What is a business without the people that help to achieve the vision and strategy? People are the most important asset a company has. Without people the organisation is nothing.
We have all heard these well-intended words before and yet when many of us go to work we feel that we are treated much like any other resource the company uses at its disposal in order to get the job done. In other words people are seen as an expense when recorded by accountants. There is no correlating entry into accounting that lists the actual value of the people, their skills and experience to a company.
So what happens is that human beings are turned into human doings and ‘managed’ like any other resource. And when we speak of a resource we want to pay as little as possible and get as much benefit as possible. Here I would like to refer to the way that we have utilised natural resources, financial resources and off-course the most valuable resource – time!
If we look at the trend we can see an overhasty approach that indiscriminately exploits all the resources that we have in the service of, many times, an empty outcome. WHY?
So, yes! – We do utilise people as we do other resources. If we want to improve the way we work with people we need to think of how we go about our relationships in general. In order to do business we don’t need resources, we need relationships. The awareness of how these relationships, from natural to human, have an impact on our present and our future is the art of connectedness.
