Asset or Expense – When you think of your employees, do you think of them as assets or as expenses? Do you say that Bill costs $4000 a month, but Susan only costs $3500 a month? Or on the other hand, do you think about how much profit Bill and Susan help you generate? How you think about them probably defines how your treat them, and how you treat them (like as assets or expenses), determines how they react and perform. Dell Computers outsourced their customer service to India and it blew up in their face. They are finally changing their strategy, but not until they had achieved a lot of bad publicity and angry (and lost) customers. Their mistake? They looked at their customer service people as expenses (to be cut) instead of assets to be utilized. There’s a world of difference between asking how you can cut expenses or how you can better utilize your assets. So try thinking about how to better utilize people rather than how to lay them off.