Stuff That Makes Me Think
Common Sense Truths
I really like this list of challenges to today's HR and organizational assumptions. The list comes from a talk Bob Sutton gave at the Singapore Human Capital Summit. These are ten thought-provoking ways to start a more strategic HR conversation about the culture we want to create, and our true philosophy about people in our organization.
- Assumption: HR ought to be all about spotting, hiring, and breeding individual talent
Challenge: HR could pack a bigger wallop by focusing on teams and networks more - Assumption: HR should focus on finding, hiring, and developing the very best people
Challenge: Bad is stronger than good – about 5 times stronger – so screening-out, reforming, expelling the very worst people is more crucial to collective performance - Assumption: Find some great superstars and pay them whatever is necessary to keep them happy – and certainly a lot more than everyone else
Challenge: The best organizations pay higher than competitors, but have more compressed pay - Assumption: Competition makes people, teams, and companies stronger
Challenge: Unless people and teams are rewarded for undermining one another rather than helping each other… dysfunctional internal competition is one of the most pervasive problems in American firms - Assumption: Harmony and having a shared vision are crucial to success
Challenge: Perhaps for routine work; but creativity depends on battling over ideas. Part of HR’s job should be to teach people how to “fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong” - Assumption: The key to success is copying practices used by the best companies
Challenge: The best companies may be succeeding despite rather than because of their HR practices - Assumption: Every company needs a great performance review system
Challenge: Are they really worth the time and effort? Do they do more harm than good? - Assumption: Taking a leadership position brings out the best in people
Challenge: This is a dangerous half-truth. Giving people power over others turns them into self-centered jerks - Assumption: The most important thing HR can do is to find and develop great senior leaders
Challenge: Having an organization with a high proportion of good bosses is probably more important - Assumption: The best organizations have the best people, “the people make the place.”
Challenge: There are huge differences in talent, but the best organizations typically have the best systems and not necessarily the best raw talent
Talent in the 21st Century Enterprise
I am enjoying a thorough read of this short Booz & Company article on the Talent Innovation Imperative. The 2008-09 economic crisis is more than just economic; it is the lurch from an old dying enterprise model to a new more sustainable and global model. The relationship between the enterprise and its talent has changed significantly. For those who haven't noticed the transition yet, the mid-20th century goods-producing, organizational man model has become obsolete. In a new economy that is knowledge-producing, global, and highly transparent, it is almostly purely the incremental effort, of individuals and teams, that makes the difference between success and mediocrity or failure.
"A more appropriate, 21st-century talent model assumes a workforce that is global, diverse, and gender-balanced, with discontinuous career progressions, in which high-potential employees may take time off or work for different types of organizations along the way. Under this model, companies value functional and leadership skills, embrace new employment structures (such as highly responsible part-time work), encourage virtual workplaces (in which people work together across long distances, communicating electronically), and offer nonmonetary rewards alongside financial rewards as a way to attract people. Family, community, and work are intertwined in a variety of ways, and the result is a more flexible, dynamic, and unpredictable workplace in which people feel they are continually building their skills and learning from the enterprise.
"This new talent management model allows a much broader group of people to assume positions of responsibility. It promotes innovation, growth, and breakthrough performance by integrating the needs of the business with those of individuals. And when aligned with a clear and focused corporate strategy, it allows top management to optimize compensation, training, and other expenses; maximize the productivity and performance of the workforce; and gain competitive advantage."
I am excited to be part of this field and see what results we can achieve with truly diverse, flexible, and sustainable talent practices.
Unwritten Rules & Feedback
John Beeson has written a terrific article titled "Decoding the Unwritten Rules of Corporate Advancement" in which he describes how feedback really works inside the organization. As talent leaders, we spend our energy building processes - competency models, succession plans, performance and appraisals - to clearly articulate what it takes for success in our organizations. This article articulates how feedback gets coded, or confused, or just plain not delivered, and how this contributes to frustration in our leaders. I have seen this frustration at all levels of the organization, and it's a costly problem when it results in the departure or lowered output of our best talent. The article is long, and well worth the read. I recommend it to anyone involved in organizational talent processes, as well as with leaders who are experiencing this type of frustration.
In most organizations, promotions are governed by unwritten rules—the often fuzzy, intuitive, and poorly expressed feelings of senior executives regarding individuals’ ability to succeed in C-suite positions. As an aspiring executive, you might not know those rules, much less the specific skills you need to develop or demonstrate to follow them. The bottom line: You’re left to your own devices in interpreting feedback and finding a way to achieve your career goals.
Jack Welch on HR
I love this quote from Jack's column in Business Week:
"[If] there was ever a time to underscore the importance of HR, it has arrived. And sadly, if there was ever a time to see how few companies get HR right, it has arrived, too ... If their company is in a crisis - or their own career - perhaps they've at last seen the light.
HR matters enormously in the good times. It defines you in the bad."
Talent Trends
My favorite talent thought leader, Tammy Ericksen, over at the Harvard Business blogs, has just posted two terrific articles about the impact of the recession on the workplace of the future.
Tammy's blog should be required reading for HR professionals and organizational leaders. She is insightful at pointing out the demographic trends that continue to exert pressure on the employment relationship; trends that are growing but hidden behind the shield of the recession that has everyone's immediate attention. Many organizations continue to treat their employees as if the employment contract and the nature of work hasn't changed since 1950, as if today's trends don't exist (and never mind how fast they are accelerating):
- increasing use of social networking tools and highly collaborative ways of communicating
- transparency (inadvertent for some companies) beyond company firewalls
- increasing expectations of highly skilled knowledge workers whose discretionary effort is the differentiator
- slowing growth of the U.S. skilled workforce in numbers (moving to single digit growth in 2010) and skills (22% overall high school drop out rate in the U.S. today)
- shifting expectations of what work means for different generations
- increasing need for flexible work arrangements at different points during an increasingly lengthy number of working years
Shout out to all my HR colleagues: we need to lead in this area by being honest about what work really is now, and having the courage to propose and build new parameters about how to work differently. Our organizations need this leadership now. There are better ways to win in the recession, and this vision will be paramount following the recession. In just a few years the 'war for talent' will be front and center for most of us. Those organizations that have had the courage to build new workplaces will be the winners in this war.
C-Suite Observations
Nick Morgan, who writes a great blog on public speaking and communications, has articulated some observations about CEOs with great clarity. I have seen this CEO mindset too often in my work with senior executives. Occasionally I find someone who doesn't make these mistakes, and wow, that is the leader I go the extra mile for.
"Top executives too often communicate too little. When they do communicate, they expect their employees and the world to pay breathless attention. They need to remember that information is not persuasion, that numbers are not vision, and that the bubble is not where most people live."