Employee satisfaction studies tell organizations it is important to treat employees as people. Historically there have been many humanistic movements to put the P back into personnel or the human back into human resources management. Attempts to have meaningful inclusion of employees in company management tend to fail. Calling employees by any other title still means they are employees. No one is fooled. Putting popcorn machines in the break room is no substitute for changing ineffective core management processes. A relaxed dress code doesn’t add to the employee paycheck. And the real problem is the overall shortage of resources. Vast quantities of resources once available are no long in such abundant supply. Look at natural resources as examples. Timber, coal, and water all have histories of abuse.

Management has also plundered natural resources of organizations. Consider what separates you from your competition. It’s not money, because that has a limit. Neither is it technology or information because everyone can acquire those. These resources have boundaries or finite limits. The one resource that has no boundaries, is unlimited in size, and is basically free for the asking is intellectual capital. People’s brainpower is your only differentiation. Ironically, companies are busy downsizing, giving away the very resource that makes the difference. Traditionally the American solution was to throw more effort and resources at a problem until it was overwhelmed. That is a brute-force solution in times of plenty. It works if you have unlimited resources. What happens when you have a limited supply of people, materials, and money? How do you still make your plan work?