Most organizations treat their people function as a cost to manage. It sits to the side of the real work of programs, policy, or service. In two decades at the executive table, I have come to see that as the most expensive mistake a leadership team can make.
The organizations that grow without losing themselves share one habit. They treat their people as the heart of the work, not a line to trim. That sounds soft. It is the most practical thing a leader can do.
When people are an afterthought, the question shrinks to how we fill this open role by next month. When people come first, the question grows. Who are we becoming, and who do we want to walk with us. Peter Cappelli reframed talent as something you cultivate over time, the way you would tend any living system, rather than something you scramble to buy when a seat empties (Cappelli, 2008).
I learned this most clearly building a team in partnership with a community. There was no playbook for who to invite first, or how to share power as the team grew. The organizations I later helped lead all had one thing in common. They cared for their people with the same seriousness they brought to their mission.
A few practices show up again and again in the places that get this right.
They make it safe to be honest. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety finds that teams do their best work when people can speak up, admit a mistake, and ask for help without fear (Edmondson, 2019). Care and candor are not opposites. They grow together.
They pay attention to who gets to rise. Talent is spread evenly across every community. Opportunity is not. The leaders I respect look hard at who gets mentored and stretched and promoted. They open those doors wider on purpose.
They invest in managers. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman found that people do not leave companies so much as they leave managers, and that great managers build on each person's strengths (Buckingham and Coffman, 1999). A good manager is how care reaches a person day to day.
None of this is hard to understand. It is hard to fund, because the returns are slower and quieter than a new program launch. But the organizations that invest in their people are the ones still standing, and still whole, long after the founder leaves and the grant ends.
Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (1999). First, Break All the Rules. Simon & Schuster.
Cappelli, P. (2008). Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty. Harvard Business Press.
Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization. Wiley.