Why People Are Not Your Greatest Asset

"People are definitely a company's greatest asset." —Mary Kay Ash, Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

Why are people not an organization's greatest asset? The short answer is that people are not assets, they're people. To classify a real, live, breathing person as a line item to be leveraged is not only dehumanizing, it is patently unethical. Our people deserve to be recognized for the incredibly diverse, innovative, and rare value they bring to our organizations.

One of the reasons we're seeing high levels of turnover, disengagement, stress, and burnout is because our leaders are perceiving people as assets, resources, things. And why wouldn't they? When you don't acknowledge the humanity of your employees, it's easier to make those "difficult" decisions—you know, terminations, mass layoffs, restructures, rebalances, redundancies, etc.

"A company's employees are its greatest asset, and your people are your product." —Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin

To be fair, many leaders are using the sentiment with good intentions. In fact, Richard Branson is nearly there by suggesting that your people are your product. But what we say and how we say it matters, and even more so when leaders' words fail to match their actions. Too many leaders praise their people publicly while privately treating them as financial levers to balance the books or achieve quarterly targets.

The Driver-Car Analogy

OK, let's ignore the semantics for a moment and consider a reality in which people truly are the greatest “asset” a company has, like so many of our modern-day CEOs allegedly believe. Perhaps, then, the problem isn’t acknowledging the greatest asset but utilizing it.

If our leaders are like drivers, then their people are vehicles. The problem is that most CEOs only know how to drive a regular car, like a sedan, say a Dodge Stratus. Their people, however, are high-performance vehicles, like a Formula 1 car. Most leaders are ill-equipped to take advantage of such a powerful machine, so when a traditional sedan-driving manager gets behind the wheel of a precision, high-speed racing car, it’s dangerous, and a lot of people (and cars) stand to get injured or damaged.

"Employees are a company's greatest asset—they're your competitive advantage." —Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox

To continue the analogy, People First Leadership adopts the perspective that people are high-performance vehicles, capable of extraordinary accomplishments. All leaders, therefore, require specialized training in order to "drive" their people safely and successfully. It is foolish to drop an inexperienced, untrained driver in the seat of an F1 car.

The same is true for managers. Organizations have to stop allowing first-time managers to "learn on the job" or "just figure it out." That's a recipe for a serious wreck. Managers need supervised training and development in order to be safe and effective leaders. Coaching, practice, and regular feedback are all crucial components of the equation. Anything less is irresponsible and borderline negligent.

"The greatest asset of a company is its people." —Jorge Paulo Lemann, Co-Founder of 3G Capital

If Not Assets, Then What?

So, what do we call employees if not assets or resources? People. They're so special and full of potential that people deserve to be classified in a category all their own. People represent the single greatest impact on a company's success. And because they are sentient, feeling, living organisms, people deserve extraordinary care and consideration regarding business strategy and decision-making. They cannot be lumped together with assets such as property, equipment, vehicles, cash, etc. People are too much of an outlier. They are much too valuable.

The most important thing we can do as leaders is recognize the incredible value each and every person brings to our organization. Your employees are choosing to spend a significant amount of their most precious resource, time, at your company during arguably the prime years of their lives. What a gift! Our responsibility as leaders is to steward that gift with care, competence, and respect. In this sense, people are not your greatest asset, they're your greatest assignment. People are first.