JOEL W. BUNKOWSKE, ESQUIRE
- Doctor of Jurisprudence
- Master of Business Administration
- Attorney-at-Law
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Attorney, Business Owner, Author, Public Speaker, Business Consultant, Music Producer, Television Producer, Recording Engineer, Composer, Guitarist, Husband, Father, Christian, Idealist
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HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD WITHOUT BREAKING A SWEAT:
THE ART OF MANAGING WELL
Joel W. Bunkowske, Esquire - J.D., M.B.A.
Copyright ©2006
(Excerpt)
INTRODUCTION
As I think about the great successes of the Western World and the challenges that face humanity, I realize that the only lasting competitive advantage comes from maximizing human potential. Human potential is the last great opportunity for the creation of wealth. It is a giant trove of treasure just waiting to be uncovered. It is the magical elixir that will propel the world from scarcity thinking into the enlightened and innovative new world of global cooperation.
In his book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith shared the insight that when nations specialize and trade they all become richer. Mass communications allows us to share knowledge globally at the click of a button. As we move from a competitive paradigm to a cooperative world view we can raise the standard of living for all human beings and the noble goals of the eradication of hunger, poverty and financial servitude can finally be achieved.
THE ART OF MANAGING WELL
MAXIMIZING HUMAN POTENTIAL
For much too long the world has embraced the wrong kind of leader. Our model has been one of the great, visionary, all-knowing genius who has a magical gift for leadership. This concept has led us to search for that special gifted individual who will take us from mediocrity to greatness. We search high and low for these special people. We differentiate through grading systems in school. We apply a bell curve that stratifies human beings for the purpose of uncovering the great among us. We offer massive salaries, perks and special privileges to entice the people we believe are worthy into positions of leadership. But all too often we realize that success is created by external forces and not by the genius of leaders.
I think that stratification, incentives, and special privileges have not brought us the sustainable rewards that we expect. I believe that we have wasted valuable resources and energy pursuing a wrong minded ideology. The truth is that all human beings have the ability to lead. As we learn to maximize human potential we will see an exponential growth explosion in wealth unlike anything the world has ever seen.
As I present seminars all across the United States I ask participants if they are being fully utilized at work. I ask them whether or not they believe that they could be more productive if they were given greater responsibility, authority, and resources. The answer is always a resounding “YES!†From janitor to manager, the vast majority of people believe they could be better utilized by their employer and more productive in the workplace.
The reason we are not maximizing human potential is because we believe that human beings are the tools to bring about the vision of genius leaders. When we talk to these leaders, if they're honest, they admit that they do not have any special insights or mysterious understanding beyond what is available to all people through education and experience. What leaders do is gamble on their ideas. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they are not. If they are lucky, they have more successes than failures and are widely admired as geniuses.
The more we look at the concept of leadership, the more we realize that the truly successful leaders are the ones who build cooperative teams. They empower the team with authority to act and rely on the team to create success. This is the only way to create a sustainable success beyond the tenure of the leader.
Truly great organizations create systems that build and maximize the potential of future leaders. In this way they systematically create a sustainable rejuvenation of leadership. I suggest that this philosophy needs to be applied to the entire organization if we are interested in the explosion in wealth creation that I am talking about.
The concept of management needs to be completely turned around. The most important people in any organization are frontline workers. The job of top management is not to be visionary geniuses but instead to discover, organize, teach, train, mentor, build, and maximize the potential of all human beings in the organization.
