It is interesting to see Microsoft jumping on the talent bandwagon by saying that people are the most important asset of your business. Of course, their point is to make sure that you have the right software tools to empower your people, so they announced (press release here) their People-Ready business vision with a website and white paper.

Steve Ballmer spoke last week in New York (webcast here) and here are some of his views:

Successful businesses succeed based upon on the quality and the performance of their people. Successful businesses make a practice on trying to hire the very best in every job in their businessthese companies, I would call them People-Ready businesses.

We cant agree more with his ideas:

We start with a few kind of fundamental premises, people drive outcomes, it’s people that develop customer relationships, it’s people that will drive innovation in process, in products, in services for your companies. It’s the people who build the connections with your business partners and trade partners in this increasingly flat world. And it’s people who improve operations.

Of course, Microsoft is right to say that you need the best business productivity software tools for your people to do the work. But we would complement and preface their new message with this: you need the best people to do the best work and that is only possible if you support a talent management centric strategy at your organization. To truly be People Ready, you need more than software, you need the right people! To prove this, we tried an experiment at home and offered a new laptop running Microsoft Office to our baby. Although she had access to the finest technology, she did not achieve any meaningful results for us, other than looking cute. Joke aside, remember that technology alone is an empty promise. Make sure you put talent first!