Each person in your organization is unique and has an irreplaceable set of gifts, talents, skills, and passions that cannot be found anywhere else. Too many leaders labor under the pernicious paradigm that people are interchangeable, that one worker equals another, that they can easily  replace one person with another person.

Or leaders toss out the dull cliché that “our people are our most important assets.” But people are not assets. An asset is something you own—a human being cannot treated like a machine.

The old industrial paradigm that an employee is an interchangeable cog in the machine is the most important reason why people are disengaged in the workplace, refusing to give the “extra effort.” That’s why the most important job to be done now is to replace that paradigm with a new paradigm: that every person is uniquely powerful. Your job as a leader is to unleash that power.