A Year of Trends In HR Coming Together

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Nov

In January I was lucky to convince iconoclastic Henry Mintzberg to speak to the HR think tank I volunteer for (Strategic Capability Network) through a friend, David Creelman, who keeps up with a wide range of management and HR (Human Resources) guru’s. Henry’s presentation showcased a new program he’s been developing as an antidote to his complaints about MBAs (as in his book: Managers not MBAs). It’s called “Coaching Ourselves.” The idea is to get managers together in small groups to walk through a PowerPoint handout that guides them to ask questions about a particular management topic they’re interested in. Mintzberg’s organization develops the PowerPoint guides for a variety of topics so groups can select the Mintzberg's Coaching Ourselves site topics relevant to them at the moment – just in time learning, action learning and self-guided learning rolled into one. It’s a great idea, which I think will develop a great following over time, no doubt with lots of imitators.

That was January. Since then speaker after speaker has pointed out that Gen Y (and piggybacking on them, all the other generations now at work) want more autonomy, more discussion, more input into strategy development, to be listened to more by their managers and senior executives, to have a real hand in what’s going on.

True, there’s always an overtone of “they don’t want to pay their dues,” but what is becoming increasingly clear as we all think about that is that no one ever wanted to pay dues. When we started out, that’s just the way it was. Bosses could insist that we trudge along in humdrum jobs “paying our dues” and waiting till we were promoted to have any say in what went on. Now with instant communication keeping every employee a lot more in the loop and allowing everyone to be heard whether senior management expects it or not, there is simply no holding back the ideas that flow from more and more employees.

What’s truly new is that many Gen Y staff don’t have to hang around if they don’t want to. Mom and Dad are willing to put up with them moving back home. Mortgages and babies don’t hang over their heads to the same extent they did with the Boomers, who inevitably had to shut up and go along.

Now not only Gen Y, but many workers have more independence. Being out of work isn’t the disaster it was 40 years ago. We tell executives to get used to interruptions and 4 to 5 month job searches periodically due to re-organizations and lay-offs. Today it’s part of normal career progression. And all this comes at a time when, despite economic setbacks we still believe there will be a shortage of good managers and leaders well into the future, so we have to learn to cater to their desires in order to keep as many as we can and attract the best of the others. Many companies have started to figure this out and so are far more willing to listen… and listening is most of what it takes to develop a new, better kind of leadership.

Over the course of this past year there’s been remarkable progress toward a “tipping point” where more and more companies realize they need new coaching-style leaders. I’m just going through the 10 or so reviews I’ve written over the year on forward-thinking HR practices and strategies plus tons of stuff I’ve read and realizing every single thought leader has urged pretty much the same solutions. Still, we continue hear arguments about details – whether we need this or that Talent Management System, which is the best Performance Appraisal method or Succession Planning program and so forth.

While we’re debating the nuts and bolts, though, we need to recall there is now very broad and clear consensus on what makes HR work best – carefully integrated practices and styles throughout the organization’s people programs, not piecemeal fixes – all directed at involving, listening to and engaging all levels of staff and management to retain the best and attract more like them. In the midst of complexity we’re finally beginning to find simplicity – points on which pretty soon everyone will agree. Remarkable what can evolve in a year once the ball is rolling.

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