These companies were built, or in some cases rebuilt, with one goal in mind—to maximize human contribution. This aspiration is the animating spirit of humanocracy, and stands in stark contrast to the bureaucratic obsession with control. Both goals are important, but in most organizations, the effort spent on ensuring conformance is a vast multiple of the energy devoted to enlarging the capacity for human impact. This gross imbalance is dangerous for organizations, a drag on the economy, and ethically troubling.

As you may have noticed, people with power are typically reluctant to give it up, and often have the means to defend their prerogatives. This is a serious impediment, since there’s no way to build a human-centric organization without flattening the pyramid.

We must be no less radical in rethinking the foundations of human organizations. Like our forebears, we must do our part to emancipate the human spirit. It is here we find a cause worth serving—to build organizations that give every human being the opportunity to thrive.

However daunting, even the most entrenched problems yield to courage and tenacity. We must not flinch or look away. Instead, we must confront what we have long known —our organizations are incapacitated by their inhumanity.

True to the spirit of humanocracy, Nucor’s model isn’t about pushing employees to do more, but giving them the opportunity to be more—more than blue-collar workers, more than order takers, more than mere operators, more than employees. Nucor’s frontline team members are experts, innovators, risk takers, and owners.