Customer Reviews

Play to Your Strengths: Managing Your Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Competitive Advantage

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The term "human capital management" has stepped into the long line of buzzwords that attempt to leverage people into increased organizational performance. Play to Your Strengths takes a step beyond the rhetoric to actually explore "how" to accomplish this. From their 3 critical questions -- led by "what are we spending on human capital (cost) and what is it buying us(value)?" -- to their six-factor framework defining human capital, the authors give insight into how organizations should measure the contribution of people to a company's bottom line. They also provide real company examples and perspectives from investors, CEOs, and managers.

As a professor of business management, I've found that one of the most difficult challenges is helping students to learn how they can actually make good decisions in deploying personnel. This book goes beyond the "soft" side of management, developing an approach that fits with the organizational imperative to heed the bottom line. I'll be using Play to Your Strengths as supplemental reading for my MBA courses.

It's a tricky balance - do you commit resources to shore up organizational weaknesses or use those scarce allocations to maximize organizational strengths? The authors of the book "Play to Your Strengths" clearly support the latter strategy especially regarding human capital. Soundview recommends this book because it places a high value on the individuals within an organization and their skills which - more often than not - are the truly unique competitive advantage of the company. The writers' fresh perspective of managing human capital should enable any business, agency or non-for-profit to fully engage their most powerful asset to their maximum benefit.

Whenever guru-accented statements like "leveraging human capital to produce results" I feel a quiver, not of excitement, but of caution. However, management trainees and schools like label-accented seminars and books, so this title, Play to Your Strengths, isn't anything that will offend anyone.
People are generally any company's core area asset. Despite the company's product, service, busines strategy, market share and management structure and reorganizations,it's people who ultimately make the differnce. People who are at the top, bottom, and between.
Apparently, this book is backed by a $10 million study. Hopefully, it was money well-spent. Human capital, in all of its forms - internal, external, management, labor and regulatory, is vital to understand, to appreciate, and to show appreciation for. As well, in today's world, the ethical element of conducting business is one that needs to be mentioned more often.
Frank G Anderson
MBA, Information Management
Korat, Thailand
Tel. 044-274972
mobile: 01-8773981