Dialectic of the Owner and the Worker

The biggest problem successful owners of small businesses face is to get the increasing amount of work done. They start their business, make a success of it and soon they have more work than they can handle. They then hire people to do the work but often the owners are not happy with their new employees. The problem is that the owners are focused on the work and they want the employees to do it the same way they have been doing it. The new employees can't do this as well as the owner so the owner gives more and more detailed instructions. Soon he's spending more time telling his employees how to do the job than it took him to do the work in the first place. Everyone gets very frustrated and the business suffers.

One of German philosopher Hegel's best known writings is the "Dialectic of the Master and the Slave." It is a study of the relationship of two beings and one aspect of the study is the demonstration how intention and result are often diametrically opposed.

One of the beings becomes the master and the other the slave. The master decides what he wants and the slave does the work to fulfill the master's wishes. But the master finds that his wishes are not being fulfilled as he would like, not as well as if he did the work himself. The problem is that the slave is not able to enjoy the fruits of his labour. He doesn't find fulfillment in doing the master's work, as he would if he were doing his own work. The more the master tries to force the slave to do the work as the master would do it, the more the slave becomes estranged and alienated from the work and the less it is like the master wants. One of Hegel's points is that the master/slave relationship is a primitive one which will not satisfy either party. Instead, the two beings must find a common goal and work together towards it.

Instead of focusing on the work, the business owner should be focusing on his goals and he should be looking for employees to help him achieve them. He should be defining the skills his employees will need to give him that help. He should then hire people who have the required skills, give them the tools needed to use them and tell them what the common goals of the organization are. He should then get out of the way.

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