Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage

Preface

"I am fed up with being told it, and I am not going to listen anymore!" This outburst captures my reaction to hearing executives say how important their employees are. Time after time I have heard senior managers say, "People are my organization's most important asset" or "Employees are number one in my organization." Sounds good, but in many organizations, there's an enormous gap between the rhetoric and the reality. In too many organizations, people are not treated as important assets, and it seems particularly insincere and inappropriate when managers persist in saying they are.

Of course, it is one thing for me to say that organizations don't treat people as their most important asset—it is another to specify what an organization needs ...