The recent parade was led off with no less than analytics guru Thomas H. Davenport, who now operates as Research Director at the International Institute, offering a teleconference on their evolving ideas. Their web site asks who is moving into the lead for analytics in organizations – the CEO or the CFO? That should signal a warning to HR, which is also echoed in CHRR. Tom admittedly has always been an analytics guy first and focused on HR topics second, but when you review his list of books HR is never far from the center, from early work on re-engineering through a recent release on making smarter decisions, they have a people-overtone – managing knowledge in the organization, “The Attention Economy” and how to get better performance from knowledge workers. So why is the CHRO not on the list to own some piece of analytics in organizations?

The answer has to be that in almost all cases, HR is getting a late start on the band-wagon. CFOs deal with numbers from day 1. So, too, do IT departments, the other functional group that is mentioned far more often than HR. But we manage the most interesting issues that aren’t as clear or straight forward as budget numbers or widgets rolling off the line. Where analytics can really shine in offering truly new insight ought to be in exactly those fuzzy human areas where it isn’t clear on the surface what people will or should do.

Unfortunately HR departments are rarely staffed with even a single individual who really understands the use of analytics. At best the function may have someone dedicated to pulling reports from the many systems from which HR needs data – how many do we have in our pension plan, what are their total contributions, what’s the headcount by business unit that we should be monitoring and limiting? These sorts of ‘analytics’ questions almost don’t qualify for the name. They are just counting.

Google, as noted in several posts, makes it clear they don’t put a single HR policy change on the table for discussion without extensive numerical evaluation. Is that the other extreme? Perhaps, but we’ve known for a long time that executives in the business are frustrated not having such information as part of the decision-making process on HR issues. We have a responsibility to get that information for them in a digestible form if we expect to be included in every business discussion. From professors John Boudreau to Dave Ulrich, the message is clear – get with the program if you expect to be recognized for contributions.

Also on trend, the Grapevine site for HR and Talent Managers comments on Engineering HR Business Partners (the underlying idea? Analytics). Rebecca Shockley of IBM discusses building an analytics-friendly culture. At a macro level McBassi & Company continues to pound away at measuring the overall value of HR elements to a business and various ways to measure. For their part HRPA continues to develop and promote its Metrics Service through which organizations can share benchmarking data – not advanced analytics, but potentially base comparisons that might help make data more meaningful (not sure how well they’re doing, but they put on lots of demos). Lots of direct vendors are in the game, too, of course, such as SAP offering a white paper in infrastructure for analytics in CIO online magazine. A further bit of overview is offered by SmartData Collective on what sorts of things are under discussion, such as “Big Data.” I could go on since a bunch more arrived in the days between drafting and editing this.

All this would be useful information for HR, if one ignored research experts, i4CP’s, finding that only 1/5 or organizations use HR analytics. A significant part of that problem has to lie with us in HR not pulling the data together or making it digestible for other executives. It’s one challenge to calculate, it’s another to make it understandable. All this takes practice to learn to do well and that takes time. With all the advice out there on the need, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of directly applicable analysis on exactly what HR should do. Opinions abound, but practical examples are rarer. Until practicing HR pros start discovering and sharing the truly valuable ways to put data together, anyone working on this in HR is going to be developing new ideas in creative ways that may not always work.

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This book is going to be far more controversial since he hasn’t fully updated his list of successful companies despite the surface reversals of organizations that exemplified success or lack of it in Good to Great. IBM, for instance, doesn’t look so superior to Apple as it did in 2002, in fact, almost the reverse. if you ignore the likelihood that IBM will sustain well and Apple may not find more fad items to keep ahead with.

Some reviewers find the reversal of fortunes casts overpowering doubt on the new book’s conclusions. Logically it should cast just as much in retrospect over Good to Great. If the top companies then didn’t last sufficiently perhaps that theory was flawed, too. We all praised it immensely and most reviewers haven’t mentioned this and likely won’t want to admit they were wrong before. They’ll merely slam the new work.

We put too much emphasis on short term results. Both books build on so much common logic I can accept circumstances change and shift companies’ fortunes up and down without invalidating the general principles. In fact, this up and down seesawing reinforces many of the points in both – not surprising since many conclusions are the same and lead to similar strategic advice. The subtitle, “Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All,” certainly recognizes forces beyond anyone’s control have to be understood. Neither fully answers the question Collins admitted ducking in Good to Great: can individuals develop the skills they suggested? In this one he notes we can at least apply effective strategies if not change our own behavior or predict exactly how we will impact.

The first part of the book usefully debunks common myths about leadership and strategy. They find successful companies, hence their leaders, are no more or less risk-takers that average and no more or less visionary. So does that invalidate Good to Great? Not likely. Leaders still make the decisions that work and it still takes a certain type of leader to be humble enough to recognize luck’s role.

He finds successful companies are not so much less innovative as they tend to press forward fewer innovations than less successful companies, which means they may have as many ideas, but develop them more carefully. The same with speed as agility – they move more slowly on average, starting small and building carefully and solidly before picking up speed, which may end up being faster in the long run. That’s definitely different from the ‘speedy’ advice usually given that motivates so many CEOs to push ‘flavor of the month’ as fast as they can. This struck a note when I read the title of the ING Direct CEO’s newest book mentioned in my last post – Rock, Then Roll – start solidly, then and only then build speed is how it hit me. Collins and Hansen go further with related suggestions.

Following up they find successful companies tend to start with less radical change to meet changing circumstances – quite the opposite, they may dig in and stick to proven values. By doing these things they generate more luck – which fits with the concept that luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity. Each new changed environment generates about as many opportunities as it shuts down old paradigms. Yes, you have to operate differently day-to-day, but if your overall strategies and values are sound, they should work in both up and down circumstances. something that certainly revealed weaknesses in a great many organizations. As they say, it’s what you do with the luck you get since everyone is exposed to the forces of luck. Whether you feel it’s good or bad often depends on how prepared you are. Great by Choice definitely emphasizes such choices and more.

One thing that stands out for me is that the advice really hasn’t changed from the earlier books despite the impact of the continuing recessionary economics we face. Their new message – those who develop effective leadership cultures and behaviors will thrive and sustain themselves through difficult luck and times when those occur. Whether we carp over their particular examples, this makes a lot of sense as we look across the economy generally. Some operators always emerge stronger rather than weaker because they were better prepared and positioned themselves for down as well as up times.

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A number of years ago this tended to mean one or two workers working the majority of their time from home or another off-site location (car, hotel room, temporary office). Sorting out best principles evolved so now many organizations have explicit guidelines for this.

In a real sense, a leader might be in charge of a number of employees working remotely, which by definition was a virtual team, but the emphasis tended to be on rules for the employees. Measurement systems that a leader might use to judge productivity tended to be secondary, but important. It was assumed leaders would keep in touch frequently as most seemed a bit skeptical anyway and could be counted on to want to keep close tabs on workers.

As time passed technology made most of us capable of working remotely at least part time with few special arrangements. It also enabled more people to tie into virtual meetings via various types of collaboration programs and online tools. The emphasis shifted away from remote workers as special cases that had to be monitored to an assumption that entire teams might be assembled from workers who are located somewhere other than where the leader is or teams in one location being led by a leader located somewhere else. Technology enabled ‘somewhere else’ to mean literally anywhere on the planet, so rules about attending weekly in-office meetings often no longer fit.

The literature filled with new concerns such as people working at home on off hours. Some unions are even bargaining for on-call premiums for anyone who carries a company cell phone especially since these are now small computers with email and more. But beyond that leadership questions have been multiplying for more complex situations.

Some excellent guides exist now for leaders of true virtual teams such as Jon Wagner’s 3^rd edition, just published with Russ Milland, “The Building Effective Virtual and Remote Teams Handbook” (note: although I haven’t met Jon as far as I recall, he’s a fellow member of Strategic Capability Network). How should leaders behave differently (or should they) if they rarely meet team members and conduct full group meetings and routine one-on-ones via technology? These guys have experience and have studied what works best, but can busy managers really implement 160+ pages of advice?

Other ways of looking at similar concerns and some of the newer evolving technologies and methods that one could consider are captured by Kyle Lagunas, the HR Analyst at Software Advice in a recent article. In his blog post, he discusses the challenges of managing with an “open door” or a version of the much recommended “managing by walking around” when dealing with virtual teams.

Suffice it to say the complete solution almost certainly hasn’t been written yet, nor have all the questions been discovered. It would be nice to think office politics can be overcome with effective processes, clearly set out, but human nature being what it is what happens when a group of employees conspire to rid themselves of an unwanted virtual leader or when individuals plot to become the favorite or divert the project or more? With a growing emphasis discussed in earlier HR Strategy posts about the need for managers to learn to confront each other and argue constructively to get disagreements out in the open, the chances for misunderstandings, shunning of people we don’t find congenial or cooperative and all those other natural, but naturally disruptive behaviors would seem to find greater latitude to cause trouble or at least tremendous inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

Maybe we need a few realistic novels or screenplays about the pitfalls, dangers and solutions as well as sound advice that not everyone will have the time or skill to implement. I’m sure there’s also a huge opportunity for some comedy in all this – “The (Virtual) Office” perhaps.

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Although critical and recommending change in HR, he is constructive – also recommending commensurate compensation, and – perhaps more importantly – highlighting the distinction that is rarely made in articles complaining about HR (like the old “Why We Hate HR” from Fast Company, which is still a teaching tool in some very high level HR courses and still draws comment even in Fast Company. The latter, by the way, is a very solid talent-management based commentary on HR strategy as it’s evolving.

Lawler’s ultimate point is the theme that HR is merely administration surfaces again and again for a reason- but one which has a solution. Lawler doesn’t make the link, but we can see the parallel in finance. He argues HR should be regarded as having two distinct levels or divisions – one handling highly administrative tasks needed to be done by someone to keep organizations going. This isn’t to say these are simple, easy or unimportant, but they aren’t the whole story. The other level or division needs to be concerned with more strategic solutions – organization effectiveness, which is far more intangible, takes time and is often short-changed when busy HR people get bogged down in the admin duties.

Think finance divided into Accounting and Business Strategy – Controllership and CFO roles, which admittedly are sometimes combined in smaller organizations. Even when combined, however, we need to recognize clearly the differences and we are helped if we distinguish between the wrongly maligned ‘bean counters,’ whose jobs are nonetheless essential, and the financial strategists in our organizations.

Admin versus strategic roles are often lumped together by complainers who dislike financial or HR controls that were set up as part of a strategy at one point. It’s human to personalize a gatekeeper as the author of a ‘stupid’ rule, but there are virtually no articles suggesting the companies try to run entirely without finance people or that they completely outsource finance. Most organizations would rather have the bean counting end of finance in-house actually, where they can argue and improve procedures they don’t like than outsource to an inflexible, lock step system that doesn’t quite fit their organization.

This is so much the case that you probably haven’t even heard much about financial outsourcing apart from occasional admin items such as payroll or basic bookkeeping. Few suggest finance be outsourced entirely and let line managers set their own strategies, yet we continually hear this question or “threat” about HR. The answer is, of course you can outsource whatever you want, but outsourcing HR is more than sending out benefits admin and letting managers decide who can have promotions, days off, special pay increases or be fired on their own. Promote the wrong people through expediency or favoritism and you have a formula for destroying the very engagement you want HR to strategize for.

By keeping in mind the distinction between admin and strategic principles, we give gatekeepers in HR the opportunity to seem more logical. They aren’t preventing a pay increase to be petty, nor because they fail to understand good people need bigger rewards. Unfortunately some in the admin roles leave the impression they are personally making the decisions about what’s “right” or “wrong,” leaving a trail of line managers who feel they have “tangled” with HR too many times and just want to be rid of them. What we need is everyone to understand the strategies and that includes gatekeeping HR staff who have to explain at the lowest level why they can accede to every individual’s personal desires of the moment.

Oddly finance doesn’t seem to suffer this personalization except perhaps in the way people feel about them when their travel expenses are refused. But in the end that’s just money and generally not a lot of it, not highly emotional questions like whether I get paid for a sick day for taking my kid to the hospital. With every one of these situations involving different facts, the myriad of possible answers and long-lasting frustration is far greater and more delicate than ‘you can’t charge that new tie because you spilled gravy on it.’ Do we really want to outsource such HR decisions to a lock step process or would it make sense to use such complex questions to improve policies over time in keeping with a long term culture strategy?

Internally we have a greater challenge in educating HR gatekeepers about how to communicate such decisions and refer people to the strategy level when they simply don’t understand the explanation. HR has to be the best communication department in the organization to prevent these sorts of frustrations from festering. Keeping both eyes on both admin and strategy, but recognizing the difference, is crucial.

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One might think the topics would have to do with succession planning systems or the like and the lead article (from their magazine) fits. The HR guy for Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, talks about talent audits, identifying hipos (high potentials) and, interestingly, career pathing among their 300 employees to ensure engagement and prevent poaching by rival entertainment organizations. That’s interesting and a great overview of talent management in brief as a unified, centrally branded approach that many companies would do well to emulate. Good for them for poaching a chief talent officer from a “global advertising media company” (I should say so – Young and Rubicam) – wow, what were they doing wrong?

So far so good, but it’s tough to find unique items like that every month or week. Next is a plea to help newly hired executives craft a leadership message – echoing others’ advice that being great presenters is now almost a prerequisite for leaders. Scary, but likely valid – and we might do well to help new leaders out with this. Again a relatively unusual bit of advice to ponder, a good second lead.

Skip the next report of a survey showing bomb squad technician is the scariest US job (edging out stunt person and high school teacher – maybe it wasn’t as difficult when I was in the latter role early on since I don’t recall shaking in my boots). Then an article on the need to convert annual reviews to on-going feedback to enhance performance. Not new, but true, followed by a pitch to get more value than damage from 360s by focusing them on development opportunities rather than (negative) assessment. OK, we’re still in talent management if not terribly fresh territory.

Skipping to popular stories of the week and archived favorites we see: a new look at engagement (not so new), how to create a solid working relationship with your boss, lessons from the ousted Tribune CEO (as noted in earlier posts here: a startling example of dreadful behavior), then: backstabbing bosses followed by building a civilized workplace (definitely some themes here for leaders, but do we really need this again and again).

But the one that caught my eye most was ‘Man’agers Best Friend: Sniff Out New Management Skills.

Oh my.

OK, I read these for my spouse who’s violently allergic to dogs and others in her family who are terrified of them even as adults because they had to avoid them as kids. Of course there’s an argument it can reduce stress in the workplace (for the dog’s owner and dog fans, that is), but it rarely rates a mention that it can severely increase stress and illness for others, to the point they quit or don’t take the job. Writers of such articles tend to pooh-pooh “a few” oddballs who are fearful of pets, but isn’t that a bit like saying ‘only some people get sick from cigarette smoke, so to heck with them, it reduces stress for smokers?’

How is this worthwhile Talent Management advice?

Well it turns out we can also learn major leadership lessons from dogs, too, to paraphrase: “patience, listening, forgiveness, minimal ego, minimal judgment, learning how to read people and how to be more open – a wonderful mirror on how others read your cues – just by watching how your dog reacts and recognizes.”

OK, I’m off the rails on the last bits. Are we to take one fond owner’s word for it that she can, and therefore that we should be able to, see these qualities in dogs. If you love animals and anthropomorphize their behavior, perhaps this is what you might think you notice reasonably consistently, but if you tend to see dogs behaving when afraid or over-excited, as unpredictable dangers that might bite unexpectedly or jump on you with muddy paws, claws and energetic licks that, to some, seem like germy opportunities to catch diseases, I don’t think you’ll be noticing patience or listening (as you cry, “down rover”). And dogs with muzzles? Somehow it’s hard to see them as patient.

By the way, I’d just as soon not work for a boss who took his or her leadership lessons from these creatures who probably know how to behave just fine in their appropriate habitats, but perhaps not so much at work, thanks.

At least it’s different. Oh the topics we have to call on to fill publications continually with new stuff. Aren’t we criticized in HR for always having a ‘program flavor of the month?’ There’s some inconsistency here.

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When the CEOs broke it down, they were unanimous this won’t happen unless the CEO personally drives it. They’re aware managers in lower ranks feel quite justified in viewing HR as a purely transactional role – hiring, firing, disciplining and generally keeping up with the paperwork, the regulations and ‘all that stuff’ that line managers say they have no time for. That’s on a good day. These CEOs want to turn that around and help lower ranking managers develop greater appreciation for their own and HR’s strategic role. It’s interesting how they all seemed to be using similar key ways to go about this.

The two CEOs who hadn’t had direct experience in support roles expressed their surprise at discovering when they reached the CEO chair that they immediately started wanting strategic input from HR. Who else partners with the CEO to improve teamwork at the senior table? How they are expected to partner is also enlightening.

Although I’ve heard and read plenty in the last few years about the need for tough conversations as a regular diet, I was surprised at the vehemence with which this group supported the concept, one also mentioning Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which expands the same basic concepts more specifically toward team development. It’s true we might expect CEOs chosen for a panel to be on their best behavior with respect to HR, especially with their HR directors sitting in the audience, but asking them to challenge executives in such specific ways is new. Of course we’re looking at a select group, but one whose members are serious about engaging HR effectively.

A couple commented there isn’t enough tough feedback coming at the senior team from around the company and that ‘maybe we haven’t made it safe enough.’ The move to encourage constructive confrontation of issues in tough conversations is key to developing teams and turning them into high performing leadership groups, but not many CEOs are ready or willing to face up to that. They know they need HR to help that happen with fairness and balance, a word they mentioned frequently.

When asked about values, they were unanimous about their importance. Again this wasn’t new to an audience of converts in the HR field as the grounding for high performance, but two things stood out. These individuals are serious about making their values work to the point of insisting they and every manager in the company be called out if they weren’t walking the talk. That’s still truly rare, although getting more widespread as the news leaks that this is the way to financial results and customer satisfaction.

As an aside, it was interesting they are quite happy to promote values with t-shirts, mugs, posters, handout cards among the more common tools that have been called into question or made the butt of jokes. Either they’re too new at the game to realize this stuff is perceived by many as hokey or those who see it that way are missing the point – it all contributes – if, but only if, the CEO backs it up and is willing to be held accountable to live those values along with everyone else.

That of course led to the million dollar challenge question – will you fire a top producer who doesn’t live up to the values. To a person all three not only said they would, but gave examples of where they had (thanking their HR people for advice to treat long service well on the way out the door and do things right, but nevertheless, do them). To paraphrase one, ‘if you let stuff like this go, you’re just expanding the problem and undermining everything you’re working toward.’ That’s new despite having heard so many times before, as one said, “if the CEO doesn’t get it..”

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You have to love the article’s opening line, reminiscent of Fast Company’s “Why We Hate HR” – “Would it be a strategic, forward-thinking utopia [if HR took on the CEO role] – or a backwater that focused on tissues, teabags and time and attendance?”

I think this describes part of the problem – along the lines of saying the biggest disability so-called disabled people have is the opinions of the abled. One of the biggest disabilities of HR executives is the outright desire of other executives to paint them as concerned primarily about “tissues, teabags and time and attendance.” If true, it’s almost inevitably because that’s what the CEO and the organization demand and limit HR to. More often it’s what others want everyone to believe so they don’t have to accept suggestions from HR or face them as competitors for senior roles.

The article goes on to point out that few HR people end up as CEOs of big operations, but some do, of whom some make mistakes – what a surprise – ignoring the fact these mistakes are similar to the mistakes other appointees make – over-spending, etc. In the article this is naturally attributed to lack of “business acumen” (but no comment about how many other CEOs make the same mistakes, presumably showing an equal lack of business acumen).

Then follow some lengthy bits about how necessary it is for career HR people who aspire to CEO roles to get some profit and loss experience in some other function. That certainly fits with today’s view that leadership development for all types of top roles requires rotation through a series of assignments judiciously chosen to provide perspective and experience in dealing with varied types of situations including failure, turnarounds, P&L, functional and more. Quite a few organizations now see experience in the HR role as critical for future leaders who otherwise may not be aware of the huge scope and importance of this territory and its many potential pitfalls. So the article wavers on to a somewhat shaky lack of conclusion about whether HR people can or can’t expect to succeed as CEOs, with more examples of those who have than those who haven’t (it is an HR magazine article after all).

One interesting aside from the main thrust is the question of whether they don’t get to be CEO because they don’t want to. Again one might well ask if this is true of other department heads as well. Everyone sees CEO tenure tending to be short, CEOs being criticized and fired for nearly every variation of mistake it’s possible to make and the incredible hours and other commitments CEOs are expected to make, often to the detriment of family and having a life in general. Of course there’s always a line up to be CEO, but never the entire or even majority of the executive team.

My guess is that many HR VPs get to see up close just how complex, difficult to master and ultimately thankless the CEO job really is (unless you consider huge severance to be a form of thanks, which is arguably a cynical, but useful perspective). By contrast I believe a great many CFOs imagine they could do better than their current boss because they believe they understand what business is really all about much more – ie: in their view MONEY. Unfortunately success isn’t that simple, a fact some companies are recognizing to their great advantage.  It even includes tissues, tea bags and time and attendance at time. It doesn’t hurt a CEO to understand those.

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In fact, there are many parts of any organization that don’t function as well as they could and those are all areas where HR could take a lead role in improving things. That might even reach up to the C-suite where the Board might be wise to look at the CEO and other C-level incumbents with a view to improving performance.

Of course, you can’t do everything, so you have to pick your areas – ones where you think you will get results and where you think you will survive. I won’t say ‘where you are safe to tread’ since a key part of leadership is taking risks and pushing limits. For instance, you may well be able to coach C-suite members, but hesitate because they won’t accept it willingly and may retaliate. Survival is a serious issue to consider. If a particular project you really believe in is clearly not survivable, you have to make decisions. Is it worth pursuing even if it results in you being pushed out or can you contribute satisfactorily (in your view) by staying away from that project and tackling lesser ones that nonetheless make a difference? Every leader at least sometimes has to come to terms with such questions. It’s not optional, but a clear aspect of leading. If the stuff isn’t tough, others would be doing it.

It’s pretty scary and awfully presumptuous perhaps for HR to think it can wield authority in areas that haven’t been previously defined for it, but that’s what being a valued contributor to a senior team is all about. Every member of the team ought to have opinions and ideas for improving every other area. Silos often prevent team members from even raising these thoughts, but that in itself is something that falls into a key role HR is intended to consider. Organizations function better without silos, but someone has to tackle the questions of how to get rid of them.

So, no, HR can’t own the entire world, but does have an opportunity to choose to take on significant pieces of it, areas that other functions in the organization probably wouldn’t dream of touching or areas that others, who could take them on, aren’t. HR is the only function that shares with the CEO the responsibility for what’s going on in every area of the organization. In sales you worry about sales and maybe about ‘adjacent’ areas – engineering of the products you are being asked to sell and the marketing and social media issues, but you rarely find sales worrying about what’s happening day-to-day in IT or finance or how to fix them. Yes, they may have opinions at a distance, but hardly the access directly into the heart of what makes those organizations function the way HR potentially does.

So deciding where and how to attempt to lead is a challenging set of choices for HR, knowing that you can’t own the entire world. It gives one freedom to focus where it will make the biggest difference, but how many HR functions sit down and actually attempt to decide that?

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Previous posts pointed out the ever increasing need and opportunity to improve HR management by measuring and developing strategy according to what’s found mathematically. Few HR departments have paid enough attention to developing the requisite measurement and math skills in house.

A second area that’s unavoidable is social media. As with measurements, there’s an unfortunately tendency among many HR professionals to think this belongs somewhere else, in this case with legal advisors or departments or with marketing or communications specialists rather than in HR.

Of course things can be set up that way. Leave hard numbers and technical processes to finance or IT or audit, or social media to marketing and legal. Inevitably, though, HR becomes involved. As soon as you want to re-engineer some process and have to move people around or if you need to discipline staff members who breach privacy or libel rules, reveal secrets or make derogatory comments about the company or staff on the Internet, you’re smack in the middle of HR territory, areas where legal may have an opinion, but culture, past practice, performance and disciplinary systems all weigh even more heavily.

So HR can choose to leave the upfront issues of measurement or social media to others, but will almost certainly complain that they weren’t brought in early enough when things start to happen and specifically when things start to go wrong as they affect people. For HR to be in a leadership role it makes sense to walk into these territories with a view that HR should own a major chunk as well as the knowledge that no one department can develop all the answers effectively.

It’s much easier to break down silos and gain your rightful input into issues such as these if you are leading the evolution of policy and practice than if finance, IT, marketing, legal or other areas are attempting to enunciate rules and procedures and HR is simply ‘helping’ or giving input.

Essentially these are perfect areas to do cross-functional planning and discussion. Again HR has a huge opportunity to show the way rather than be hauled in as an afterthought or an add-on. These aren’t easy areas to come to grips with, the best approaches are still just emerging from the muddy surroundings. There’s lots of room for mistakes, regrets, embarrassment and more, but that’s exactly what distinguishes leaders from average managers – the willingness to stand up and be counted on important strategies, where the first mover is often criticized at least as much as lauded.

Being willing to stick ones neck out and accept criticism for a new product, partially formed, that everyone immediately wants to add their two cents worth to is a key element in seizing the first-mover advantage. Getting your policy keys in place early and offering to add in others’ is a better position than letting others lead and later trying to argue for a change to suit HR needs.

Power grows for those who exercise it. This is an area where certainly if you don’t use it you lose it because someone else will take the lead and set the basis on which the rest of a program is built.

So is there new stuff in HR? You bet, if you see it that way and grab the opportunity to step forward first, knowing there will be some criticism, but that advantages far outweigh disadvantages.

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Alan Collins operates a site called Success in HR and recently offered 20 Brutally Blunt Career Tips to Ponder.. One stood out for me – one that wasn’t even among those he highlights, but which is what I see missing in so many careers:

“The time for creating your new HR career is not the day you get downsized or when you decide it’s time to move on. You need to plan this months in advance. This planning is mainly because you need to grow your network first..”

Emphatically, the first part is correct, except I’d say “years” not “months.”

I’m not so sure how most people would interpret the networking part. I wasn’t a great networker so maybe that would have turned my ‘years’ into ‘months,’ but I have to say I relied on trying to do the job better than anyone else wherever I could (including better strategies for whatever needed to be done). and on keeping an eye on a strategy for myself and making choices whenever any arose that fit its general outlines. That way I’d have success stories to tell if and when opportunity arose. I’m a firm believer in the old saying: luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. I can wait, but I want to be ready. What you get ready for is where you end up. if you’re keeping your eyes open and volunteer when you see a chance at that sort of work.

The very essence of strategy as an approach is what most people miss. You won’t get to the end result if you don’t have an idea of what it might be, but a loose idea that leaves some flexibility for variety in getting there. The problem most people seem to encounter is they get frustrated, become negative about themselves and cease pursuing their strategy as soon as they don’t see immediate progress to some specific result. It takes a certain kind of confidence to tell yourself, I will work toward being the best HR person ‘somewhere’ one day whether I get much proof along the way or not.

As a sub-strategy I began to keep an eye out for interesting and remunerative problem situations. To get better at HR meant looking for challenges where HR seemed difficult and moving consistently toward industries and sectors where there was more pay. (I came from a poor family and always knew I had only myself to count on – creating a mixture of risk averse, wanting never to be out of work, yet strategically preferring higher paying, somewhat riskier positions). In time, I became continually ‘ready to move’ in case the worst happened, but equally ‘ready to take on a bigger challenge.’ The result was promotions and moves to progressively more challenging roles, learning more constantly and eventually funding the coveted ‘freedom 55′ without actually planning when to become VP or asking for raises except in one obvious case where the job doubled in size.

To me, strategy is this ‘always getting ready for something bigger in your chosen area.’ Today, organizations prize innovation, which comes down to exactly the same thing. And U.S. political strategy? The same. Are they “getting ready for something better” – no – it’s more a case of “getting ours” as if we exist in some zero sum game where winners only get what they can take from losers. That’s what happens if you believe you’ve arrived and can only go downhill if you let ‘those people’ get more. That’s why so many successful companies and cultures ultimately fail. Reasonable prudence is fine. If it becomes cutting everyone else’s expenses so your immediate income goes up, with no investment in future growth, you have a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. Strategy has to be about waiting. and preparing. with both eyes open, yes, but being able to wait till preparation enables seizing opportunity. That’s what the marshmallow experiment with kids is all about!

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Those comments, which he’s consistently made about the movie stand in some contrast to reviews of the book on which it’s based, Moneyball, by baseball aficionado, Michael Lewis. Reviewers tend to emphasize what also shows up a lot in the film – the statistical method called sabermetric s that a number of teams now use to analyze players’ skills in contrast to the old baseball scouts’ methods of assessing talent on factors they developed in their association with the game - some might call it instinct.

The real story here is a version of successfully blending “high tech/high touch.” Today we have massively higher powered tools for recruiting. It’s easy to calculate statistics, although not many people picked out the most helpful ones in baseball that would lead to assembling the full skill set for a winning team. The main protagonist, Billy Beane, did, and took the Oakland A’s all the way to ultimate victory despite being unable to afford the salaries of any great star players that the other teams constantly bid into the stratosphere.

The high touch part gets somewhat shorter shrift in reviews, typical of how we evaluate the role of HR versus finance in organizations. Of course, it’s always harder to explain, to point to and demonstrate, but teamwork is the essential ingredient and that, in turn, is based on trust, respect, engagement of everyone in the team goals and learning to work together smoothly to achieve the overall result. It’s a bit oversimplified to say that if you sprinkle a few extremely highly paid prima donnas in among your core players, you immediately set the stage for jealousies, for attempts to show “I’m better than he is,” rather than for everyone to work closely in collaboration, setting up and supporting success by their teammates instead of worrying about how big their own next contract will be.

The same points have been made in hockey – that Wayne Gretzky, for instance, got vast numbers of points for ‘assists’ (for helping other players score) and that was a significant part of what made him the greatest player of the time. You can be a superstar and be a team player, too. It’s just that very few superstars work that way. and we need to develop more of this in every organization.

Plexus Institute (the Complexity Science group) has turned more and more toward these questions and just sent out a newsletter headlining a lead story with some excellent points called Superstars or Super Collaborators. After pointing to similar “moneyball” approaches now used for building winning soccer teams, author Prucia Buscell makes the outstanding point at the end that perhaps the best solution isn’t “either/or” but “both/and.” Just posing the question that way is a major contribution to the evolving discussion, highlighting as it does the central question. Can we do without either when our organizations need both to succeed at the top of their industries?

There will undoubtedly be more to say when we’ve all actually seen the movie. I for one will be looking most closely at how Pitt handles the team collaboration questions. A key criteria, as I understood it from earlier descriptions, was that the lack of superstars helped when they tried to bring the team together to function smoothly and support each other. In retrospect, though, you have to conclude that if you can being a team of superstars or one with at least some superstars to function well, you should have an advantage. as long as, by selecting those, you don’t depend so excessively on them that you forgo assembling all the varied, diverse skills a complete team needs. As we’ve discussed before, diversity is more challenging to manage, but ultimately far more rewarding in results.

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Today there’s greater recognition that HR encompasses the most complex aspect of organizations, but one that offers the greatest potential payback while being the most challenging and misunderstood by managers. Some feel it can never be done well, so why bother beyond basics. Other attempt a path that seems obvious – applying the mountains of research we now have to develop a comprehensive guide. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done.

Those who succeed best usually happened to have particular types of leaders from the beginning who set the tone and seemed to fall naturally into a successful pattern they regarded as obvious common sense. Unfortunately those are few. Repairing a weak culture takes considerable time and few new CEOs stay the course long enough. While significant improvements can be made, they’re not as easily maintained.

What’s come to the fore is recognition that strategy is pointless unless it furthers the aims of the organization or “the business” as those in business prefer to have it stated. HR must “understand the business” – meaning whatever line of work the organization is in and what in total makes it succeed. That’s the foundation of tailoring the potential complexities of HR to fit a narrower need rather than attempting to promote general HR concepts that may turn out to be unworkable in any case. Effectively it’s about what helps a group of people do something specific they’ve set out to do. It’s counter-productive to divorce what works theoretically in HR from what’s needed to achieve focused results.

Given an objective, we know whom to reward, to respect highly and recognize most, to focus on retaining, to promote, to train and what they need to show to deserve continuing help beyond their day-to-day production activities. By contrast we also know whom to respectfully sideline except for routine tasks, to counsel toward other careers or organizations and support in departing. HR can then build systems to further those managerial tasks effectively.

General concepts still apply, but tailored. In a given organization, for instance, you probably want to pay ‘in the middle of the box’ – neither the highest nor lowest among your competitors. You don’t want people to feel foolish working for so little when others offer more, but you don’t want to waste budget on high salaries if or when other factors lead to greater attraction or retention. You will likely tweak salaries and all other programs for scarce specialists in particular roles that you’ve discovered are critical to your specific operations. If you’ve decided to shift your culture, you will focus your strategies to support that change and swing people away from former practices.

Above all you will do your best to ensure that HR strategies don’t leave gaps or inconsistencies that everyone will recognize, that undermine what you say you’re attempting to achieve.

Herein lies the secret sauce that both big general consultancies such as McKinsey and more specific HR players such as Ceridian and others attempt to help with using more broad-based or more specific services. Regardless of how much help they offer, achieving broad consistency effectively requires a strong hand to match the specific needs of each organization.

Complex as individual components get, the ideas of focusing on specific measurable goals and not leaving gaps remain the two major differences between old and new approaches. As with finance and accounting, CEOs have a key role determining which priorities need to be achieved, but scarcely could have the time for the details. and the devil will be in the details if the CEO, CHRO, CFO and operators aren’t both fully aligned on common objectives and willing to take advice on the details they can’t possibly manage.

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Of course they fell back on a financial result they didn’t like as well – saying another $4 billion should have been cut from spending, but the headline reason, which we all need to pay attention to is the leadership issue.

By contrast hardly anyone blinked when Moody’s cut Japan’s rating three weeks later because that decision was based almost purely on financial concerns. Ho hum. With the US, now all pension and investment companies are looking at what S&P’s action means to their management of funds. No one imagined the US could be shaken off the top rating. A different anchor for investment safety has to be considered. and for a reason that sounds like a long term systemic flaw in their government process – the dependable capitalist democratic ideal – not just a temporary over-spending problem. Ouch.

It’s ironic that the US currently has perhaps the best democratic leader since Abe Lincoln, but he’s saddled with impossibly high hopes from an electorate hungry for jobs and an economy seriously damaged by eight years of another unwinnable war started and pursued by ‘the other guys’ who poured unbelievable amounts of cash down a drain massively bigger than Vietnam ever was.

So we have an electorate, no doubt tired of all the wrangling, but desperate to find a fix. and a lot of opportunists taking advantage of the intensity to present themselves and their narrow interests as the savior. We also have a political system with such embedded checks and balances it won’t allow even four years of consistent policies to take root. Unlike the Canadian and British system which allows one party to organize things if they develop a majority, the US seems almost guaranteed not to be able to put together a program without it being destroyed by opposition between, as well as at, elections.

What does every politician say the moment they’re elected? “Let’s put aside our differences; I’ve been elected to govern ALL the people.” Many try, but interest groups adhere to no such principles. They can stand back and bash away at their points of view no matter how tiny a minority they are. and should they have clout in some other area of government, they think nothing of simply attempting to block every plan.

When we look at business leadership, we’re reminded of Jim Collins’ finding in his book Good to Great that the first requirement for leaders is to ‘get the right people on the bus’ and, by extension, the wrong ones off. How a leader does this is critical so as not to alienate and paralyze the remainder with fear, but still sooner or later, lining up those who want to work toward the goal and moving those who don’t somewhere else is fundamental. In government you don’t have that luxury despite the bigots’ common admonition that ‘if they don’t like it here they should go home.’ Obama seems able to develop a common plan, but how to prevent a few from scuttling every agreement?

In any case, it appears the US will have to spearhead a new model that sustains efforts at consensus or compromise or face the critics worst predictions that they may be slowly losing their dominant position in the world. mostly due to inability of anyone to gel anything done on any issue at all.

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It got me to questioning the use of the term Talent Management itself. I have always taken it to be an umbrella that takes in finding, recruiting, orienting, developing, managing and tracking performance and then moving people up through effective succession planning all the way through their careers. That definitely calls for integration of many HR functions and beyond since line managers have to be central in many of the pieces – from supportive coaching on the development side to career planning conversations with individuals. They are definitely needed for effective succession planning discussions among groups of managers so everyone agrees on how to rotate people through progressively challenging assignments across different divisions to season their leadership knowledge and skills.

So I’m all for adding “Integrated” to make the point since, as i4CP notes, HR is splintered and hasn’t made nearly as much progress as it should have in most companies at breaking down the silos that would allow true integration of these operations.

We need this now, but at a job search presentation I gave recently an audience member came up afterward to ask about my use of the word “talent” in the phrase, “Sell your talent, not your skills.” Her understanding was talent meant born-in skills. Mine (and the source I’d quoted) mean something more like “your global skill set viewed by what it can achieve rather than the individual skills: your overall ‘talent’ for. whatever”. In other words, I sell my ability (or talent) to get upset groups of people cooperating together for common solutions, not the separate component skills like conflict management, consensus-building, etc. – a ‘sell results’ view rather than a nuts and bolts view of what I do.

This definitely highlights a difficulty with the generic term ‘talent.’ Some senior executives still take this to mean the handful of ‘highly talented’ individuals they depend on to drive the business – the so-called A-players. This can mean programs set up for the rare few who show really outstanding performance or qualities. In fact Talent Management as it needs to be practiced for bigger impact on organizational results requires that the program take in far more people – including pretty much everyone in any sort of leadership role in the organization. I mentioned a book a couple of months back (Talent is Overrated) about the folly of thinking people are ‘born with talent’ or that if they haven’t got it, you can’t build it. Geoff Colvin in his excellent book debunks that neatly by showing even the most ‘talented’ musicians, for instance, get there by endless practice at their chosen field. Malcolm Gladwell gets at the same points in his book Outliers.

So while Talent Management is a term that’s grown rapidly in popularity, it probably has for the wrong reasons – because for many it calls forth the mental image of the sole super-contributor, the knight on a white horse – exactly the picture of leadership that is now outmoded and that is holding back results for so many organizations. Instead they need the up-and-coming, innovative, learners who are keen to try new ideas – guided by some seasoned veterans who can help them manage risk (ie: avoid pitfalls the younger set haven’t experienced), but still forge ahead with continual improvement. That’s a very different need from the all-knowing, all-powerful ‘talented few’ that many still hope for and imagine exist.

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When I think back to situations I’ve been in this is all too true. So when you read reports like Wallace Immen’s piece for CTV on the poor state of leadership development in Canada (which is pretty similar to all you read about the US and even worse in other countries), you have to think there are very few executive teams asking where the process needs to start.

Black’s seems happy with their results and it’s great to see an organization attribute future potential success to a thorough and well thought out leadership development program with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and actual follow up planned. Two days a month over four months for key leaders makes for a good learning pattern judging from the programs I’ve worked with – enough concentrated time in each session and enough ‘settling’ and application time between them.

Even more important than the time spent by individual leaders furthering the own skills has to be the overall impact within an organization’s environment when everyone knows this is going on and everyone is watching to see who actually improves.

The peer and co-worker ‘pressure’ (really, the attention everyone will pay) is a key element that ensures the program is actually applied and begins to make enough of a difference to stick. Just knowing the new behaviors are expected eases the path for leaders who want to try acting differently and the reinforcement they’re bound to see in happier and more productive employees has a much greater chance of making changes permanent. A little icing on the cake is knowing the senior executives went through similar processes and should be demonstrating similarly improved behavior themselves. Lapses will be highly visible!

Getting momentum is a critical element to making such programs effective and these articles certainly suggest that it can be done, but that most aren’t doing it. yet. With the continuing spotlight on these sorts of innovation-boosting efforts, though, it seems inevitable that more companies will begin them.

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