My brother works with a man that is a Colonel in the U.S. Army and he’s deployed overseas fighting for our country right now. He is a high ranking officer with years of experience, confirmed kills, and multiple tours in battle. He is the ultimate warrior and doesn’t make excuses: exactly what a soldier should strive to be like. When he’s overseas he rarely sees combat and spends a majority of his time planning attacks and working behind the scenes, using his brain rather than his brawn. This isn’t necessarily because he’s a better planner than he is a fighter, it’s because the Army doesn’t want to lose their indispensable investment.
The Army would rather lose 10 Privates in battle than this Colonel, so they do their best to keep him out of the action. They will do everything they can to protect their investment so that he can continue to yield high quality work leveraging his knowledge, experience, and attitude across his Battalion.
What if we approached our people this way in business? What if our most senior people were so indispensable that we would sacrifice multiple newbies in order to keep that tenure within the organization? It sounds intelligent that we would want to keep the people we’ve invested in and do our best to maximize their skills for as long as possible. That is… assuming we have invested in them.
What normally happens is that too many organizations look at their people as liabilities instead of assets. When it’s time for budget cuts, the most tenured people are often on the front lines because they have the largest salaries. And we let them go because we have simply been using them instead of investing in them. If we are investing in our people from the time they join us, we will NEVER want to let them go and in turn they’ll never want to leave! Invest in them through continuing education, through internal classes, book stipends, mentoring programs, and anything that will add value to the life of our team members and they will become indispensable.
