How companies can unleash employees’ full potential; Sadhguru explains

A human being is not a resource - a human being is a possibility. A possibility means it is yet to be. If well nurtured, everyone is a fantastic possibility; if not nurtured properly, everyone is a serious problem – this is the nature of a human being. Whether it is a family, an institution or an organisation, it is important to understand that a human being is not an established quantity. It is just a possibility because unlike other creatures, we have not come fully developed.

If a tiger is born, it need not sit and worry as to how to become a good tiger. If it just gets enough food, it will become a good tiger. But once you are born as a human being, you have to do many things to become a good human being. Even after doing all those things, you still don't know where you are because what is human is not defined. For every other creature, nature has drawn two lines. They live and die within those two lines. A human being has reached that point of evolution where there are no lines. They can become god-like or an absolute brute.

For example, if you plant a mango seed and nurture it, you do not have to worry whether it will become a coconut tree or a thorn bush. It can only become a mango tree. In a way, human beings are born like a seed too. But with a human being, they could turn into a sage or a sorcerer. Depending on how you nurture a human being, they can become absolutely fantastic or an unimaginable horror.

Today, unfortunately, we are trying to handle human beings like a limited quantity, like a machine – let's get the best out of what we think it is capable of. This is the wrong approach because when I was a five-year-old, no one knew that I would become a Sadhguru. No one recognized that possibility. But companies have become so task-oriented that if someone comes to you at twenty-five, you just say, "This is the task you are good at, just do this." That is a very detrimental way of handling a human being because you are handling them like a quantity.

When you talk about a product, let us say you make soaps, it is a question of quantity because they are material items. But even when it comes to a human being, most companies are only thinking of, "How many soaps can you make as an individual?" If we continue like this, it will look like we are getting some sense of efficiency from people at a given time, but in many ways, we will have stifled the whole possibility.

A human being is not a quantity but a certain quality. A quantity cannot be enhanced, quantities can only happen in addition. If one person is not enough, you can add two people; if two are not enough, you can make it five. But a quality is not like that, it can be enhanced.

It is obviously a massive challenge for a business to maintain the capacity to really nurture a human being without any fluctuations in their productivity. But at the same time, if our interest is in the wellbeing of the human being, and we keep enhancing the human being, you don't have to worry about how many soaps they will make. They will make as many as can be made. But that has not been the focus in the world.

The focus in the world is about making a machine out of a human being. Today, because of information technology and artificial intelligence, we are seeing how to make a human being out of a machine. When this is the case, is it not important that we see how to make a human being as full-fledged as possible? One single company or one HR person cannot do it. It needs to become the culture of a nation, of the world.

Wherever simple machine-like efficiency is needed, we should have machines. A machine will just repeat what has been done continuously with the same level of efficiency in the same product. A human being is not about just efficiency; a human being is about ingenuity, a human being is about creativity, a human being is a possibility that can do something that has never been done till now. That is a human being.  When you unfold this human possibility, that is when we can say you are truly developing the human possibility.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.

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