The Human Asset Manifesto

While dysfunctional human relationships are a widely studied topic, it isn’t common to equate dysfunctionality to the relationships between organizations and their workforce. In his new book The Human Asset Manifesto; What Happens When Organizations Allow People The Freedom To BE, Jonathan Ledwidge makes the bold assertion that organizations are not only socially dysfunctional but they subjugate and destroy the human spirit! Managers often say good things about the importance of people but very seldom mean it, comments Ledwidge. This can be seen from the rightsizing, downsizing, reorganizing and outsourcing that happens with unabashed frequency. These actions represent a failure to comprehend the true value of people and people processes. Worse still, this cycle is constantly repeated even when it obviously doesn’t work.