Do you work for a company that claims “Our people are our foundation”?
Maybe it’s that “People are our biggest asset” or phrased in another fashion.
“Our heart is our people” perhaps?
All of these sound noble and high-minded. Does your lived experience match?
For many, unfortunately, no.
All of these metaphorical framings betray themselves.
Metaphor Alert
Metaphor Alert, for me, is observing the behavior that goes with a metaphor, and seeing where it fails.
“Our people are our foundation.” Sounds good, everything you do is built on top of your people’s efforts.
But how often do you actually pay attention to your foundation?
If your doors start to jam or stick, you fix the door. When you see cracks in the walls, you patch and paint them again.
It takes fairly significant damage to look at the foundation as a root cause, and by then it’s an expansive repair effort involving lots of labor, time, and money.
And once the “repair” is done, you still likely have damage to fix throughout the building.
Similarly, most organizations don’t look at their “foundation” and take care of it. When symptoms of poor people culture appear, they’re fixed as one-off problems, not as a systemic issue.
By the time leadership realizes that the “foundation” has been damaged, it may be too late.
Same thing for a “heart” – very few people pay attention to their heart health until the first (or second, or third) heart attack hits.
Many expensive hospital visits and medications later, things get “back to new normal” with limits and boundaries on what activities are possible. Things are rarely as capable as they were before.
Metaphorical Wisdom
If your people are your “foundation,” then take care of it.
A proactive homeowner inspects regularly for cracks, maintains proper grading to avoid moisture build-up, and checks gutters, sprinklers, and plumbing for leaks that could erode soil underneath the slab.
A proactive business engages with actual live humans, not through annual “anonymous” surveying but continually, with genuine curiosity and respect. Leaders check and reflect on the integrity and transparency of communications, and on the consistency of actions in demonstrating value for team members.
You can treat your “foundation” like a chunk of inert material you build things on, or like the key to everything you build. And if you’re one of the builders and not the owner, you can make it a goal to work for one that sees you as more than concrete.
You can do this. I can help.