Running head: LEAD PEOPLE LIKE ORGANISIMS

Lead People Like Organisms Not Machines
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Biblical Application to Roman 12:7 and Exodus 18:1-27

Daniel Fields
Belhaven University
MBA 682
Principles of Executive Leadership
November 12, 2011

Leaders who desire to understand why and how people behave the way they do in the workplace must challenge his or her self to first develop an understanding of how people in an organization should be lead. To develop this understanding a leader can approach this subject by seeking to answer the question, “Should people be lead like they are machines or organisms?” Whichever side is taken to answer this question would significantly affect an individual’s ability to lead others. From an effective leader’s perspective, people are human beings and should not be treated as machines; therefore, they should be lead like organisms. People are living organisms with a variety of individual values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs). To take the approach of leading people like they are programmable machines will result in unsatisfactory visible behavior. This paper will discuss why leaders who use the organisms approach to leadership are more effective by contrasting machines and organisms (people), proving that people are organisms with similarities and differences, and discussing what motivate human behavior. People are living organisms born with two powerful legacies; a genetic inheritance and memes [ (Clawson, 2009) ]. Machines are devices created by people to perform a certain task or job but lack the ability to breath, eat, drink, reproduce, or even think. At birth, people inherit both behavioral tendencies and physical characteristics transferred through genes from their parents. In addition to the genes, people also develop memes, which are the VABEs that are passed on from generation to generation [