Your Most Important What?

“Our people are our most important asset.”

That corporate cliche became popular in the mid-late 20th century. I wish we had left it there.

Maybe it was a leadership guru.
Maybe it was an HR professional.
Or maybe a PR firm.

No one definitively knows who came up with the trite phrase or when it was first stated. It’s been in innumerable employee handbooks, management textbooks, and even annual reports ever since. Supposedly, referring to people as “assets” sounded people-friendly.

After all, calling people “assets” makes them sound like a competitive advantage, rather than thinking of people as expenses.

But what’s an asset?

In the accounting profession – which existed thousands of years before people were ever referred to as assets – assets have always meant things of economic value that we own, control, expend, and use to pay off liabilities. The only way we could legitimately refer to people with that understanding is if we owned them.

That’s abhorrent.

Why refer to people in financial terms that would make the relationship sound anything like that?

Somewhere down the line, we started thinking of assets as bonus points or something that provided some kind of favorable advantage over other options. I’m not an etymologist, but I think the way we’ve eroded a financial term over time to sound like a great way to refer to the people on our teams is naive at best. Maybe even condescending.

When people are assets, resources, or capital, that makes them a commodity. And when people are a commodity, that makes the employment relationship transactional. When people are considered assets, resources, or capital, we probably treat them like other assets, resources, or capital.

We can do better!

We can build a team of people who are more like partners, who think more like owners. People are better than mere assets. They can be envisioned and have an emotional stake in the culture, clients, team, and vision of the place they work.

When I meet with the leaders of an organization the first time, I frequently ask a question that’s important in my way of thinking.

“What do you want?”

That’s because I believe that those who build companies and create jobs should get what they want out of their vision, their risk, their investment.

Several years ago, I met with the partners in a CPA firm. I posed that question to them. The first partner to speak up said, “Our employees are our most important asset.” I responded pretty directly and said,

“Do me a favor. Don’t ever say that again. What’s an asset?”

At that one of the other partners smirked. I challenged them (as I do many other companies) that if they need to think of those on their team in financial terms, why not think of them as the most important item to invest in.

When people are regarded that way instead of being thought of transactionally, we invest in them, expecting an ROI. That’s how investments work. “Our people are our most important asset.” Most companies say that.

Few think about it.
That’s how cliches work.

When most companies say the same thing, it’s no longer a distinctive; it’s just a common platitude.

We can do better!

We can create ways of referring to our teams that sound more empowering, that actually do convey value. And we can even create ways that are unique to our own team that actually do sound distinctive.

The names, catch phrases, and cliches create an identity. What do you want the identity of the people around you to be – something you own and expend, or something you partner in expecting results from?

You own assets, you don’t own people.

What is your most important asset? Probably your intellectual property.

You own that.