Presenting this week to a class of MBAs taking an HR overview course, I had a chance to ask them what they were doing and why. Several mentioned they’d taken HR undergrad, but switched to marketing. I asked why. One said, “HR seemed to be all policies and rules. Marketing is more creative.” I chuckled, but I could see heads nodding around the room. I couldn’t let that go.

HR, done right, means figuring out with people what to do to make them more effective in the varied and challenging situations they encounter daily. It shouldn’t be about consulting the policy manual and telling them what the rules are. If that’s all it is, you can be sure we’ll soon see “Why We Hate HR 2″ written with even more negative accusations that the original.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is more creative than trying to figure out individuals’ idiosyncrasies and what strategies they can pursue to get what they want while ensuring everyone else has a shot at their goals, too. Rules truly are made, if not to be broken, at least bent, stretched, modified, turned to everyone’s advantage. And HR is the primary place that should occur. How else can we keep some sort of logic and balance in the midst of constant surging forward?

I purposely chose HR because I thought it was the greatest creative challenge, not the least and certainly not less than marketing, which always seems to boil down to trial and error based on focus groups and surveys. Sure there’s creativity in the pieces - the art, ideas, copy-writing and so forth, but mostly they evolve from earlier attempts and testing new materials. The elements of HR are often more constrained - union rules, CEOs orders, financial requirements, etc., but being hemmed in makes the challenge of finding a creative solution even greater.

In  most non-HR situations there’s usually time to test. With HR, you rarely have that luxury. You need solutions today or tomorrow. You need a true sense of what makes people tick… and the variations that exist in your particular culture, organization, unit, team and more. Figuring out how to align all that for everyone’s benefit is, to say the least, the most complex sort of challenge we ever face… so much so that many people just ignore it because they can’t face the creative struggle it often requires. So tell me you like marketing because it has rules, concepts or patterns that can evolve and room for new ideas, but don’t tell me it’s more that way than HR. It’s may not be your chosen field; you don’t have an aptitude for it, but not ‘uncreative.’ If that’s what we leave people with as an impression of HR, we deserve all the condemnation we’ve been getting.

Under the heading Management buy-in key to learning, the UK’s widely read Training Zone (free) newsletter reports this (which applies worldwide): Lack of line management buy-in is the key barrier to learning retention, according to 40% of people who responded to a World of Learning on-line poll. The survey also revealed that 37% of the 300 respondents believed that the lack of follow-up further hindered the success of learning retention. Another 25% felt that lack of coaching/mentoring negatively affected the effectiveness of learning and development opportunities. A similar proportion – 24% - felt that lack of learner buy-in was a major issue.

Of course, these are really the same four issues. Buy-in by managers would mean they would follow up their staff’s training with coaching and mentoring thus producing learner buy-in. So how do we get this? The most successful answer is to start at the coaching-leadership end of the chain. If managers work in a culture where they’re expected to coach and they have some experience (and training) in how to do it, it becomes natural for them to be following up regularly with how people are doing.

When you lead by coaching, you work in a pattern of coaching all the time as the primary way of managing every issue. On daily coaching rounds with staff, you naturally ask, “how’s it going” and hear about their experience at training. You enquire what they plan to do with it – “what they really want” from it and that would lead to mutual objectives that you would be asking about in future conversations. This is far from rocket science as they say.

Experiences employees have, whether in training, attending meetings, conferences internally or externally, working on teams and projects and so forth all are things a great leader keeps up with, asks about and takes an interest in. When follow up is just “the way we always do things here” we have a culture of effective leadership. Questions about “buy-in” just don’t arise. If managers and staff aren’t bought in it’s because they have no mutual interests in what’s going on daily.

HR Lacking in Accountability?

A national newspaper’s management tips column picked up a dubious McKinsey finding on HR accountability I noticed a few weeks ago, but ignored. McKinsey has reasons for publishing such findings – they sell HR consulting. It doesn’t hurt them to remind clients they need to pay attention to their HR accountabilities. But when a widely-read paper flogs the same information without comment, I’m moved to comment on the lack.

Let’s not appear to bash HR without evaluating the comments in light of other facts. In this case the study noted 64% of line managers felt HR was not held accountable for Talent Management initiatives while only 36% of HR managers agreed.

How should we compare this? I suggest two ways. First, against other departments: Marketing Today on-line reports a study by the CMO Council that “less than 20% of top technology marketers surveyed had developed ‘meaningful, comprehensive measures and metrics for their marketing organizations’” …and “The last major study on marketing ROI found that 68% of marketers were unable to determine the ROI of their initiatives.” Sounds at least as damning to me… and far worse than the oft-quoted John Wanamaker comment that ‘we know we waste half of what we spend on advertising; we just don’t know which half.’

Second I’d say we should compare those opinions of HR with what appear to be facts highlighted by other recent studies such as this from Workforce Management: “One-third of U.S. companies do not have workforce contingency plans in place, according to a recent survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide [despite growing concerns]. Of those companies that say they have contingency plans in place, more than half say those plans center around layoffs, while an additional 46 percent say their plan is “to restructure their organizations.” I doubt that HR came up with most of those plans without direction by the way. Planning layoffs isn’t typically HR’s first choice.

If you think beneath these last two reports you’ll quickly see the blame falls not solely with the functions by any means, but with the organizations as a whole – companies need to develop ways to measure their Marketing and HR departments and results. The idea that it is somehow purely HR’s fault they aren’t held accountable or that this gives them an unusual ‘out’ is implied, but not backed up. I dare say more line mangers than Marketing managers see the lack of Marketing’s accountability in many companies. So what? HR is likely quite willing to take accountability if anyone can agree on measures.

I have no quarrel with continued insistence that measuring results is essential. What’s annoying is the implication that it must be somehow resolved solely by HR when in fact this is an incredibly important facet of overall management of all operations – one that depends on teamwork, not finger pointing, the former being unfortunately sorely lacking in many organizations.

Yes… and no. Many HR professionals believe protecting employees is one of their duties. That is true in a large sense, but it is rarely easy to protect individuals in specific situations, at least, not without their help and cooperation, which frequently is lacking.

It will be interesting to see what action Norway’s SAS airlines takes now that  public bullying of older pilots by young ones who want them to retire (to reduce possible layoffs) has received world wide attention (example - Canadian HR Reporter).   Workplace Violence News quotes a study by the global-oriented Employment Law Alliance which found almost half of all employees at one time or another have been bullied by a boss. 50% of those bosses and 84% of the victims are women, suggesting bullying is equally distributed, but victimhood belongs to those at least  perceived to be in the weaker position.

Fortunately today there are lots of resources for bullied individuals who care to search. I like the Robert Mueller’s BullyingBosses.com for one, but there are lots and it helps to read several before deciding what to do.

The key, inevitably, begins with the victim sad to say. SAS is a relatively typical example - a company alerted months ago, yet  to date unwilling or unable to manage effective solutions. In the past they’ve stood out as a good employer with some great HR strategies. But bullying is particularly challenging to address.

Of course it should have started long ago with a Harassment Prevention policy clearly posted and consistently managed. That would make it easy to fire the s.o.b. who posted suggestions for harassing older pilots by freezing them out of social activities. It would also set them on the path of finding and having the police charge those who reportedly are talking about breaking legs and worse. There is no excuse and should be zero tolerance for such outrages – a case where zero tolerance makes total sense.

Most bullying is not so overt, however, or at least it is not so visible to management. Most bullies would likely be happy to bully everyone, but don’t because some people are immune for various reasons and so they settle on those who aren’t and who react. Most tire of persecuting those who shrug and ignore them. Their miserable behaviors are focused in limited areas on specific individuals. If companies have trouble helping victims, that’s even more true of surrounding co-workers who tend to offer advice quietly, but probably correctly want to stay out of the direct line of fire.

If it is so easy to say “just ignore them” why do so many victims suffer repeated torture to the point of quitting or worse? There are as many answers as individuals involved, but first and foremost, people get rattled and don’t recognize the many actions they could take. Bullies, on the other hand, will inevitably apply their nasty side to someone, so the lowest tolerance individual, even if they’re reasonably good at ignoring the bully, will continually be subjected to unacceptable behavior. Ignoring only takes you so far.

The fact is this sort of behavior goes on constantly. HR can’t stamp it out totally any more than they can stamp out office romance. It’s human nature and will creep back in no matter how “zero tolerance” we say the policy is. We need to be careful about what we characterize as zero tolerance because there will always be ways around it, situations that fall through the cracks and individuals we can’t touch who will make a mockery of the concept.

The biggest challenge is we don’t prepare people effectively. Strong employees realize there are things they can do. Weaker ones will be basket cases before they’re discovered or complain loudly enough to be heard. By then it is usually too late to protect them. They have reached the point of quitting and do so either directly or indirectly by falling into long term illnesses, constructive dismissal or human rights retaliation.

What we need is a general sort of protective training that makes everyone, including bullies, aware there are always solutions to disrespect and bullying in all their subtle variations. But those solutions begin with people reaching out and seeking solutions and participating in working with the boss/bully to solve the behavior as opposed to waiting for it to break them down and then lashing out in whatever form they fall into. We need these systems in place long before instances of bullying start coming to our attention or we can’t “protect” individuals. The first defense will always be to help them be strong enough to work through solutions. That is unlikely to take root if they arrive already at wits end.

While making new attempts to convince an audience in a speech yesterday I found myself clarifying convergence between HR, leadership and people skills in ways I had not fully thought through before. Sometimes when you talk and think about ideas for a while they suddenly start to make sense in entirely new ways. Conversation drives insight. This led to more ideas later that will cause me to revise my presentations to emphasize where we are in “the state of the art” today.

Several very different factors are evolving rapidly in society, having begun 30 or 40 years ago, now becoming visible in many places. Best known, most obvious is the impact of the PC dating from the first Apple computers built in Steve Jobs’ garage in 1975. Not only have these changed world history, but we don’t yet know how much or what the most powerful impacts will be. From pure record-keeping to social networking the story is far from finished.

Less well known, but now quite clear in direction, we can date recognition of the amazing power of effective HR from the takeover of GM’s Fremont, California car plant by Toyota, who were able to double production with the same people, machines, suppliers, etc., in just two years and have continued to boost productivity steadily since - for 25 more years - a management/human resources process that in incredibly powerful.

Then Complexity theory, with roots in biology and mathematical systems, least well understood, tells us that complex situations behave in similar ways in all endeavors, all challenges from physics to human behavior. HR - or human behavior - is the most complex area of all.

Complexity theory tells us that thousands or millions of “independent agents” working on problems will evolve rapidly to produce amazingly powerful, unexpected answers that turn out to be based on simple principles. Of course this is exactly what we’re seeing on the Internet… and at Toyota’s Fremont adventure called NUMMI - notice their simple principles: teamwork, equity, involvement, mutual trust and respect, and safety.

With blogging and social networking conversations, often truncated, halting and confusing, by millions of people someone will stumble on answers and ideas that will change the world in dramatic ways - and some of those will be further clarity in HR and leadership.

We now know HR process can revolutionize results. What we don’t fully understand yet are the simple principles that work together to create the right framework for this to occur in the widely varied organizational situations we face. We know what work on auto assembly lines.

Hospitals are struggling to apply complexity theory directly, a confusing path based on the concept of “positive deviance” or “copying the successful people from thousands of attempts” at solving a problem like rampant, drug resistant infections. More of these efforts are being tested world wide. The potential to solve political and organizational problems never before resolved logically is enormous. Those whose conversations lead them to the best solutions stand to reap equally enormous benefits.

Blogging, social networking and virtual worlds are going to be key tools that HR practitioners will need to understand whether they actually use them or not. They each may or may not have a place in corporate and HR strategies. Understanding typically improves with some do-it-yourself practice. In future posts I’ll cover my own halting explorations.

In the mean time tech gurus at Forrester Research have authored a great new book that gives the pros and cons of strategies and best practices - how and when to use blogging, net communities and more. It’s an easy, fast read for the uninitiated as well as many who think they know what these are all about.

Just wish the binding by Harvard Business (??) had held up longer than a week. But the information is invaluable and still readable nonetheless.

After several weeks sorting out how to get the blog running well, I realize I have so much material about what’s effective in Human Resources (HR) and leadership I could fill a dozen books not to mention a daily blog. Time to get going! Every day brings more confirmation that people are finally understanding how powerfully these topics affect results.,, but not necessarily how to manage them most effectively.

I’m happy to say there are more new communities on these topics shaping up. Just this past week I’ve joined a couple and may report further once I assess their value and openness to being identified. Each one brings a flood of new information, though, which can be challenging. What to believe, what to focus on? We can’t pay attention to everything, but HR and leadership are ascending today.

Case in point, one of the new links’ newsletters pointed to a summary of an interesting study by Booz & Company who follow the world’s largest 2500 companies and report only 2.1% of CEOs among them have been fired for poor performance while average tenure has been 9.4 years over the ten year period they looked at.

Assuming the data are correct, that’s far less turnover than the widely reported 2.6 year average tenure for CEOs in general. So, do big companies really have better people? Given that stats also show most big companies (with certain distinct exceptions) fall from grace over any 20 year you want to look at, it would appear more likely that Boards simply aren’t acting on big company CEOs as often as they should.

What most research of this sort raises is the question of which stats to pay attention to and how to interpret them when they appear more or less in a vacuum, unconnected to related information that contradicts or reinforces them.

How do you judge? That’s a question we will increasingly ask ourselves as the Internet continues to deluge us with such questions. I’m interested in opinions….

Recently I found and joined a new HR Bloggers group - a Ning community (Ning.com) - that I ran into via LinkedIn. As HR takes off as a powerful force in organizations I think there are going to be a lot more of these.

These social networking sites are starting to make sense finally. As with many things, you learn if you work with a system for a while even if you aren’t sure what use if may be. It’s a relatively easy form of risk-taking that may produce results. If not, you haven’t lost much.

Anyway, if you’re reading my blog today, you’ll see a variety of odd colors as the designers I’ve contracted via Elance work on changes I’ve requested. The elance process has been another of those learning experiences. I’m not fully opening it up to the public till the changes are in place and I’ve begun again with my HR-related posing.

As a start I thought I’d post the answer I put on HR Bloggers to the question: why stay in HR? For me it goes like this:

I’m staying in HR because this is where the action is for the next few centuries. People working better together can make our organizations far more effective. Not only will everyone make more money, but they will have a fighting chance of enjoying it while solving the problems we’re creating all over the world.

We’re seeing a sea change in organizations toward understanding that people are the most important ingredient. Ours is the most complex (therefore most interesting) and impactful area of organizational work. We will begin getting the respect this work deserves… as soon as we start convincing everyone what needs to be done. Fortunately bookstore shelves are rapidly filling with proof and advice that will get CEOs thinking they need us. Now… are we up to it?

Every HR professional is facing a bigger set of new learning challenges than ever before. How are we going to learn the new social networking technologies, among them Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Twitter, YouTube and Second Life and still have time to do the basic job. There is only one answer: try them yourself whenever you have a few minutes. Do a bit at a time. Learn by doing.

I’ve always loved technology, so it’s easy for me to say. But none of it is completely transparent and easy. The new blog hasn’t been as easy to finish setting up as I’d hoped, but it’s been a chance to try engaging help via elance (a popular site for hiring virtual help, mostly in this case for techie challenges like web design. It’s only one of many, though that provide a mind-boggling array of services.

The technology is amazing, but the first time you try anything there’s a learning curve. Fortunately you can usually get advice from Google at any point along the way.

The real quesiton is going to be how many of these new initiatives you can juggle along with everything else. What’s the ROI for individuals trying this stuff? Are we going to drive ourselves crazy or can we anticipate there will be a limited number of sites and programs to learn and then we’ll feel “fully equipped?” Somehow that seems a bit unlikely just at this point. What’s your take?