One of my favorite thinkers and futurists is Erwin McManus. Erwin is a pastor in Los Angeles with a freaky good ability to take simple thoughts and communicate them with wow! I am reading his new book, Wide Awake and the following blurb resonates with my belief on what we should be doing with our human capital:
The word resource is not one of those instantaneously compelling words. Actually it is a really boring word. It just means stuff, supply, things, materials.
But the word resourceful is a very exciting word. When you look at the word resourceful, it means ingenious, creative, imaginative, quick-witted.When you stop at resource, you're at best a human container of gifts and talents and intellect, passions and abilities, but you do nothing with that resource, essentially you are boring. When you become resourceFUL and start really pulling out the stuff God has placed inside of you and start drawing on that creativity, intellect, talent, and experience that God stored within you and start becoming resourceful, then you become extraordinary..."
As I rushed through this and allowed my own inspirations to move, I began to think in terms of the human resources of a business. We are at a stage in organizational design where a sweeping change is required. Too many have relegated their Human Resources to just that -- bodies! I bet most people think of an HR "department" when they think of "Human Resources" and not the actual humans doing the push-ups throughout the business every day.
Corporations must go from monitoring and supporting their Human Resources to creating Resourceful Humans. If we just have our people punch in - do a job - and punch out, then we have made them a resource, and merely a resource that will decay unless developed.
Your organization is "FUL" of people with unique gifts and talents that can likely generate great things for your business. I could unpack this whole idea over several pages...keeping it to just one post is too confining.
For now, just really let this settle with you. Are you viewing your people as resources or are you developing them to be "FUL?"