Sometimes, there can be times when you feel close to invincible. Your strategy is in place. You know who your customers are, and you’ve learned how, when and where to reach them. Your IT systems are up to date. Sales are coming in, and your pipeline is looking healthy. Like Chandler’s boss, Doug, says in an old “Friends” episode, “All the lines [on the chart] go up, so I’m happy.” You spin around from your desk to throw your apple core and it lands with a satisfying thud in the bottom of the bin. Yes, everything is just as it should be.

The Future Is Tech.

However, technology is advancing every year, every month, every week. We’re looking at a future where artificial intelligence (AI) could replace much of the work that people currently perform. In fact, a recent CB Insights study puts 10.5 million American jobs at risk of becoming obsolete due to AI and robotization.

This future poses a particular conundrum for business leaders, because as much as technology and infrastructure are critical for business success, the world’s most successful organizations aren’t all about the “stuff.” It’s not the mechanics of your business that will raise you up above the competition – or at least, not for long. Think of organizations like Google and Facebook; people vie to work there not just because they want to be part of the future that these organizations are building but because of the communities that they have become.

People Aren’t a Resource; They’re Your Community.

If you’ve checked all of the “hard infrastructure” boxes in your business – systems, processes, procedures, operating models, overarching strategy – that’s great. But check again, because the most unique resource available to you isn’t on that list: your community.

That’s right – not your people, staff or human resources. Your community. If you don’t routinely think of your organization as a living and breathing entity made up of living and breathing people, it might be time to take a good look at what’s been going on around you.

I’m willing to bet that there are amazing things going on every day in your organization that would make your jaw drop with their ingenuity and passion, if only you knew about them. People all over your organization will be showing up with their ideas, their heart and their passion every single day. But if your core focus is always on implementing processes and procedures that are all about efficiency and making increasing use of new technologies, you’re in danger of killing all that passion.

Humanity Is Your Best Competitive Advantage.

If, as expected, the future sees applied AI reach a point where it is almost ubiquitous, what’s left to give us the competitive advantage that we all need and crave? According to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, “If technology leads to fundamental transformations in the kind of jobs available … we have to increase our focus on … investing in people.”

What’s so fascinating about this new frontier is not the dystopian science fiction vision that the media often lays out but the opportunity it gives us to return to focusing on what really counts: people. With so much of the basics taken over by automation, we will be left with a wonderful opportunity to reassess what our communities are able to do. We’ll have much more time and scope to help people develop in the ways that really matter: those supremely, exclusively human traits, such as empathy, loyalty, truly listening, openly communicating and being motivated by a shared experience.

Put Your Money Where Your Community Is.

Training leaders have to prove the financials behind people development programs, but in the future, that will cease to be the case, as “humanity” becomes much more of a recognized and valuable commodity. We won’t necessarily continue to fill our organizations with people who are technically proficient, but we will be free to recruit those who are most willing to show up as their wonderful, enthusiastic, flawed selves and who want to learn and grow with our organizations over the years.

The organizations that become industry leaders will be the ones that put their money where their community is. Leaders in these organizations will be able to develop people who want to become as effective as they can possibly be; who want to work on their challenges and make the most of their innate gifts; who want to be loyal teammates who know how to gently challenge others; who become leaders with a vocation for making the very best community they can with those around them; who understand their unique selves and those around them, and who want to put that knowledge to the best use they can.

Ultimately, this is about more than our community at work. Highly effective and self-aware people are much more likely to share their gifts out in the world, too. Consider the cumulative positive effect that millions of switched-on, empathic, purposeful people could have on our collective humanity.