Imagine this: You get a call in the middle of the night—your entire business facility has been destroyed by a fire. Every machine, desk, and piece of equipment is gone. You’d immediately start calculating the steps to rebuild: insurance claims, replacement costs, and timelines. It would be hard, but with time and resources, you could recover.
Now imagine a different scenario: You show up for work, and every single person on your team is gone. No employees. No expertise. No institutional knowledge. No relationships with your customers. How would you rebuild?
The truth is, you can’t. Equipment and buildings are replaceable. Your people are not.
This thought experiment underscores why leaders need a clear understanding: team members are not expenses, in fact they are the only appreciating assets. Unlike machines that lose value over time, your people—when invested in—can increase their value, skills, and contributions exponentially.
I once presented this idea to a board of directors while requesting a budget for employee development. Predictably, they pushed back, asking, “Why does this cost so much?” So, I came prepared. I’d gathered data on how much the company spent annually to maintain equipment—assets that we knew would depreciate to zero over time. The equipment maintenance budget was 6.5 times the training request I was making.
My argument was simple: “We willingly invest in maintaining these depreciating assets. Why wouldn’t we invest even a fraction of that in developing our most important appreciating asset—our people?” To be fair, I knew it was not a completely fair comparison, but it made everyone think. We assume people arrive with skills and experience, but industries evolve, and so must the capabilities of our people and teams. Continuing education, training, and development shouldn’t be seen as optional; they’re necessary investments in our organization’s future.
If we truly believe that people are our greatest resource, perhaps we can do more to act on that belief. Allocate a budget for development. Create opportunities for growth. Because the biggest risk to your business isn’t a burned-down building—it’s a team of people who are just as competent today as they were 5 years ago.