{"id":3175,"date":"2017-10-10T08:16:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T13:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=3175"},"modified":"2017-08-01T13:28:07","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:28:07","slug":"the-journey-from-the-age-of-the-tool-to-the-present-part-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/the-journey-from-the-age-of-the-tool-to-the-present-part-7\/","title":{"rendered":"The Journey from the Age of the Tool to the Present (Part 7)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: \u00a0The\u00a0Journey from the Age of the Tool to the Present is a 7-part series, tracing the journey humanity has taken from 2500 BC to\u00a0modern times\u00a0on\u00a0the progress of\u00a0Human Resources. \u00a0This is a very comprehensive narrative that touches upon numerous management philosophies and concepts. \u00a0To read the full series, take a look at the\u00a0author\u2019s profile page found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

Continued from part 6\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I have found that establishing Decision Domain Councils can be incredibly helpful. \u00a0<\/b>Establish one called Human Performance Excellence and have the CEO and some individuals who are not the usual suspects such as the VP of Marketing or Product Development or the CTO or CIO involved with the HR Head who is Secretary and one of the other execs as Chairperson. This group is accountable for creating the employer of choice positioning to attract the best talent and keeping them.\u00a0 They ensure special programs for developing the \u2018leaders of tomorrow\u2019 and having strategic succession planning such as offered by Rothwell. Each Council should be supported by a Strategic Business Improvement Team made up of high-potential cross-functional talented individuals.\u00a0 Their assignments from the Council must be given priority and their performance evaluations and recognition must be linked to their success.<\/p>\n

Requiring senior executives to have (1) back to the floor experiences<\/strong> \u2013 going out and working in their retail operations, branch banks, whatever for 3 days going hand-to-hand with real customers and rubbing shoulders with their employees does wonders; (2) mandating that every senior executive not only listen to calls coming into the call center<\/strong> (if they know where it is!), but take calls for information or deal with complaints like Xerox and others have done; and (3) giving each senior executive responsibility and accountability for building exceptional relationships with one key customer account and key supplier<\/strong> organisation \u2013 their bonus depending on their success\/performance in doing so. The frequency which senior executives are tuned into needs to be changed and these will work \u2013 I have used all of them with great success. There are more, but allow me to stop there.\u00a0 In each case at each Management Committee meeting, a sharing of learning from these experiences needs to happen and built upon.<\/p>\n

\"journey7.1\"So, where do we go from here? Well if I were to paint a high level picture of what I believe the HR function should be in order to resolve the issues identified above and to move organisations more effectively and efficiently into the future, then I would propose this diagramme to the right.<\/p>\n

For me, Strategic HR would probably be headed by an executive who knows absolutely nothing about HR other than how to manage people effectively in the position he or she has had in the past. It could be a CIO, CTO, CSO, CFO or others. The keys in my mind are these. Put someone in this position who is well respected by the CEO and leadership team and therefore can act a liaison with them and ensure things happen such as ensuring the right decisions are made to invest in people \u2013 help the organisation become more people-centric and unlock their full potential to contribute to the success of the organisation.<\/p>\n

This position also would be on the career path of those whose aspirations are to move into a position of even greater responsibility.\u00a0 This experience should broaden them and give them the necessary competency set to help secure the long-term sustainability of the business.<\/p>\n

The Operational HR executive<\/strong> would be an HR professional \u2013 but not just an \u2018ordinary\u2019 one.\u00a0 What do I mean?\u00a0 Someone who possesses relationship mastery, creativity, capability to interpret analysis of data and information related to people, is up-to-date on the latest studies, surveys and books on the subject of HR.\u00a0 They need to be someone who changes the image of HR from being a necessary evil or nuisance \u2013 something to be tolerated, to a true ally, coach and source of inspiration.\u00a0 Focus and delivery – on engagement, empowerment, enablement, involvement, creativity\/innovation and more should be part and parcel of their remit and capabilities.\u00a0 They need to fully understand how to deliver value to the organisation which is clearly recognisable by the entire workforce and the CEO and leadership team.<\/p>\n

The Strategic HR and Operational HR Executives<\/strong> would have joint ownership and evolution of the culture of the organisation.\u00a0 Right now, no one owns the culture of an organisation \u2013 it just sort of happens and then we live with it. Yes, as said before, the culture of an organisation can either be the biggest enabler or inhibitor of success \u2013 not something to be ignored or taken-for-granted.<\/p>\n

The last component is having a \u2018world-class sensing system<\/strong>\u2019 which is continuously collecting, \u2018refreshing\u2019 the organisation\u2019s understanding and insight into the people side of the organisation.\u00a0 It should allow the \u2018new\u2019 HR function to be \u2018agile\u2019 \u2013 to identify, assess and act on issues \u2013 opportunities or problems at \u2018hyper-speed\u2019. Optimising technology<\/strong> to enable people in the organisation to work more effectively and efficiently will be increasingly critical. Then to, as digitalisation, and even robots and artificial intelligence begin to play in more and more down the road eliminating some base level HR positions as well as those in other functions, transformation related to people and the HR Function will increasingly become an organisational priority.<\/p>\n

In addition, the CIPD in the UK<\/strong>, one of the world\u2019s most respected Human Resource organisations did a study in 2013 which resulted in the following model being developed which is where I shall leave the discussion for now. \u00a0I leave this with you as \u2018food for thought\u2019 if you are an HR Professional reading this article:<\/p>\n

\"journey7.2\"<\/p>\n

I hope that the above Article has shed some additional light on the challenge ahead for HR.\u00a0 To me, at this point, HR is like a lifeboat of immigrants bobbing in a turbulent sea looking for a safe harbour and finding none. Let\u2019s help get this sorted!\u00a0 It\u2019s too important an issue not to!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: \u00a0The\u00a0Journey from the Age of the Tool to the Present is a 7-part series, tracing the journey humanity has taken from 2500 BC to\u00a0modern times\u00a0on\u00a0the progress of\u00a0Human Resources. \u00a0This is a very comprehensive narrative that touches upon numerous management philosophies and concepts. \u00a0To read the full series, take a look at the\u00a0author\u2019s profile… The Journey from the Age of the Tool to the Present (Part 7)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":3176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[595],"class_list":["post-3175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organization","tag-human-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3179,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions\/3179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}