Editor’s Note: Welcome to new subscribers. Day 149 of the Great Con II. The theatrics in place of leadership found a new target this week by purposely focusing on a Democratic state (California) with a majority minority city (Los Angeles). And by the time you read this, a Soviet-style parade will have been completed. See it and understand the difference between leadership and the facade of leadership. One works for peace, the other works for chaos..

Late addition: the Israeli strike on Iran has a number of features that a discerning mind must take into account. While Israel has participated in indiscriminate killing in Gaza, the preemptive strikes on Iran have so far been very targeted, going after “the head of the snake” and brick and mortar facilities. This is similar to what Ukraine accomplished two weeks ago in response to Russia’s indiscriminate killing of innocents.

Even in war, there are just and unjustifiable actions. Treating human populations as collateral damage is unjustified. Strategic targeting, accomplished under the right premises, can be justifiable. (Would the world have benefited if Hitler perished during WWI?).

Iran has been under an authoritarian-religious based leadership for four decades now, having come to power by revolution and then seizing the functions of democracy to stay in power (remember that when it comes to MAGA). It is possible the regime will now collapse.

This strike will also set Russia back. This is part of the bigger picture. Russia no longer has a foothold in Syria with the fall of the Assad family, and Iranian drones sent to support the invasion of Ukraine may come to a stop.

If these Israeli strikes remain targeted, it could establish a new direction for the entire region, with people pushing out their authoritarian leadership, including in Israel. A more likely and worrisome outcome is the rise of another round of suicide bombers and direct attacks on American assets to drag us deeper in. Stay tuned. War typically begets more war, and a certain brand of leaders thrive on purposeful chaos.

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Our daughter started a second job a couple months ago. The first two days were nothing but videos, policies, and electronic signatures of understanding before she even got to the actual work part. Our sons have gone through the same thing. They are all perceptive and asking questions about this stuff we parents call “adulting”.

Why must all these papers be signed and read, and who reads them and what’s the purpose.

I find that each generation serves the last best when it asks why the hell are you doing that?

There is much about workplaces that have become so standard and monotonous, we turn our brains off and accept it as the price of having a job. We wait for advancement to come instead of us developing a continuous improvement mindset and asking why.

It’s a wasteful introduction to “adulting.”

I feel a bit embarrassed over it for my kids.

In our household, we have near seventy years of workplace experience. As both a manager and an employee, I have more often found myself in a bind between perceptions and reality when it comes to the proper use of HR. While the perception of HR is molded as a support system to the employee, our reality has been quite different.

This got me to wondering whether this has been a universal experience for most when it comes to dealing with HR. Was the originating concept purposeful or accidental? Did HR begin as a “worker protection” type initiative, or was it avoiding liability?

The concept of "human resources" emerged in the late 19th century when economist John R. Commons first used the term, framing workers as capital assets comparable to machinery. This industrial-era mindset birthed the first personnel departments, designed to manage growing workforces through standardized policies and procedures. The intent was to offer protections and support, but as the decades passed, HR evolved, perhaps encompassing more of the man as a piece of machinery than man as an individual.

I’ve had some interesting HR experiences. In almost every instance, the results depended upon the interpretation (feelings, hunch, gut) of an attorney, which might include is it worth the risk or is it more work for me? There’s been cases where we worked for protection of a employee who does a great job but not by the policy, or we worked to remove a staff member who did everything by the book but was cancerous to the team.

If there’s one thing that I see as a contradiction with modern HR, it’s the protection of perception over reality. The effort to make one size fit all through policy and procedure has made it harder to be more of a unique and capable human resource.

That’s what I’m embarrassed to pass on.

But we could be at a breaking point, especially with the arrival of AI.

I don’t see my kids, the millennial and Gen Z generation of workers, putting up with a lot of what we do in terms of bureaucratic controls and wastes of time. They are more interested in workplaces that value purpose over policies. They look with scorn at procedures backed by entrenched personalities or ideology.

Artificial intelligence, coupled with a complete reframing of humans as a resource, has the potential to change a lot of the traditional HR functions.

In a previous position, I made a presentation on the rise of AI that was met mostly with silence and a bit of disdain. The reality is that AI will replace many of the HR functions that are time-consuming. It will negate some of the fear and risk aversion that drives many questions and decisions. It will delete the need for procedural activities and disrupt the empowered policy pusher.

But a word of caution.

The quality of an AI tool will ultimately depend on how human-like its programmers make it and how much the structure of HR changes (it will be the greatest irony if AI ultimately helps us to be more human to each other).

Consider this model in the Netherlands.

The Dutch home healthcare company Buurtzorg was founded in 2006 by nurse Jos de Blok. It changed HR by eliminating managers entirely. It has 10,000 nurses that operate in autonomous teams of 12, making all decisions collectively from patient care to budgeting. The "HR department" consists of 45 coaches supporting these 900+ teams, not directing them. This structure produced staggering results: nurses spend 60% of time with patients (versus 30% industry average), reduced hospital readmissions by 33%, and cut healthcare costs by 40%.

Instead of enforcing policies, coaches help teams navigate challenges while maintaining core principles: humanity over bureaucracy, client empowerment over dependency, and trust over surveillance. Teams hire their own members, manage budgets, and interface directly with community resources. There is much less hierarchy and distance in decision-making (see last week’s issue on the perils of Distant Decisonmaking).

There’s also Sociocracy 3.0-a consent-based model replacing top-down policies with distributed authority. At a German factory adopting this approach, employees propose HR policies through "objection rounds" requiring reasoned critiques, and they peer reviewed for compensation.

Think about how different of approach that is from everything we are familiar with.

Under this model, which you can watch and learn about here, HR-related grievances dropped 68% in two years as employees co-created flexible policies that were more responsive to production cycles. The factory now outperforms competitors in both productivity and worker satisfaction metrics.

These models share some commonalities that have simply not been tried in the modern workplace. Those closest to the work decide who the team needs, there is more transparency in decision-making, and more coaching instead of looking for problems.

New models like these combined with AI has the opportunity to put the human back in human resources. It will be less patriarchal and more collegial. For American companies facing AI and a younger workforce, more radical models like these are needed.

And they work.

When you treat professionals as responsible adults rather than resources to control, they often surpass bureaucratic expectations. The concerns for liability and hierarchical control are less prevalent.

The history of HR may have begun as an effort to enhance the workforce, but it is more likely regarded as a mediator with purposeful weight toward the employer. The models and generation emerging today suggest a better approach toward organizations that recognize people as more than just tools.

In an age of quiet quitting, forced returns to central offices, more weight given to legalities over progress, and impending AI disruption, the companies that will thrive are those courageous enough to let go of controlling "human resources" and start cultivating human potential with the tools and freedoms they deserve.

The most valuable resource any organization possesses is the creativity and collective intelligence that emerges when people are truly empowered.

It is the natural progression if we don’t fear it.

This is a really interesting piece. The WSJ put together a diverse group chat to seek thoughts on current issues. Read the back and forth, and then the comments. There is one common trend. We are in love with our own opinion. The question is whether we will change our opinion in the face of facts.

We may need to start from places of consensus again and then get into current issues. Here's what I mean. Slavery in America was wrong. Everyone should have access to a doctor. Greed is not good.

I believe that most Americans are of good character and are going to find common ground on these things (recognizing that probably 10% of the population is nuts).

That's an opinion.

Then you can get into issues such as individuals here illegally should be treated like criminals. In some cases, maybe yes, and in some cases, maybe no. ICE rounding up workers with no consideration of whether they’ve been here twenty years working peacefully? That’s the real grit you must get into and not take a shortcut to a 15-mile mentality.

As one reader pointed out, it would make this piece more relevant to include where people are getting their information. We know for a fact outlets like Fox feed only selected narratives. If that is their main source of “facts” and there's no actual interest in deeper research, like reading books, that's a problem.

If you want to go down a wormhole of the split American psyche right now, take a look at the comments in this one and the effort by the moderators to enforce some decorum. Social media has been one of the greatest achievements of technology, but it has also empowered a lot of evil and ignorance. It’s let the idiots find each other a lot easier.

It’s not the first time society has been upended by change, but it could be the last if we don’t grow with it, and learn how to use it wisely and properly.

I like these time-lapse videos and this one has a lot of contemplation to it. This is the first time I believe I’ve posted from the Nextdoor App, so hope it works properly for you. I applaud people that do this for the beauty and serenity, to set up a camera and take a long video and watch nature at work over a day. Moments like this help to ground us, to understand how unique and rare we are in a cosmic train that has been going on for a billion years and will continue long after us. Watch it and be in awe.

I’m sure most of you have noticed the increased consumption of chicken in the United States. In my area, there are now several franchises specializing in chicken, where there was once only a couple. I remember the days when a Chick-fil-A sandwich was something you got in the mall with a lemon pie, and you always hoped someone would bring a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to the church potluck.

I’m always interested to see how entrepreneurs take a product we’re familiar with and put their own spin on it. It is a sure sign of a system that supports innovative thinking. It’s happening all around us with air conditioning systems, vacuums, glasses, battery technology, and so on. Even the chicken sandwich. There are no Dave’s Hot Chicken where I am, but rest assured, it won’t be long until there’s one around.

While I enjoy variety, I’ve not enjoyed the franchise saturation that has gobbled up and homogenized most cities in America. I wish we had more care for local tastes and aesthetics. We would serve our communities better by at least making these cookie-cutter storefronts be more unique and regional in their design.

These are trying times, but as mentioned in one of the links shared above, ground yourself in goodness. There were a lot of peaceful protests around the nation this weekend. A job well done that we all needed to see.

Be at peace, but don’t be complacent, and continue to be a good human.

RIP Brian Wilson. Thank you for sharing the love and the vision.