Creating A Human-Centric Business Approach
In today’s increasingly dynamic, post-pandemic business landscape, human-centered leadership is more important than ever. The last few years have underscored much-needed changes for employee well-being and accommodation in countless industries. This is, in turn, creating new opportunities for leaders to integrate and normalize such factors within their infrastructure, policy and product output.
Still, even as our collective leadership ideology becomes more empathetic and progressive, the reality is that human-centric transformation remains, in many ways, an enigmatic challenge. I believe that we must navigate this change carefully, balancing proactive action with nuanced planning and an inherent desire to challenge longstanding norms.
There are many elements to consider when fostering a more human-centric business, but in my experience, I have found that leaders can boil their aspirations down to three critical variables: culture, value and consistency.
Strengthening Internal Culture
Genuine human-centered infrastructure can only exist atop a solid internal foundation, and this starts with auditing your business’s existing workplace culture. Productive, fruitful working relationships are conducive to success regardless of goal or initiative, and leaders can achieve this by implementing factors like more collaborative initiatives, opportunities for ongoing employee development and effective approaches to interpersonal communication. Above all, I suggest establishing a clear thread between expectation and recognition, taking care to acknowledge employees’ accomplishments and remaining open to feedback along the way; this helps normalize a blend of hard work and holistic design.
These changes can quickly create a sense of mutual empathy, stronger comprehension and boosted morale-all of which can enhance corporate efficiency and strengthen the consumer experience without sacrificing worker welfare.
Redefining Value
In dissecting the modern human-centered organization, IBM notes how important it is to challenge the notion of business value, comparing the human-centric model to traditional business metrics. While many traditional metrics remain relevant in a practical, revenue-focused sense, they ultimately fail to address drivers of true human-centric design-namely, “the value of an enterprise to its users and customers, the welfare of its employees and the resilience of the organization in the midst of external threats.”
I think these facts highlight the need for redefined value in a cultural, transactional and existential sense. In the wake of various macroeconomic events and societal shifts, the common thread between these fields is equity. As previously noted, workers should receive every opportunity to grow, succeed and remain safe and heard within your company’s unique operational parameters, but I believe that this equitable consciousness should also expand to the broader marketplace.
All developmental and marketing stages of a service or product should reflect a deep awareness of your consumer base, centering on crucial factors like social awareness, safety, inclusion and transparency. Such considerations are now a solidified, inevitable part of business viability in 2023 as the world evolves to become more progressive and forward-thinking.
Upholding Consistency
It may seem simple in theory, but consistency is perhaps the most vital principle for creating and upholding a human-centric business. It is not enough to lead a one-off audit of your company on behalf of workers and consumers; those changes should be a regular touchpoint in ongoing business development.
Retrain your leadership perceptions to include employee well-being, consumer-appropriate design and messaging-look to embody a dedication to social responsibility as an industry figure. To do this, you must constantly ask yourself: Are my intentions for human-centric design genuine? Do they stand to solve problems both internally and societally, putting such matters on a level field with bolstered efficiency and increased revenue? Anything less than a yes could be a quick path to performativity.
As real people sit at the core of human-centric design, I see this prevailing concept remaining a relevant part of business design and ideology. Adapting your business based on decency and consideration is not only a key part of staying competitive-it is a means of aligning your corporate values with the right side of history and doing your part to benefit the world at large.
Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.
About Dylan Taylor
Dylan Taylor is a global business leader, commercial astronaut, thought leader and philanthropist. Currently, Dylan serves as Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space, a multi-national space exploration firm focused on building the next generation of space infrastructure for NASA and other global space agencies.
Dylan has been recognized by Harvard University, SpaceNews, the BBC, the Financial Times, Pitchbook,CNBC, CNN and others as having played a seminal role in the growth of the private space industry. As an early-stage investor in more than 50 emerging space ventures, including Axiom, Kepler, York, Astrobotic, LeoLabs, Relativity, and Planet, Dylan is widely considered the most active private space investor in the world.
Dylan’s technical background, global business experience and unbridled passion for space make him a unique figure within his industry. As a thought leader and futurist, he has written many popular pieces on the future of the space industry for Forbes, FastCompany, Newsweek, SpaceNews, The Space Review, and Space.com. As a speaker, Dylan has keynoted many of the major space conferences around the world and has appeared regularly on Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNBC.
Dylan has extensive global business experience as both a board director and CEO in several industries, including advanced electronics, finance and real estate. He previously served as a Director for UMB Bank, a Fortune 500 company based in Kansas City and as a mutual fund director for the Jackson Funds where he oversaw assets of $8B across 130 distinct funds. He has also served in the roles of CEO, President and Board Director for multinational companies like Prudential PLC, Honeywell, Colliers and Jones Lang LaSalle. Dylan was recognized as a Fortune 1000 CEO with P&L responsibility in excess of $3B and operations encompassing 15,000 employees in over 60 countries. In addition, Dylan has participated in 4 IPOs over the course of his career.
Dylan is a leading advocate of space manufacturing and the utilization of in-space resources to further space exploration and settlement. In 2017, he became the first private citizen to manufacture an item in space when the gravity meter he co-designed and commissioned was 3D printed on the International Space Station. The historic item is now housed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Dylan is an explorer of note. On December 11th, 2021 Dylan became just the 606th human to go to space as part of the crew of Blue Origin’s NewShepard Mission 19. Accordingly, Dylan earned his commercial astronaut wings with the FAA and his universal astronaut wings from the Association of Space Explorers.
He is also one of only a handful of humans to have descended to the deepest part of the world’s oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench as part of the Limiting Factor Expedition in July of 2022. In that mission, Dylan descended with pilot Victor Vescovo to a depth in excess of 10,800 meters (35,500 feet) into an area of the Mariana Trench that had never been visited by humans. Dylan is the youngest human to have been to the deepest part of the world’s oceans and crossed the Karman line into Space. Dylan has been a member of the Explorers Club since 2014.
Dylan maintains an extensive philanthropic impact on the space industry. In 2017, Dylan founded the nonprofit and social movement, Space for Humanity, which seeks to democratize space exploration and develop solutions to global issues through the scope of human awareness to help solve the world’s most intractable problems. Space for Humanity has successfully sent two citizen astronauts to space via Blue Origin including both the first Mexican-born woman (Katya Echazareta), and first African-born woman (Sara Sabry). Building upon his passion and support for the space industry, Dylan serves as a strategic advisor for both the Archmission and the Human Spaceflight Program and is a co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which promotes the growth of commercial space activity. Additionally, he is also a leading benefactor to the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and Mission: Astro Access.
Dylan is the founder and Chairman of Multiverse Media, an integrated global media company focused on science and technology, with an emphasis on space. Multiverse is the parent company of the popular space philosophy website 2211.world as well as the Ad Astra Dinners, a Jeffersonian-style dinner series featuring some of the world’s leading influencers discussing the future of humanity in space. Another subsidiary of Multiverse Media, Multiverse Publishing, publishes books by leading authors including Frank White, Isaac Asimov and Gerard K. O’Neill. Multiverse is also the executive producer of the documentary film, The High Frontier and the forthcoming film, Fortitude.
For his influence as a global leader and his commitment to creating a positive impact on the world, Dylan has been honored with numerous personal and professional accolades in recent years. The World Economic Forum recognized Dylan as a Young Global Leader in 2011 and a full member of the World Economic Forum in 2014. That same year he was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2020, Dylan was recognized by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with their top honor for business and finance, following in the footsteps of 2019’s inaugural winner, the late Paul Allen
and subsequent winners Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
Dylan Taylor earned an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago and holds a BS in Engineering from the honors college at the University of Arizona, where he graduated Tau Beta Pi and in 2018 was named Alumnus of the year. He is also a graduate of the Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century program at Harvard University.
Dylan and his family reside in Denver, Colorado where he is active locally with Colorado Concern and theColorado Spaceport. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons and spending time outdoors. As a weekend warrior athlete, Dylan has more than 25 top ten finishes and 25 age group wins to his credit, and he regularly interviews world class athletes whom have shown extraordinary resilience as the host of the Legendary Podcast. He is married to legal expert, consultant and author Gabrielle V. Taylor with whom he has two teenage daughters.
