Perhaps the most difficult resource to manage is human resource. The management of people in an organisation or, on a broader scale, a country requires special knowledge, skills, and above all, unique tact. Of all the assets available to a CEO of a company or country, the human resource complement is the most important. This asset, unlike other assets available for utilisation, is a *live* asset—of flesh and blood, of emotions and sentiments.

The human being is a marvel of Mother Nature. All humans possess the ability or disability ranging from inherent angelic qualities to highly devilish characteristics. In a split second, any individual can oscillate between these two extremes of the spectrum of human behaviour. Possessed of these unique behavioural responses, human beings become the most difficult resource to manage, direct, and control. Every single person has distinctive traits that respond differently to different stimuli, particularly those that come from external sources.

Kashmiris and Pakistanis rally in London against Indian actions

Thinkers Ralph Stacey and Dave Snowden have researched ways to make sense of human complexities. They estimate that there are 200 different types of cells in the human body and over 37 trillion cells. The human brain is the most complex system known in the universe. It is a highly connected structure. Estimates vary, but it is generally considered that the human brain has 86 billion neurons. These and other characteristics make human behaviour the most difficult to predict or understand.

Snowden, himself an authority on understanding “human systems”,........

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