the “system.” Employees are treated in dehumanizing ways while the corporation centralizes control at the top. What’s worse, sales teams working for such organizations are constantly struggling to secure resources to help them sell. They suffer on a daily basis to get the machine to respond in a way that matches the needs of the customer, rather than the needs of the corporate machine.
By contrast, when executives and managers see their organizations as communities of individuals, all of whom have individual hopes and dreams, they begin to find ways to connected those hopes and dreams to the organization’s purpose.
When employees really feel that they’re valued as individuals, they more easily dedicate themselves to the goals of the organization. They’re more likely to truly enjoy contributing to their own success, the success of their peers, and the success of the community at large. Anybody who has worked in this kind of organization remembers it as a wonderful experience for the rest of their life. (Unfortunately, such experiences are woefully rare.)
Better yet, the more community-like a corporation becomes, the easier it is for sales professionals to get things done, because communities are naturally more flexible and service-oriented than machines. Ideally, the community concept begins to embrace customers as well.