There are three primary resources for every organisation: capability (not people!), information, and money.
The last two support capability. Capability generates better information and more money. So capability matters most. Conventional management today understands money very well, is getting better at managing information, but it lets much latent potential of capability go to waste.
Conventional management treats the custodians of capability badly and pays the cost: disengagement, churn. People are not your assets: slavery is illegal. You have no human capital stock. You rent the service from staff of hosting and providing your organisational capability asset for you. So you better be nice to them if you want to keep and grow the asset. Don’t reduce their ability or desire to provide it, or worse still throw them overboard as ballast, or burn them for fuel.
– from the first draft of our new book, The Open Executive.