Pawns and Tools

"If people are not on your path, then they're in your way"

- Summer Sanford

We graduated college together. So, when we met again about six years later, it was a loud and boistrous reunion. We were good friends in college but had simply lost contact after graduation. Interestingly, though, once we met again, it was as if we had never missed those years. Now, we connect on a regular basis, do business together, and even plan on playing golf together.

During one of our lunches, the words above were so potent that I had to stop lunch and our discussion to appreciate their weight. Subsequently, I typed them into my PDA and would not allow another word as I did so. Summer had basically diagnosed the cancer that is at the center of the human condition...one that blights our "crops" each year.

With each project, I am more and more convinced that people aren't really what their companies claim them to be - "our best asset." Perhaps it's because you cannot "truly" put people on the balance sheet. Whatever the reason might be, it does sound good, though; almost makes the management team sound like they actually care. I question their veracity!

Too many people - good people - have been used as tools and pawns on the corporate chess board. Sucked dry, only to be booted to the curb, these individuals who were "our best asset" are now nothing more than a faded memory. As we traverse the tumultuous post-economic collapse landscape, both management and "people" will have to recognize that every, single pawn is a potential queen...

...a queen that can move in multiple directions with unlimited distance. That means that "people" have to take ownership and personal interest in their growth and development (and stop playing the victim or simply being indifferent); and management has to step up and put their money where their mouth is. If people are their best asset, then they will have to develop them and get them involved. Without this partnership, people remain "in the way" or just another tool or pawn for another's agenda...

Are you a pawn?

(c) 2009, Dr. Kozhi Sidney Makai. No part of this blog post may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written consent of the copyright holder.