Your People are NOT your most important asset

 "WHAT??”, you say.  “Are you serious???    Haven’t you heard the mantra that we all recite to ourselves, and each other, and liberally douse our corporate communications with????  ….. of course people are our most valuable asset!!!!"

Sounds like you are a little surprised to hear me say that people are NOT your most important asset especially as I spend so much time talking about people and their value to the organisation.   The reality is a bit more subtle.  Knowledge is in fact your company's most important asset - and that knowledge resides in, around, and through your people.  When you look at an organisation with this slightly altered light, you may see your people, and the environment you create for them, in different way.

Knowledge can be defined as the 'capacity to act', or the ability to do something, or to make something happen.  For example, you may know how to drive a car meaning you can get in your car, start it, drive it from A to B, safely and within the law, and when you are expert at it, you may even do that with little conscious thought.  You navigate all sorts of variations - even on very familiar journeys, and you can drive off into the unknown and apply your knowledge to new geographies and conditions adding to your knowledge base with each new experience.  But we also know that how well you drive on any particular day can be impacted by all manner of influences.

Your people are the custodians of your corporate knowledge. They take time to acquire it, they constantly hone it and grow it, they build upon it to generate new ways of doing things or new products, they share it and so learn from each other, they combine it with other knowledge to create the future – your company’s future.  In a healthy organisation, knowledge flows smoothly and spontaneously. A workforce that is individually motivated and collectively inspired will make far greater use of their knowledge for the benefit of all.

However, it is very easy to thwart this effect; you could try providing endless policies and procedures to remove any possibility of creativity, or do the opposite and provide little if any leadership so no-one knows what to do.  Consider treating people as a mere resource, ignoring their human needs, or giving them unreasonable targets.  These are all well proven techniques for reducing the flow of knowledge.

Creating the working environment in which your people can thrive will generally have the side effect of enabling your corporate knowledge to thrive and multiply in value. People need the freedom to develop and hone their knowledge and skills and learning is the means by which they do that; people enjoy learning and being able to apply their knowledge, especially if they can see it making a difference and they are recognized for it.

In a rapidly changing world, knowledge has to be constantly updated, honed, and built into the evolving way the company operates.   Truly, the company that learns faster than the competition will have the edge.  And that is down to your people and the working environment and culture you lead them to.

And so yes – knowledge is truly your most valuable asset but it’s your people that create it, use it and make it valuable.

Graham