The Central Importance of Human Capital

Knowledge in an organization begins and ends with people. The knowledge and experience that employees bring to their work is probably the greatest driver of an organization’s success. What employees know helps to build an organization as well as to preserve, maintain and improve it.

This importance is generally accepted. It is rare to meet a CEO who won’t tell you that his or her organization has the “best people” in the market. But this kind of statement is rarely challenged. Most businesspeople still don’t know how to see beyond the people and understand the employees and managers of an organization as knowledge assets—as human capital.

There are some that are critical of the label “human capital.” To them, it seems to smack of an attitude that people are just nameless cogs in an organization, exploited for their knowledge and experience. We don’t share that view. In fact, we like the term human capital because it is a graphic statement of the fact that people are indeed an asset of the organization. Assets require investment and maintenance. And they are a critical part of the productive capacity of the organization.

To us, this is the realization that matters—that your people are part of your productive capacity, now more so than ever. Because the future of your company depends on what you know rather than what you own. And what you know as an organization is intimately tied to the knowledge and experience of the people in your organization. In looking at human capital, it is helpful to distinguish between employees and managers. Both groups are employees but managers need a set of competencies that is distinct from those required for your value creation processes–I’ll look at each in the next couple posts.

Adapted from Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization