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Microsoft Philippines HR Director Sheel Majumdar addresses need for HR to become more strategic. He lists down the changes that need to be done.
A lot is being said and expressed around the assertion – HR needs to transform and get more strategic. As much as, the statement in itself is powerful, yet a lot of the practitioners from the fraternity is struggling to demystify the real elements of this journey.
Recently, during a day long brainstorming with a few co-practitioners, I was engaged in a fascinating and energizing debate around this topic. Thankfully, a few CEO and business leaders also participated in this debate, making the dialog more meaningful. We got a real-time business validation of some of our thinking.
Some of the key questions that we deliberated upon were: What really is this transformation? Can we put some definition and specificity to this conversation? If so, what would be some of the top drawer ones?
Based on that discussion, I started jotting down some of the changes that we need to bring into our HR work, relatively fast. These aren’t gospel, they may or may not resonate with many. But it’s important to table them to initiate a conversation, that will be a reflective take on what we need to do as a fraternity to be more relevant.
Let’s take a look at them:
Understand, what business (CEO) “doesn’t” want to know or care
A lot that we do under the quintessential HR job is running rhythmic processes, programs and scorecards, which though are critical in nature, but the business (CEO) doesn’t care much about. They know these are important, and needs to be carried out, but they don’t want to know what we are doing and how we are doing these. A lion share of our time goes into doing and maintaining these, but the reality is, for business or CEOs, these are HR issues (which they wouldn’t want to spend too much time on) and not business issues. HR will need to ensure these happen as clockwork to the right quality and compliance need, but also understand these alone wouldn’t mean much from a functional relevance standpoint.
Clearly, identify and recognize what “is” important
Business (read CEO) are interested in business / revenue/ profitability growth. To that end, they look across the table to HR to own the talent, organization capability and culture roadmap needed towards these. CEOs are more focused on business and talent issues, not HR issues. For HR, the key opportunity to be the most relevant executive function is to address the questions:
- Where do we want the business to go?
- Where are we today to that end state?
- What do we do to organization capability, talent, and culture to accelerate this journey?
Time to listen and absorb
Traditional HR of telling and governing, HR processes and policies, are changing rapidly. Since the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, organizations the world over have been intentionally transforming HR to be much more than just process / policy advocates. In the modern day context, it’s important for HR to “get it (what the business is and what it needs)”. I have repeatedly heard this grouse from the business leadership – of HR not getting it, and being happy in their cocoon. That may sound a tad generalized and a carpet-bombing statement; however, that, to a greater extent, is a reality. A very tiny section of the HR community “gets it”. Its time, we change our approach to inculcate habits of:
- Being at the business forefront, attentively listening to business conversations (identifying the talent, organization and culture needs), employees (identifying opportunities to simplify systems and culture to enable high engagement and collaboration), external market (learning from different ecosystems and embracing the new world of work)
- Understand the end-to-end business value chain (system) – in and out (what are the systemic parts, how it all works, the present state and opportunities therefore)
- Absorb insights – from leaders, from the organization at large and market information
- Have a strategic (ears to the ground) point of view
To me, the biggest ammunition in the HR arsenal is the ability to ask powerful questions, that:
- Creates deeper strategic conversation about growing the business (capability, new market, new business, transforming our present business model, etc.)
- Pushes the status quo – thus elevating the quality of leadership, decision making, unearthing growth opportunities, being self-critical of our blind spots, etc.
- Generates more insights on cultural mindsets, barriers, fears, vulnerabilities that uncovers opportunities for intrinsic growth
- Enhances my (HR’s) alignment to business and strategy
- Helps to create a key facilitative and highly credible space for HR on the executive table
Understanding the “customer” context
For us to have a strong point of view on the future state organization, it’s important to know how we are landing with our customers today and what needs to change there. Most successful organizations align all their internal decision systems and results with the impact on the customer. It is this impact which needs to ultimately increase, and HR needs to understand how the present talent, organization and culture strategy is playing out in this pursuit, and what can improve. HR will need to spend a lot of time listening to the customers and partners, and this will help enhance their presence and effectiveness in the executive conversations.
Embrace data and intelligence
As HR gets into the driver seat to influence and shape the organizational strategy and growth plans, it will need to be equipped with some in-depth intelligence that will help push the arguments and conversation further. Talent, organization and culture, have been measured (mostly) using very surface level numbers (traditionally) – attrition analysis, diversity, spans, employee satisfaction scores, etc. Increasingly, the need is getting amplified to go deeper and bring out intelligence around growth indicators, for example:
- What kind of transformational talent do we need?
- What’s the impact of such talent in transforming and growing business?
- What kind of managers are being talent magnets that feeds to the organization growth plans?
- What are the voices from the employees to the environment of taking risks and tolerance for failure, etc.
Leadership coach
Leadership is a lonely place. It has moments of uncertainty, vulnerability and plain blank fear. There’s a lot at stake for a leader in making decisions to grow a business or organization. In the modern day context, a true HR business partner will need to build skills to be the confidante, the white boarding partner, the sounding board, the dispassionate / non-judgmental listening post, the conscience keeper, the mirror, the difficult question bank, who will do the critical job of eliminating doubts and uncertainties, to help the leader operate with confidence. This, in my experience, is yet another critical role the HR business partner plays – specifically to build the adaptive leadership component of a leader or (leadership team). Modern day HR will need to build on the skills of listening, asking thought provoking purposeful questions, giving real-time active feedback (mirror), facilitating difficult decision making conversation (white boarding partner), combined with values of trust and integrity to be effective in this space. This ability can generate a lot of credible space for the HR professional, especially in these times.
Talent magnet
Lastly, it’s all about talent. Talent with a future in mind:
- What kind of talent we need to grow the business?
- What kind of leadership is needed to transform and win?
- What are some of the new capabilities we need to focus on that aren’t there today (or are limited) but is needed more in the future context?
How do we know it is working?
My simple visual measure for this is:
- How many conversations to future growth am I being invited to?
- How many times does the CEO (client leader) seek my opinion or seek me out to discuss / share their line of thinking – to further seek feedback or counsel on decisions?
- What share of my time am I working on future growth agenda – business strategy, talent management, organization capability, culture, leadership coaching, customer / talent meetings?
- What’s the feedback from your client leadership (CEO)? What am I hearing? Where are they experiencing my impact more – Tactical? Transitional? Transformational?
- How sought after am I – with the leadership team (for leadership coaching / organization development)?
- How often am I able to elevate leadership conversations with purposeful, future focused questions?
- How often am I leveraging intelligence based insights to prepare for a conversation (to advocate my argument)? How am I building this competence?
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