Executive Leadership · 2026
Are Your People Your Most Important Asset?
Your people drive EBITDA performance as much as anything else. Do you treat them as such?
Productivity. Retention. Customer service. Throughput. Efficiency. Profitability.
Consider a simple maturity model for engaging your people.
Level 1: Manage through normal leadership.
For some organizations, particularly smaller businesses, formal engagement programs may not be necessary. Good leaders know their people and address issues as they arise.
Level 2: Periodically assess engagement.
Annual surveys can identify company-wide issues: Do people feel valued? Do they see opportunities to grow? Are they treated fairly?
The value comes from what leadership visibly does with what it learns. Sustained action improves the experience of employees and frontline leaders, and your bottom-line results. Taking no action undermines leadership's credibility and performance.
Level 3: Make systemic listening part of continuous improvement.
This allows frontline leaders to address an individual's obstacles, development opportunities and to reward progress as it occurs.
Sometimes the issue is simple: My scanner constantly fails and hurts my productivity.
Sometimes it matters much more: "I need to adjust my schedule temporarily to care for my elderly parent without putting my job at risk."
When people know they are heard and see quick action on issues entrusted to your care, their performance, and yours, improves.
TrailPath Workplace Solutions' NxtPath provides a practical way to enable systemic listening and continuous improvement without creating a major administrative burden.
Not every company needs the same maturity level. But every leadership team should consciously decide what best serves its people and business performance, then execute it well.
I have worked on these issues in Fortune 50 companies and small and mid-sized family businesses.
Would you be opposed to comparing notes on what you are facing? I would be glad to help you make sense of it and determine what, if anything, you should do next.