All projects are human capital projects

by Toby Elwin · 1 comment

The valuation of a company usually involves 4 areas:

  1. physical capital,
  2. financial capital,
  3. intellectual capital, and
  4. human capital

Valuation is a combination of science, art, and straight voodoo (Enron anyone???). Voodoo aside, when I recast these valuations from a new angle, I see each relies, in their entirety, on people:

  1. physical capital – people are trained to use, maximize, and maintain machines
  2. financial capital – people manage, buy, sell, and negotiate
  3. intellectual capital – people research (question/challenge) and invent
  4. human capital – people and their knowledge, skill, and abilities contribute individually and collectively as part of a company’s social network

If people are the lever for a company’s value, no amount of their knowledge, skills, and abilities will matter without their motivation. When 70% – 80% of all projects fail, too much is at stake to ignore human capital. You lose people’s motivation, you fail, your company fails, and your stakeholders fail.

When you cast all projects as human capital projects you can coach involvement, motivation, and performance.

Cast as human capital projects you can continually uncover your greatest asset – people.

P.S. Is it really an Information Technology/Enterprise Application issue???

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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Terry from Crowdfunding March 18, 2012 at 7:24 AM

This is truly great information and all these kinds of capital is interrelated because without one or a failure in one of them and the business would not be able to succeed or reach its full potential. Thanks for sharing this post.

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