Perhaps the biggest mistake business leaders make is to assume that people are resources like any other. The truth is that people are resources unlike any other. At the heart of many business disasters is the misunderstanding that people and man-hours are one and the same.

A close friend of mine is a regional program manager for a successful software business, and she is looking for an escape. The business is under new leadership and has been reorganized. Much of that reorganization was important and necessary because the old leadership had become ineffectual.

An unfortunate side effect of the overhaul is that many of the legacy program managers and sales personnel have been reassigned or removed. Business sales have fallen drastically, and the sales teams are being punished. My friend is surviving very well, for the moment, but she sees writing on the wall that isn’t good.

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