"People over Profit" - Maybe I was Wrong

I went to lunch Friday with a relatively new contact Megan Yoo Schneider, in a few meetings we've really hit it off in our professional philosophies. In our industry, water/wastewater, incomplete engineering deliverables are common - meaning engineering designs have to be redone, and/or they are moved forward and the facility doesn't work right. It can be the process, equipment, electrical infrastructure, the controls (my line of work), etc. This is also common to maintenance of the infrastructure.

Her take is the design engineering industry is going through a cycle where the need to demonstrate business growth takes precedence over developing and retaining the talent performing the work. She hypothesizes a correction is slowly taking place as a reaction to poor business results. Part of her personal mission is to accelerate this by helping organizations with their strategy and leadership. Megan summarized our discussion as "People over Profit".

Up until our discussion, my impression was "People over Profit" is a political slogan, often repeated by those who demonstrate little business or economics knowledge. However, Megan presented an alternative to the business dynamics that have perplexed me since I started my career: the dominance of convenience and short-term thinking in business.

Some examples to illustrate my view:

• Going with the fastest fix available (see the picture above, this "sphaghetti" control panel is the result of many years of repeated short term decisions)
• Kicking off projects with unclear value propositions and objectives
• Building project schedules without an honest model of time and actual resources
• Choosing the lowest bidder for design or construction
• Moving on from a project when it is actually 90% complete
• Releasing erroneous designs / diagrams "temporarily" to accelerate construction schedule - "we will just issue an addendum later, before the items are ordered / built"
• Hiring fast, firing slow. Being too busy to interview properly and coach people up
• Omitting conscientiousness, self-awareness, and integrity as considerations for promotions to leadership
• Habitually prioritizing immediate completion of tasks over the opportunity to develop staff. The latter takes more time, but is far more valuable to the business long term (increasing a team's skill, capacity, productivity, ideas, retention)
• Implementing technology tools into workflow to fix errors where the root cause is inadequate behavior (good tools can substantially improve efficiency, IF reliable people and processes are in place)
• Prioritizing busyness and the "biggest fire" over defining and planning work (a self-reinforcing behavior that guarantees rework and a perpetual source of fires)
• Measuring short term gains and ignoring trends of long term value (the 2008 crash, recent studies of GE and Heinz, venture capital takeovers come to mind)

Why the stress? Why the drama? Why the extra hours? Why the conflict? Why the poor results? Why lose people? Why the profit loss?

I have formed several theories on why this is common, briefly, these are manifestations of human nature. In-the-moment, optimism feels good, discipline doesn't. As individuals, we can't choose to do differently if we don't understand a decision is counterproductive. If we understand it is counterproductive, but keep doing it, that's where leadership either saves us by asking if we want to work smarter, or maintains the course.

Is making better decisions in this context "People over Profit"? If so I'll be a champion, "putting people over profit" has consistently proven more profitable in my experience.