I used to puzzle over an expression I haven’t heard in a while – “the exception proves the rule.” How can we say this, I always wondered, when an exception by definition would seem to defy the rule. Later I read that the old meaning of “prove” was “test” as in “proving grounds.” So an exception tests the rule. and certainly if you find the rule still applies, it adds to the proof that the rule makes sense.

One can write off any success to luck and it’s always a key factor, but Jobs clearly was successful several times and clearly followed rules of his own, whether they seemed understandable to us or not, so it’s unlikely to have been pure randomness. The core question remains – was that good leadership. and, if so what does that mean to my leadership theory or the many others that would seem to say his style is unlikely to succeed (and certainly wasn’t pleasant for employees)?

In the wake of Jobs passing I put off drawing conclusions because I felt I was missing something. In the interim I’ve read two Jobs biographies, a number of reviews and a good many articles because I think it is important to answer such puzzles. Ultimately I’ve come to conclusions.

My leadership theory says three relevant things. First, luck is always a factor, but you increase your chances of success if you (second) include five key elements in your leadership style – balancing positive with honest, and strategies with habit-building or implementation skills (those are the five in italics). And you improve your odds further if you either develop great strengths in all five areas (rare) or develop them in some areas and find partners to assist you in the areas where you lack strengths.

Jobs is a very, very extreme case of this, but it worked, albeit in a rather odd way he certainly never planned out. I conclude he wasn’t a great leader by himself nor by knowing how, just through sheer determination and somehow sensing the need for the five elements in strength and finding ways to supplement what he didn’t have.

What he did bring to the party was mostly a rather strange twist on emotional intelligence abilities – those being the positive/honest dimension in my model. His staff used to say he could create a ‘reality distortion field’ in any lengthy conversation or presentation. He was amazing at presenting his arguments in such a way that people walked away totally pumped, completely positive he would succeed, wanting to participate. They ‘drank the cool-aid’ as some would say, time after time – and so did analysts at conferences and trade shows. He even pushed Apple to design top notch presentation software as a key priority, many say, in order to use it to further this over-the-top skill of his.

One reason he was forced to this super-positivity was because he constantly went over the top on the other end of the EI or EQ spectrum. He aimed to be so brutally honest that it was extremely painful to work with him. He would rip people to shreds the second they failed to deliver to his image of what he expected, often highly unrealistic expectations. The latter is typical of great leaders who ‘get away with it’ – to push for results that seem to almost everyone else beyond the realm of what’s even possible – but it’s also typical of wild visionaries whose whacky dreams fail miserably. Jobs stumbled into a very extreme balance, but balance nonetheless, by accident I think.

On another key axis – IQ, the ability to generate workable ideas and implement them, I think Jobs was much less adept, but no less extreme, perhaps even weaker would not be too strong. The defining feature that made his initial fortune through the Mac for instance was the concept of the computer ‘mouse’ with its ability to point, click and activate menus, commands, highlights and more. He didn’t invent this, but saw it at the Xerox PARC labs and recognized – that was his skill in the strategy area – recognized that it had world-class appeal and function. It did, but he couldn’t build it or implement it himself, lacking all the skills needed to do so.

Through his belief that one truly good employee could deliver fifty times the actual implementation of a poor one, he triaged through computer geniuses, insulting and humiliating many in the interests of finding a few who would buy into his reality distortions and deliver fabulous technical machines in a fraction of the time everyone imagined was necessary. It seems certain he was never happy with the results or the speed, but settled for the best he could get by cracking his whip and driving toward the idea he’d spotted that would appeal to consumers.

His strength in the strategies (or ideas) area was to spot and in the implantation area was to drive others since he had absolutely no skills there himself except to see when something wasn’t yet good enough to appeal, wasn’t simple enough to be mass marketed to non-technical individuals. In that respect you have to say his inability to do any of the technical stuff himself was actually an asset – he would simply keep pushing until something worked simply enough even for him.

So in a very odd way, Jobs does in fact fit my theory of leadership, albeit in a way I never imagined and would never recommend. He found a peculiar balance of the key elements, requiring that to balance them he had to be beyond optimistic on the other to balance brutal on the other and capable of identifying the one core idea that was better than every other on one end and driving the associates he could bamboozle into joining to produce it ever more simply, quickly and cheaply on the other.

But it didn’t always work. In several tries – with his Lisa computer, NEXT and in film animation he nearly bankrupted himself or the company because a reliable overall balance never really there. Nevertheless he believed in his own distortion field to the point of nearly losing his house investing in a new idea before it caught on barely in time and took off.

I’m far more interested in tamer applications of my model, ones that anyone can learn and succeed with, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this exception does ‘prove the rule.’ It also could have been disastrous had luck not clicked at the moments it did for Jobs because there was absolutely NO balance in the third dimension – how fast you go. As with riding a bicycle (an example of balancing several skills that I often liken to leadership), if you don’t go fast enough or if you go too fast the balance is in danger of being lost. Jobs risked going far too fast for safety, but that was simply another of his personality quirks and unlike many, many other entrepreneurs he got away with it big time. At the end of the day, it appears he was driven somewhat like Alexander the Great, by believing he might die young and so had to achieve greatness in the short time he had. and, like Alexander, the prophecy seemed to come true unfortunately, just when Jobs had matured more toward the point of planning the balance instead of crashing into it and nearly wrecking everyone along his way. We can thank his indomitable impetuousness for speeding us along the digital path, but we should be glad we weren’t part of the painful process.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

In short, CFO magazine published this report a week or so ago that makes one a bit dizzy. It aims to summarize a presentation given by the CEO of Taleo (the Talent Management software company) at a US Conference Board event on Human Capital Metrics. The report seems to be an effort to pull out the highlights, which include a blast at companies using too many contract workers (getting less engaged employees) and the need to localize HR programs when operating globally rather than ‘drop in an American or Australian solution consultant’ into China, for instance. In the latter case, the reason pulled out by the reporter is ‘you need a local person who speaks the language and understands the cost structure.’ Admittedly these are among the reasons for wanting local help, but surely from an HR view, there are quite a few others – understand the culture, the local HR regulations, what motivates local people and more. By this time you can see a mish mash of partial ideas and wording shaping up.

From here we launch into a clip of comments about the need to use social media better, emphasizing that referrals result in employees who typically stay longer.

So far I’m following the reporter, a little buzzed by the quick shifts, but still puzzling about the title ‘HR under microscope’ and waiting for the major criticism. I’m guessing the headline is due to an editor creating something to sell. But no, there’s more.

An interesting segue takes us through an interesting comment that HR can’t be more than an administrative function if it runs on a staffing ratio of 1 HR pro to 350 employees when (in the CEO’s reported opinion) it started at more like 1:60.

Then the blast arrives. Asking reasonably whether HR at these large ratios can be expected to know more about talent than the manager of 10 people, it concludes: “Yet in exit interviews, employees say the number one reason why they leave is that they [don't like] their manager. It doesn’t make sense. We have to drive the HR professional into making more strategic decisions.” Wouldn’t logic suggest from this we need to convince senior management teams to make more strategic decisions about how to staff HR?

Wow. I’m not sure what the point is here, but given that it made it into the tag line for the article, I’m sure it must seem important. Let’s see – HR doesn’t have the resources to get properly close to talent issues, so it falls to managers who are doing a lousy job. In some way that doesn’t make sense so we have to drive – great concept there: “drive” HR professionals to make more strategic decisions. Would that be strategic decisions to hire themselves more staff? Is that their fault? Or is it that perhaps they really could create a better environment at their 350:1 skinny department ratios if they just tried harder? Or am I being paranoid?

All this ignores analyses from years back that HR staff ratios vary greatly due to the structure of the organization as well as sheer volume decisions (you typically need more HR per employee if you have 600 units spread geographically than if you have all, say, 25,000 employees under one roof like a big plant). But of course what really catches everyone is the facile move to turn this into blame for HR’s lack of strategic decision-making. Get the whip, let’s drive ‘em. By this point I’m not sure exactly who said what, but the result certainly seems to have ended up twisted in a familiar way. Sorry we can’t score one for CFO Magazine’s effort to make an ally of HR and mitigate inter-departmental silos. Except for the punch lines it sounded for a minute there like we were on the right track.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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..”

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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?

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

The two elements fit nicely together. Transferrable, prepared employees are the most valuable to any business. They don’t have to be jacks-of-all-trades, but they will be looking at what else they could be doing that the company needs and what skills they need to develop to do that. Good bosses will be identifying such employees routinely as those who could take on more or different roles and encouraging them to prepare, to try them out through cross-department projects and assignments.

Clearly this breaks down if any element, the employee, the boss or the organization, refuses to participate in such a program. But that’s how some companies come to have great reputations for protecting, nurturing and promoting their employees and some employees come to have great reputations for being ready to take on tasks the company needs.

All this is even more important as the pace of change and innovation continue to accelerate. Yes, it’s still possible to find organizations that don’t change. much. But even government, which used to be counted on never to change much at all is faced with having to keep up with changing expectations of the public for new and better services. Just take a look at how many things can now be done via the Internet and are often done better, faster, cheaper and with fewer staff. Imagine what happens to staff numbers in particular departments.

A close relation worked for many years in the cataloguing section of the National Library. In time his personal interests motivated him to study data base management and move to the computer systems site of the department where he survived quite nicely through a number of downsizings. Cataloguing just isn’t done by hand much any longer.

Not everyone has to move into IT for safety. In fact, IT can have considerable turnover as well when new systems and approaches are introduced, so it would be foolish to assume it always represents a safe haven. The plan for individuals needs to be that they keep an eye open for other things they could do and request opportunities to learn and take on some of those types of work so they’re ready when things change.

Everyone, in other words, should participate in the on-going growth and change that every organization must foster in order to ensure it survives and thrives. Not paying attention may leave you high and dry when change overtakes your type of work. Are you ready?

That goes for HR as well. The move toward measuring results and managing HR by measurement, for instance, seems to be catching many HR professionals flat-footed. When a shift in employment numbers comes within HR, it won’t wash to say, “I don’t know much about computers, I joined HR to work with people.” There’s nothing wrong with doing both and nothing stopping anyone from becoming more computer literate as systems become easier to use and understand.

These are skills you can work on even at home or in spare time in various ways. Everyone benefits as more and more HR managers develop a more sophisticated understanding of what capabilities exist for enhancing current HR practices even if many of those individuals are never called upon to actually tap a keystroke on any program. In fact, if you aspire to be the boss in an HR function, at least understanding such capabilities is quickly becoming an absolute necessity. Yet how many HR people do you talk to who have “learning more about systems” on their development plan?

Bookmark and share this post

More »

Promising iron-clad job security for life is clearly not what’s required or advisable for good employee relations. There will always be exceptions – an odd specialty department that’s no longer needed or, in the minds of some employees, even if you fire someone for cause or poor performance, the perception can be that you violated your promise. A real danger of making any formal commitment to security is the possibility it will create an entitlement mind-set in at least some areas of the company. It can be tricky to find a balance.

At Hbc, where turbulence and regular layoffs for ‘re-organization’ were commonplace, I was shocked to hear a senior director in one function suddenly accuse the CEO of being unconscionable for laying of half a dozen in the director’s division while he’d said nothing throughout much larger layoffs elsewhere in the company. Apparently it was OK everywhere else, but ‘not in my backyard.’

Some companies are fortunate never to have had to do any significant layoffs. RIM fit in that category until recently and earlier this year achieved #1 spot on a survey of “most attractive companies to work for” by Randstad Canada who collected 7000 opinions. Almost certainly that result was in before the layoffs. It will be interesting to see what happens in future years, since job security had to have been a pretty firm expectation of anyone signing on with them before recent events. People make assumptions. That’s in fact how job security is mostly evaluated in North America and helps explain the very high ratings obtained routinely by companies like P&G and even governments (during recessions). Of course it doesn’t earn such ratings by itself, but is a key ingredient.

Engagement requires employees to be satisfied with a number of factors, but disengagement can often result from a poor record in just one and that includes job security. But it’s a relative concept thankfully. Most people understand nothing is or can be 100% guaranteed. They make their analysis based on track record mostly and on the messages given out by employees of the firm – so employee culture, perceptions and what they tell others is likewise very important and can be managed in this respect through honesty and clarity as with so many other elements. People judge which companies are most likely to provide security largely by track record, often the recent record, though big splashes that got lots of publicity hang around a long time.

The key is don’t foolishly promise complete job security, but rather promise and demonstrate that leadership operates prudently. Don’t over-hire in good times (since they won’t last). Try for steady growth rather than spurts of uncontrolled hiring binges. Above all encourage and support cross-training so when tough times arrive, you can shift people to needed areas from those being reduced so as to minimize outright terminations. People understand if you’ve done the best you can and treated those who absolutely cannot be placed to fair severance arrangements, job search support and more. You can afford to be a bit more generous than average if you’ve minimized the numbers you have to let go. For others, it’s a vicious downhill spiral – the more they fire, the more it costs, the more they try to shortchange departing employees and blacken their reputation for future hiring. As with all other areas of HR, trying for balance is best. and most easily explained to those who need explanations if they are to be dissuaded from bad-mouthing how they were handled. Unfortunate, but often inevitable, this area, too, fits into a strategic approach to how we lead.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

For every useful item that lands in the inbox, there are about five that make me wonder who thinks this will be of interest to someone they often address as “Dear HR Strategist.” (Thanks to Canadian HR Reporter, that’s my label at the moment and one I’m honored to aspire to.) About half of these make me wonder why they think anyone at all would be interested.

Cases in point – one entitled “Employees’ Poor Emotional Wellbeing Is Obstacle to Wellness Efforts.” No, really? There are stats to prove it, sort of: “40% of employees say an emotional or physical problem has interfered with normal activities..” Yup, when I get a cold or flu, it sometimes interferes with stuff. If I had an emotional problem that might well too, though I might not know what was happening or be willing or able to report it. Wonder what they were hoping for with this factoid. The same survey shows unhealthy habits among sizable segments: “34% of employees consume one or less fruits and vegetables a day.” Maybe of more direct concern at work: “Only 16% get enough sleep.”

What HR strategies should I promote for these? I can report my intentions to be a good leader caused me more than once to ask a team member if they were sleeping OK, but I have to admit it never occurred to me to ask about their fruit and vegetable consumption. Lest I be unfair just quoting teasers, let me add the objective is to point out emotional problems may lead to poor wellness habits, so wellness programs without a component to help with mental/emotional issues may be less successful – a laudable aim.

Another opens with the dangerous headline: “Canadian Employers Not Doing Enough to Keep Employees Happy.” Bosses are justly suspicious of trying “make employees happy.” It goes on to say about a third of both Boomers and Gen Y feel employers should do more to address their concerns. Not a surprise. and clearly related to the endless surveys showing 65% to 80% or more of employees are varying degrees of disengaged. Surprisingly their attached press release expands on this to say 75% of Gen Y and 82% of Boomers are satisfied with their jobs. and yet 40% of the young group couldn’t get jobs in their preferred fields and 33% are planning a job change soon and 60% are working for money not enjoyment. So. they’re not as happy as they’d like, but they’re highly satisfied, but not in their preferred fields and thinking of moving. What’s the right strategy for this?

I’m a huge believer in two key observations. First, human beings are constantly subject to contradictory feelings, wants and needs. making it difficult to articulate a consistent direction. We want autonomy at work, but lots of feedback on how we’re doing, clear direction and support, but not micromanaging. These are contradictions we can understand and work with. Need I go on. We are contradictory beings and that makes life and HR interesting and challenging, but we can shape strategies on these.

Second, we develop innovations, both strategic and tactical by facing such contradictions squarely, so calling them out clearly can be helpful. My puzzling is about how to sort out useful contradictions from such ‘teaser’ factoids and headlines that may not reflect anything like the actual meaning of the reports they purport to summarize. Often it seems more likely the confusion such reports create, but don’t specifically try to resolve just makes strategic innovation more difficult. If a dozen readers can develop even more than a dozen interpretations of the study by picking and choosing from the supposed highlights, what use can we really make of it?

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

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.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

I happened across one of those ‘what are pay rates these days’ sites, of which there are a number including the big job boards. To test it out I looked up what I might have expected to make if I took a job near my favorite Florida vacation spot. Don’t ask why I’d be thinking of that in mid-summer. If it had been winter, an obvious reason.

That got me looking at my old ‘competitors’ – the CFOs – and at different regions. The short story is:

Median Salaries:

	Florida	New York City
CHRO	$208,000	$252,000
CFO	$343,000	$395,000

While there is slightly more convergence in New York where the median CHRO salary is just under two thirds of the CFO, Florida hasn’t moved up as much, although when I was in the job 10 years ago most CHROs were making less than half in many cases.

One can’t judge too much from these data, which can’t be trusted to be highly accurate statistically and will certainly have lots of variation company to company, by size, industry and more, but assuming they were collected more or less the same way by a common survey method, the variances a distinct and sizable enough to draw the obvious conclusion.

What this confirms is the slowness of progress even in big companies toward recognizing the value, choosing the right people and paying competitively for the best CHRO candidates, as well as the candidates themselves accepting less than the competitive rate. One can argue that CFOs or both are overpaid or CHROs are underpaid, but either way we can see that the established faith Boards of Directors have in the importance of financial issues over people issues is still alive and well.

I didn’t try, but almost certainly would find roughly the same ratios in Canadian statistics. Of course there will be exceptions, but chances are we’re closer to the Florida situation than New York where competitive pressures are bound to be more strongly pushing organizations, especially the bigger global ones, to the logical conclusion that HR is increasingly important.

It’s a small measure, perhaps not especially significant to people outside HR, that we still haven’t dragged most companies into the twenty-first century understanding of the value of effective HR practices and strategies.

Bookmark and share this post

More »

Meanwhile things I’ve taken on ‘because I’ll have more time’ like my condo board result in similar information overload, so the total not only hasn’t gone down, but for some adjustment period has gone up. Maybe that’s fraying my patience a bit.

Suffice it to say I lost it today (albeit mildly) with a chat comment back to me that probably wasn’t intended to be snarky, but felt that way. What triggered this was question on a chat board about why, with everyone talking engagement, the writer isn’t hearing a lot about diversity.

I commented positively that I think diversity is essential for engagement, but would be interested to see if he got examples as he was requesting. He did subsequently get a couple, but what I got was a reiteration that sounded like – if you agree it’s so important why don’t you answer my question why people don’t include it more often? So much for my thinking I’d been supportive, now I’m being challenged. Both chat and email have that tendency to sound snarky when the writer may simply be trying to be brief.

Well I more or less dumped my frustration with these sorts of questions. Each proponent of a particular view (me included I suppose) wonders why their viewpoint isn’t #1 on every list. I happen to think the key is effective leaders, who will promote diversity, for instance, because that makes them more effective. I pointed out I just got an advance copy of a report done in conjunction with HCI that points out that effective career planning is essential for engagement. They argue that with jobs opening and people finding it easier to move, companies would do well to institute better career planning in order to keep them engaged. Actually I think the primary goal of this is ‘to retain them,’ but I agree that one key to retention is engagement. Is it chicken or egg?

The challenge we face is there are dozens of possible “programs” which now propose engagement as the overall objective. because the real overall objective is performance and research shows engagement drives performance. We desperately need to get our strategic priorities in the right order. Engagement is the overall goal because it drives results, which has to be the core goal of any group that wants to remain in business.

To get engagement takes treating employees individually as valuable contributors. If we ignore suggestions and make them feel they can’t make a difference we won’t get engagement. When I say we, though, I mean each and every manager since that’s the individual each employee expects to turn to for support, encouragement, understanding, respect, etc. Getting those right leaders in place requires effective Talent Management which combines a good tracking system with good leadership development, succession and career planning (two different aspects) and solid HR environments that don’t discourage people. So, yes, diversity is definitely in there – individual respect and recognition – but it’s not a stand alone item. Neither is career planning or any of the others on the list. If it doesn’t all hang together logically employees will immediately find the discordant element and tend to turn off. Strategy is more than a single program.

Bookmark and share this post

More »