I
t appears that the old aphorism, "people are our most important asset," is actually true. Compelling evidence suggests that organizational success comes more froin managing people effectively than from attaining large size, operating in a highgrowth industry, or becoming lean and mean through downsizing-which, after all, puts many of your most important assets on the street for the competition to employ. But while many leaders believe that putting people first makes strategic sense, all too few of their organizations do it.
What can you actually do to implement high-performance management practices and enjoy the benefits that will almost certainly accrue? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers-if there were, this strategy would not be such an important foundation for sustainable competitive success. But there are things that high-performing organizations do that can spur new thinking about the question.
Achieving profits through people requires consistent leadership attention-and that is the biggest barrier to success. The scarcest resource in most organizations is time and attention-what leader has enough? Time spent focusing on one thing cannot be spent on others, and too often quarterly financial results crowd out the long-term management of people. Leaders of truly successful organizations-such as Whole Foods Markets, Southwest Airlines, the Men's Wearhouse, and AES Corporationsee their role as systems architects, engaged in the critical task of building values, cultures, and a set of management practices that enable the recruitment, retention, development, and motivation of outstanding people. They also engage in the important work of building work practices that ensure that the ideas of all people become known and used.
Whole Foods, which has grown in the 1990s from $100 million to $1 billion in sales-in the grocery business, no less-is famous for its use of self-managed teams.