Have you ever come across the saying, "People are our most important asset?" What do you think of this statement? Do you agree with it? As an academic, whenever I come across absolute universal statements like that, I'm always curious to find out a bit more. So I would ask, most important in what sense exactly? If you're a mining company and you secure the exclusive rights to mining a particular high-yield site, isn't this asset more important to your success as a business than the people who you employ to do the mining? Perhaps you want to argue that even in that case, people are more important because the specific ways in which you organize your mining processes are driven by people. In other words, it's not the physical asset that's most important, it's what you decide to do with it which is determined by people. Fair enough, I would say, great argument. But aren't you talking about a specific group of people in that case, the engineers who design the processes? What about the miners themselves or the admin support people or people cleaning the trucks and equipment? Are they your most important assets too? A simple statement like "People are our most important assets", it quickly throw up some difficult but crucial questions. This week, you'll grapple with these questions in order to develop a strategic perspective on human resource management. You'll learn how to identify the roles in your organization that are most critical to your business strategy, and I'll guide you through a useful diagnostic tool for determining how your HR practices should be tailored to your strategy. Through this learning process, you'll come to see the saying, "Our people are our most important asset" a bit differently. You'll recognize that instead, "Some people are our most important asset." This may sound harsh, but from a strictly strategic perspective, it's true. It's no different to saying, "Some of my customers are more important than others," or "Some of my suppliers are more important than others." We're going to break this down to see what I mean and I'd like you to maintain a critical perspective that enables you to answer back if you want because such critical engagement is much more important than just taking my words as absolute truth, particularly when we're dealing with a controversial topic like this one.