Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose

Preface

People are our most important asset. 'We are a knowledge-based company.' 'All we have is our people.' These are statements we hear more and more. Yet for many people the reality of life in an organization is that they do not feel they are treated as the most important asset, or that their knowledge is understood or used. The reality of working in contemporary organizations was starkly described in Human Resource Strategy; Corporate Rhetoric and Reality^[1] which I wrote with the Leading Edge research team. I came away from this research with three messages. First, that in many companies people do not feel inspired, engaged or free to voice their opinion. Second, that there has been no uniform progress in people management over the six years ...