“People are our organization’s most valuable asset.”
I hear it all of the time. I hear this so often that I made it the first sentence in my upcoming book, Aha Moments in Talent Management (ASTD Press, 2014). I always ask CEOs to tell me what they consider to be their organization’s most valuable asset. As reliably as a knee jerking up seconds after being whacked with a little rubber hammer, this sentence comes flying back at me before I’ve even finished asking the question. This response has come to be so predictable that I’m beginning to believe it’s taught on the first day of CEO School.
So I’ve taken to asking a more revealing question: “Does your organization behave every day as if it truly believed people were its most valuable asset?” While I believe most CEOs are sincere when they answer the initial question, this one elicits a wider variety of responses. Some are cautious (“Maybe not every day”), while others are a bit diplomatic and optimistic (“Perhaps not, but we’re working on it, and we’re on our way”). But last week I received a response that surprised me in its honesty and lack of qualification. After a moment’s thought, this person answered, “Definitely not.”
Faced with this level of brutal honesty, I thought I should pursue. “Why not?” I asked. After considering the question, he answered, “When I said our people were our greatest asset, I said it because I believe it to be true. But most of our practices have been in place long before I got here and are not based on valuing people. As I think about it, it’s less about practices and more about mindset.”
I continued with my questioning. “So what would it take to get your organization to behave as if it truly believed people were the most valuable asset?”
Again, he answered honestly: “It’s an interesting question. We need to ultimately change mindset, but it’s easier to change behaviors than mindset. And let’s face it—our rewards system is predicated on results, not people management. I realize that good people management is the best pathway to results, but we’re just not there yet in terms of our management practices, measurement systems, and rewards.”
And there we have it. We pay lip service to people being our most valuable asset and to encouraging our managers to hire, develop, engage, and retain talent, but we don’t reward them for these behaviors, and we haven’t yet mastered how to measure these outcomes. You can’t expect to see a change in behaviors unless you hold people accountable, and you can’t hold people accountable unless you know how to measure results.
So how can we do a better job? I have some ideas that I’ll be sharing on May 5 at ASTD 2014 during my session, The Role of Learning & Development in Talent Management, and I look forward to having conversations about this throughout the conference.
