What is the first rule of business? — To make money.

Whether we like that answer or not, whether we consider ourselves to be holistic or not, let’s take that as a given. If you don’t make any money, you aren’t going to be in business.

But the real bottom line is people. If you don’t invest in your people, you don’t have an avenue for making money. No matter how advanced, how technical, how innovative you are, there isn’t a business that exists that doesn’t have people involved. There may be far less people because of automation, but people are ever-present. If you don’t know how to take care of them, you are out of business.

Even if you have a completely automated system, on the other end your customer is not automated. Even if I’m buying an automated system from you, I (as a person) am buying it. If I run into problems I don’t want to talk to an AI, I want to talk to a person.

Summing-up: The true bottom line is people.