Humans of your workplace

I follow Humans of New York on social media and couldn’t help seeing some semblance and connecting the dots to our organisations as there are definitely loads of learning points.

According to Wikipedia, “Humans of New York (HONY) is a photo blog and bestselling book featuring street portraits and interviews collected in New York City. Started in November 2010 by photographer Brandon Stanton, over 6,000 portraits have been gathered thus far. Humans of New York has developed a large following through social media, and has over 12.1 million followers on Facebook and over 2.8 million followers on Instagram as of April 2015.”

Couldn’t help sharing some of my key take-aways to mull over:

Focus: Brandon started HONY after he was laid off from his job. He may have despaired but he picked himself up and focused

Pursue your passion: He dug deep and figured out what he was passionate about….not history which he studied in University, not bond trading which he had done for a number of years but he pursued his passion – photography.

From Zero to Hero is doable: He was named one of Times 30 under 30 in 2014 – from unemployed to passionate photographer to world changer!

Take a stand: We all inherently have what it takes to transform a hobby into a global sensation and can come to a decision one day

He took candid portraits: He had to have stopped every time he took a picture, to look in the faces of his subjects. Do you take a minute to look at those you work with?

Concern and empathy: He started off taking pictures then ended up asking questions which drew people to him and changed the landscape of his work and purpose

Flexible: Brandon had initially set out to capture 10,000 pictures of New Yorkers and plot them on a map but his first year was just pictures only

Freedom and hard work are also key values he continuously lives: He feels being able to have a certain level of freedom mixed with hard work which he brings to all he does every day, are sustainable success factors.

Zero Entitlement: He figured he really loved what he did and felt like it would catch on after a while. From one of the interview he granted, Brandon said he knew he had to put in a lot of work into HONY before he would expect people to pay attention. Then he drops one of the wisest quotes I’ve heard in 2015 which is “I feel like one mistake new artists make is that they expect people to care about their work before they’ve really demonstrated that they care about it themselves”. Replace ARTIST with employee, staff, team member and there’s renewed insight for leaders.

What do all these points have in common? They are elements of Ownership! Having that entrepreneurial spirit and letting it pitter patter all over your work on a daily basis.

There are obviously humans in your workplace but are there humans of your workplace?  Humans of (fill in your company’s name)

There is a nice ring to it. Can YOU as a leader at your organisation make this happen?

It begins with one human….

Ngozi Adebiyi