Virtual Training: Strategic HR Business Partnering

My most popular training with Human Resources Online in Singapore has been a two day course focused on strategic HR business partnering.

This will now be delivered completely online, running over four Thursday morning from 4 to 25 June 2020.

More details and booking can be found here.

@joningham, http://linkedin.com/in/joningham
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134


Top 100 HR Tech Influencer - Human Resources Executive
Mover and Shaker - HR magazine

#ioms17 IOM Summit Keynote

I'll be keynoting at the IOM Summit in Cologne next week. The conference focuses on the digital workplace and the way to the digital work organization and I'll be speaking about HR's role in supporting, and enabling, this

My session is called #HR in the Leading Role for Developing the Social Organization – but Not as We Know It!

I explain more in this interview.

More about me:

@joningham, http://linkedin.com/in/joningham 
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134

Top 100 HR Tech Influencer - Human Resources Executive 
HRD Thought Leader - HRD Connect
Mover and Shaker - HR magazine

Also develop your Strategic HCM capabilities at my new Strategic HR Academy

#HRVision17 how to divorce from Dave (Ulrich)

Two sessions at HR Vision focused on the Ulrich model and how this may now be being updated.

First up was Xavier Savigny from Bureau Veritas in a session titled 'Get ready for the future, and how to divorce from Dave'. Xavier described a number of cultural changes required by HR (e.g. saying no but also offering a new solution).

In terms of structure, Xavier suggested a change to Ulrich's three wedded stool, as shown above.

• HR business partners become HR coaches, more focused on building the required skills in business and people leaders

• Centre of Excellence specialists become innovation laboratory scouts recognising the need for these staff to continuously transform and experiment with new approaches

• Service centre advisors being replaced by a digital platform (RPA, AI, chatbots, etc).

These are all useful and appropriate changes, though in a sense are a second honeymoon, rather than a divorce, e.g. specialists surely should always have been innovating?

However, if nothing else, it'll be interesting to start calling HR's updated structure the fried egg model! (see the above picture).

The second of the two sessions was delivered by Reza Moussavian at Deutsche Telekom and was titled 'What digital really means for HR - Dave and doing the same-same will not help!'

For Reza, the Ulrich model is too structured, hindering us by promoting structured thinking. Deutsche Telekom have therefore installed disruption into HR through a digital and innovation unit. This tracks all the HR startups, has run an internal HR tech conference, and uses design thinking which it sees as the greatest enabler for change. Eg it has developed 21 personas representing DT's workforce.

I was pleased to hear that, as I had suggested in my own keynote, HR is also responsible for digital collaboration.

Once again these changes are interesting and appropriate, but again, not that significant. Ie they still support a three legged stool and once again, the type of innovation Reza has introduced is really only the sort of thing that the central policy team (the seat of the stool) should always have been doing.

It's got me thinking - is this enough, or do we still need more radical transformation to the Ulrich model?  More on this next week.

More about me:

@joningham, http://linkedin.com/in/joningham 
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134

Top 100 HR Tech Influencer - Human Resources Executive 
HRD Thought Leader - HRD Connect
Mover and Shaker - HR magazine

Also develop your Strategic HCM capabilities at my new Strategic HR Academy

Future Models of HR

One of the areas which seem to have produced quite a few ideas this year is the future of HR, supporting the broader future of work.

My favourite report in this area is probably Henley's: HR with Purpose: Future Models of HR - partly but not just because I contributed to it.

A lot of the report emphasises the need for HR to act more strategically. Eg the diagram above suggests that creating an HR strategy is one of the most important needs for HR and is also an area of low capability.

I really like the value chain model which is proposed, particularly the split between people and 'HR' (or what I call human capital). Though, as the report points out, these HR capabilities may increasingly be provided by non-humans (robots, AI etc) too. It's also interesting to see HR capabilities identified as belonging to both individuals and groups (the groups part being the focus of The Social Organization). I believe the use and understanding of models like this can really help HR develop a more strategic role.

The key to doing this is to focus on the human capital and other outcomes an organisation wants to achieve. And further back than this, the core business strategy, often expressed through its values and purpose etc. And then developing HRM activities to support these.

I like these questions about capabilities provided in the report (though to me chemical engineering is an operational core competency not an HR capability):

This incorporates both strategic aspects of capabilities (such as chemical engineering  or engagement) and tactical delivery of programmes and processes to deliver capabilities (such as recruitment and retention) and raises some substantive and useful questions, such as:

• What capabilities? How can we de ne the required capabilities? What are  the criteria for the capability? Can we substitute a capability that might be  easier to build? 
• Why do we need that capability? What does it add to the organisation? Can we  know when it has added the predicted value?
• When will the capability be needed? 
• Where, and how, can we acquire key capabilities?
• Who owns the capability? Is it necessarily a human capability or can it be built  via some other mechanism?
• How much of each capability will we need? How can we know when we have  enough, or not enough? How can we maximise the utilisation of the capability?
• How can we build, acquire, nurture and retain our key capabilities? If the  capability provides competitive advantage, then how can we protect it from competitors?
• Do we already have capabilities that might contribute to our strategy or even suggest modi cation to the strategy?

The same applies to OD and the report includes one of the figures from my recent article with Dave Ulrich, in which I take each of the core structures from my OPM model and show how these impact upon HR:

I don't agree with everything in the report, e.g. it suggests separating out strategic HR from business partners' account management role. I think it's vital that HRBPs act strategically (i.e. are focused on capabilities), not just the centre.

The report also suggests that it is easier for a business person to learn HR and carry out HR strategy than it is for an HR person to acquire the required business knowledge. This misunderstands HR strategy which whilst acting in the context of the business needs to be fundamentally about people. It also under estimates the amount of people/HR related knowledge people need in order to act in this strategic role.

Other than this, the report contains some great thoughts about potential future models of HR.

More about me:

@joningham, http://linkedin.com/in/joningham 
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134

Top 100 HR Tech Influencer - Human Resources Executive 
HRD Thought Leader - HRD Connect
Mover and Shaker - HR magazine

Also develop your Strategic HCM capabilities at my new Strategic HR Academy

HR Academy Asia: Strategic HR Business Partnering

I'm training on HR business partnering in Asia next month - in Singapore on 18-19 April, KL 21-22 April and Hong Kong 25-26 April.

The sessions are being organised by Human Resources Online's new HR Academy.

If you're in the region and you get a chance to, do come and spend a couple of days with me.  It's an important area and I've got some great suggestions to share.

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HRPA2015 and HR professionalism

Looking through the slides of the sessions that I missed at HRPA 2015 one of the most interesting that I missed was one on HR professionalism.  It suggests that:

'Interestingly,‘professionalism’comesupfairly frequently in HR but there is actually very little that has been written about what ‘professionalism’ means for HR professionals. 

We can take‘professionalism’to mean the set of values, attitudes, and behaviours that are expected of professionals.'

I think this is a really interesting idea, and a potentially important one.  I’d also prefer to see standards focused on our professional behaviour than on the technical aspects of doing HR.  The opportunity but also the challenge in doing this is professional behaviours gets to the heart of what it means to be in HR - eg are we about the business of HR being business, or making the business of business into HR.  Dave Ulrich’s outside in perspective suggests the former but I think it’s wrong.  So do you, apparently.

This is based on one of the other articles in People Management which I found interesting recently which was this one on making friends with the Finance Director (they did let me comment on this.)  

And particularly these survey findings:

'In the 2013 State of Talent Managers Report, conducted by the US organisation New Talent Management Network, 77 per cent of respondents said a primary reason they got into HR was to “help people grow and develop”, but only 58 per cent said they joined the profession to “help my company maximise its profitability”.'

I doubt Mark Efron will not have been impressed by these findings but I am.  Helping people grow and development is the art of HR, the heart of our profession and this is this is what we need to develop and spread.

It's why I still think Peter Cheese at the CIPD has it wrong when he notes:

' “Part of the problem is we don’t have a business language of HR,” said Cheese, pointing out that even regularly used terms, such as headcount, have no common definition. 

“The business language is principally a language of numbers so this is a really important space to be working in,” he added.'

We need to develop a new language of business focused on people, not to try to fit people into the way things are done now.  It's this I hope the reporter was referring to when they note:

'I agree that it’s vitally important for HR to make friends with finance, as the alternative seems to be letting finance take over the boardroom. As any good HR professional knows, one of a business’s most important assets is its people. And people can’t be simplified down to finance’s language of facts and figures.'

It's interesting to see tonight's #Tchat returning to Ram Charan's intervention last year as well (see my comments here.)  To me, if all we do is see ourselves as in the business of business, and use the language of current business i.e. Finance, then we can't complain when we do get taken over by Finance as what's the point in us.  We need to create a new language of people and ensure the business is in the business of HR.  Then we've got something special to contribute and our businesses will be in a much better state as well.

It's this that needs to be the basis for increasing moves towards confirming our professionalism.

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The Ulrich model and why HR's not a Support Function

Dave Ulrich seems to be going down well at the HR Director's Business Summit in Birmingham today, as he did at Artof HR in Croatia.  But his ideas are still being knocked in many places.

One of the most recent is this article in People Management: 'Are HR business partners a dying breed?'

As normal, most of the criticisms are unfair and largely irrelevant, for example focusing on things which have nothing to do with the structure of the Ulrich model eg:

"HR remains reactive, procedurally focused and transaction-oriented."  Yes well structure (alone) isn't going to change that and may be if people acted on rather than just listened to Ulrich's advice we'd all be in a better place by now.

"When HR can’t explain its own transformation to the rest of the business, the idea of an HR business partner is dead in the water."  As it, and hopefully the HR function concerned, should be!

"The business partner role is best suited and most effective in larger organisations."  Yes of course, it was always designed for complex, multiple business unit organisations.

In any case:

“A lot of people say HR structure is a three-legged stool, but that’s not at all what the model says,” Ulrich tells People Management. “The model says your HR structure needs to match your business structure. If your business is centralised and functional, your HR function should be centralised and functional.”

Other comments are more relevant eg the suggestion than business partners come from the line, as with Ram Charan’s suggestion.  Though I still think the suggestion is wrong headed.  After all, another key principle of effective business partnering is that the HR structure need to match your HR vision.  Much of our problems come from an inappropriate vision, not an inappropriate structure.

Eg the article suggests that

“If you are an HR business partner, it’s probably best to ask yourself a few key questions: whether you understand business strategy and how HR supports it.”

If that’s how you see your job then that’s going to indicate a particular type of HR structure and I can understand why taking HR from the line is probably going to be a part of it.

But I also suggest that this is an inappropriate vision for HR...

There's nothing wrong with understanding the business strategy of course (other than the question still needs to be asked) but the key word in the above paragraph is 'supports': "whether you understand business strategy and how HR supports it.”  Did you spot it?

This is still the big problem in HR - we define ourselves as being a support function.  We're not, or at least shouldn't be, but then if we believe we are, we'll act as if we are, and we shouldn't be surprised when we remain reactive, procedurally focused and transaction-oriented!"

Of course the word support could just be a slip of the pen, but I think it tells a deeper story.

PS I tried to make some of these points in a comment on the People Management article but PM has chosen not to publish this.  I don't know why not - I was critical, but only of some of the ideas, not the article.  And I did link to a previous blog post but only because it was relevant to the discussion about Ram Charan.  Perhaps it was because that blog post refers to the HR Business Partner training I run with Symposium which competes with the CIPD (though ours is much better.)  But then PM use their article to advertise the CIPD training so why is it OK in their article but not in my comment???  (Just a side comment about the impact of poor moderation on people's propensity to comment - which I probably won't be bothering to try and do again.)

Picture credit: Ed Schipul

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So how do you know if you’re a Business Partner?

I’m once again looking forward to chairing Symposium’s Successful Business Partnering Conference on 18th November this year.

We’ve got a good mix of speakers with some presenting on the role of the HR function partnering with and having impact in a business, and others focusing more on the job of the embedded HR profession – also often called a business partner – as it’s the person in this job who is mainly concerned with making a success of the broader role.

I cover both aspects of business partnering in the training sessions I deliver for Symposium Training as well and one of the things I often pick up from these courses is how much confusion still exists over the approach, the role and the job, what they are, and the differences and commonalities between them.

So how do you know if you’re working as a Business Partner?

1.   Business partnering as an approach

To me there are two critical things which make up business partnering as an approach. These are firstly, that HR focuses on the business (or other employing organisation) and secondly, that it focuses on partnering.  This makes business partnering, despite some challenges, a perfect name for what we're talking about.

 

The business piece is about focusing on the business/organisation – understanding the business and making a significant supporting and possibly leading contribution to the business.  A lot of people would suggest the approach is about a commercial focus too and it certainly does need to include a financial and commercial understanding and clarity about and alignment with HR’s contribution to the business’ financial results.

However, I prefer to talk about a business focus as I think we do need to see our organisations in holistic, rounded terms – paying attention to the business operations and financials but without forgetting the people who are behind these things.  And despite the need to be more business focussed, most business partners still deliver most value by identifying opportunities to add and create value through the people within a business and the way that these people are managed, developed and enabled.

The partnering piece is about aligning the people and the rest of the business – understanding what the business needs and ideally contributing to these objectives based upon what people can do for the business, and then aligning HR activities with these needs so that everything HR does contributes to the success of the business.  Partnering is mainly about relationships and it’s therefore relationship management which forms a major focus for my training sessions with Symposium Training.  By the way, the major challenge to the term business parter is that partnering is not enough and that something like business player would be a more suitable term.

I certainly agree with the need for more ambition in what partnering can provide and that a partner needs to be on the field not just supporting from the sidelines but I still think partnering is a more accurate description of what the approach involves (come to one of the training sessions for more explanation of that.)

All HR professionals and the whole HR function can and should act as business partners in terms of this approach.


2.   Business partnering as a role

I think this second question is a more difficult one to answer, mainly because there are so many types and varieties of business partner (a good thing! – see my post written for last year’s conference.)  However, in addition to demonstrating that you are working in a business partnering approach (as defined above) I think there are three key criteria, or enablers, which make it more likely that you are a true business partner and not just a HR generalist with a business focus and a partnering approach.  These are:

i.   You’re focusing on a business division rather than a location within a business.

This to me is the key distinguishing feature between an HR generalist and a business partner.  A generalist will typically be focused on all of the divisions of a business at a particular location.  This doesn’t stop them from understanding the overall business, or indeed the different business needs of each division, but it does mean it’s harder to understand all of that.  It also means that it’s more difficult to act strategically to contribute to the overall business or a particular division because they’ll need to act together with other HR generalists in other locations to do this.  The easier and potentially bigger opportunities to focus on are the common needs within the area of the business that they focus on which are the needs of the employees working at their location.  So this structural arrangement is going to tend to pull them down, away from focusing on strategic business needs and towards focusing on more people oriented, operational ones.  That doesn’t need to happen but it does make it more likely.

The difference if you are focused on a division is that you can really, really get to understand your division’s business needs and concentrate on aligning HR activities with these more specific needs.  You also probably cover multiple locations so it’s less likely that you’ll get dragged down into operational issues at these different locations.  Again this structural arrangement doesn’t guarantee that you will do this but it does make things easier for you to do so.


ii.   You're also aligned with a divisional director.

Another benefit of a divisional focus is that you have one clear business client - the director of this division. You can really focus on them, their agenda, and them as a person, developing the practices they need and developing the type of relationship they also require.

iii.   It’s not just that you are aligned to a director but that this director is aligned towards you.

Partnering takes place in two directions.  Even if you’re aligned with only one director if that director is aligned with more than one business partner they’re not going to see either or any of you in the same way.  They need to see you as the individual person they will turn to in order to get strategic advice on HR.

3.   Business partnering as a job

It also makes it easier to partner if you have centres of excellence and/or a service centre and/or additional legs of the business partnering ‘stool’ (which most often has three legs – business partners, centres of excellence and a service centres – but can have many more) so that you can focus more on the business and your partnering rather than doing or developing HR activities.  

HR then becomes the context for what you do but your professional responsibilities revolve around the business and being a partner (ie: ensuring your relationships with your business clients is effective and that you are aligning everything the other legs of the HR model provide with what your business needs).  Note also that one of the most interesting changes in partnering at the moment is the development of the business partnering context to include other areas that are not traditionally part of HR (eg: IT and facilities management – so that you’re not just partnering into HR but into other functions as well).

 

Where you do have responsibilities for HR activities, and most HR business partners do, it also helps if these are strategic, business related activities such as organisation design and/or development, rather than HR oriented and operational ones (eg: dealing with employee relations cases).

If you’re supported by all three of these things, I’d suggest it’s pretty definite that you’re acting in a business partnering job.  If you’re not doing any of them it doesn’t mean that you’re not a business partner but you’ve got things stacked against you so it’s going to be less likely that you’ll be successful.

Which ever of these apply – whether you’re operating in a business partner’s job or just trying to act in the broader role, and if you’re in the job how ever many of the enablers I’ve listed apply to you, I am sure you will find topics of interest and of value, being discussed in Symposium’s Successful Business Partnering Conference, so I hope that I’ll see you there.

The above post has been updated from an original version posted on Symposium.co.uk.

Finance are from Mars, HR are from Venus

At the end of last week I was following the tweets from Eversheds HR Summer School which I spoke at last year and spotted this tweet, relating, I think to a presentation from the CIPD's Peter Cheese: "Finance are from Mars, HR are from Venus."

Despite the fact that the tweeter also suggested this doesn't apply to her - she loves her FD - and Peter Cheese's response with #HRlovesFDs (a hashtag which - you might be surprised - hasn't quite managed to go viral) I do think there was something in the phrase.

In fact it was something I was thinking about anyway as I'd been reading a few other things about CFOs including Management Today's suggestion that CFOs are developing into change agents.

Then there was this - a fairly offensive rant from Ram Charan suggesting we split HR in half because the function is so completely rubbish and that in future we should continue just doing administration.  The strategic part of what we do would then be led by high potentials from Finance.  That really annoyed me...

Firstly, although we're all used to 'I hate HR' articles, writers normally make a point of acknowledging the lots of good people who work within the function - few such allowances from Charan (only really where they're Finance people already running HR).

I thought this was particularly cutting as we've always given a lot of respect to Charan.  Even when he turned up clearly worse for wear to present at Singapore's Human Capital Summit in 2011 we muttered quietly to each other but didn't challenge him about it.  (You might not be surprised that attendees in SE Asia responded so politely but I also chose not to tweet or blog on the session.)  Well no such respect was shown to us from him.  Perhaps if we'd challenged him then he'd have respected us more - so I'm trying to make up for the earlier omission with a robust challenge now.

Secondly, I think Charan's reading of the situation is absolutely and completely wrong.  He suggests HR (the strategic bit) needs to be led by the business, which is why he wants Finance to run it.  I think that business needs to led by HR.  Business is about people and needs to be a lot more people shaped than it is now.  HR understands how we can do this.

Charan wants HR to be able to deal with real business challenges, being more like the rest of the business.  I see little point in being more like the rest of the business whilst business is in such a mess.  Business needs new thinking and new ways of operating which HR people with a different - not the same - perspective to CFOs can bring to it

This may mean that HR can be seen as a little bit different to other functions - and that's a good thing.  Let's celebrate our difference, not obscure it.  And let's not worry about criticism from people like Charan who clearly represents the past rather than the future.  Because if there's one function which is going to be split in half in the future it'll be Finance not HR (or as I recently suggested we could just outsource it.*)

* = I know some great Finance people, though I've worked with some nasty examples of inhumanity from within that function too.   But this article isn't written to disrespect them, Charan-style, but simply to argue that their function isn't as important or as strategic as our own (or if it is now, that this is just a hang over from the past, and the situation is already changing.


In fact the above changes are already taking place - many HR Directors are already acting as 'the consiglieri of the C-suite' (this article by Saatchi & Saatchi's Richard Hytner is much more sensible then Charan's diatribe.)

Therefore I do think Peter Cheese has lost the plot a bit when he suggests that HR needs to use data, engage with other departments (Finance) and get fluent in finance speak in order to be taken more seriously.  We do, but prioritising this is just a recipe for continued irrelevancy.

So I'm not suggesting we shouldn't engage Finance - of course we should.  But let's do so from a position of strength.  It's HR which interfaces with the people in the business and despite MT's suggestion, has the best ideas and experience around engagement, performance and change agency.  So let's talk to Finance, but change the agenda that Peter has suggested to how we can help them become more talent centred, using emotions and developing fluency in people speak.

We need to change other peoples' attitudes to people, not our own to business.  And to do so withought needing to get them all to run HR! (like Infosys' Mohan Pai for example.)

And if we do need to get together on one planet, let's help Finance to come to Venus rather than having us moving off to Mars.  This isn't intransigence - it's just that it's Venus, not Mars, which today provides the best environment for the future of our businesses.

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#20mmc : HR & Technology - A Relationship that Can't be Broken!

I've not got around previously to sharing the archive of a short webinar I did recently with SuccessFactors - 20 Minute Masterclass: HR & Technology - A Relationship That Can't Be Broken!

Enjoy!

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#HRSummitExpo - The Credible Activist

 

  There are some nice links in the programme at the Miiddle East HR Summit.  So after Dave Ulrich yesterday talking about his outside-in competencies, today and tomorrow is organised by competency area.

We're starting with the Credible Activist competency and a well delivered presentation from Christel Heydemann, EVP Corporate HR from Alcatel Lucent.

Christel has presumably been selected for this session because she was a business executive who was selected to run HR because the CEO thought this function said 'no' too often.  She got lots of good feedback on her appointment because she was someone who had been in the field and understands the company.  (Not that pure HR people can’t develop this level of credibility but it’s a useful warning shot to those who haven’t or say no too much.)

Christel saw her challenge as making HR simple, selling it and executing:

-   Simplification because Alctel Lucent face the same issues as other organisations.  And a lot of what they do is common sense (Christel repeated this point several times).  So Christel grouped activities into three areas:

• High performance culture
• Execution of strategic workforce plan
• Attract and develop talents

 

-   Sales because the company had lots of initiatives but people weren't clear what these were for.  She spent time explaining to managers what they were doing and simplifying corporate initiatives.  Often this was about explaining what the team was already doing - so there was no resistance.

-   Execution - doing what was needed well.  For example, one activity I quite liked was setting up an internal job opportunity market, 'ijob', where employees post CVs (or use their Linkedin profiles), and hiring managers post internal job opportunities.

 

Credible? - yes, clearly.

Activist? - yes - Christel clearly understands what she wanted to do in the business.

Great HR? - well, I’d have liked to have seen more...  That's not a criticism of Christel or Alcatel Lucent HR - they've skillfully executed the approach they’ve wanted to use.  It's just that I personally would have focused more on developing their HR strategy.  Please note that I'm not arguing for unnecessary complexity.  But I do think great HR has to involve more than just common sense.

This is part of my issue with outside-in.  Christel talked about listening to what managers, employees (and yes, customers) want and translating these into HR terms.  Fine - that's going to help you gain credibility.  But I’d have wanted to see more in this presentation (other than the ijob site) that would help Alcatel Lucent gain competitive advantage.  Doing the same as other organisations, or doing common sense things well doesn't do achieve this.

And to me, creating competitive advantage is the key opportunity for HR.  So I don't think practitioners can really be seen as credible activists unless we're focusing on this agenda.

But I suppose that’s also more about the Strategic Positioner competency which we’re moving onto next…

 

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Technorati Tags: Dave Ulrich, HR, IIR, Middle East, Summit, Christel Heydemann, Alcatel Lucent, Credible Activist

Being a business person first, HR person second, and other nonsense

  You see it all the time these days - that proud assertion from leading HR professionals that they're business people who just happen to work in HR.  Or linked to this, the need for HR professionals to  develop business savvy and work in the business and speak the language of business, etc, etc - e.g. this video from Mike Moran on Friday. 

To me, it's all a result of the same thing - a lack of clear thinking and a desire for an easy life.  I've made the point on this blog many times - we can get so far by being more like the rest of the business, but real value comes from being different, not be being even more of the same.

I was recently interviewed by HRZone on this topic and you can see the resulting article here (free registration required, and worthwhile).

 

 

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Technorati Tags: HRZone, interview

#MelcrumSummit - More time for time out!

   I missed the first couple of sessions again today, partly again because I've already posted on these organisations - e.g. M&S Plan A.

But I've just sat through a very interesting, even somewhat inspirational, session from Susan Kelly at Syngenta.  Now I had thought that I might end up posting on this for a number of reasons including there being points in the slides about innovative topics like collaboration and gameful engagement (the role of gamification in supporting engagement) but don't actually think this is anything they've done anything on - yet.  (I also did some work on their performance management framework a few years back which was also in Susan's presentation - and even had some of the flowers - and soil - on one of her slides in my garden last Summer - probably why our kids won the local parish council's tallest sunflower competition this year!):

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

However what really resonated for me was Susan's comments on needing to rethinking IC's role and recognising that insight is key.  The one thing Syngenta business leaders want from their IC people is to really challenge them - based upon this insight.

That took me back to another key point from the conference - one more of Anne-Lise Kjaer's wise insights that the biggest barrier to change for our organisations today is that we don't have time to think.  And that this is a problem because we desperately need a new model.  I agree.  That’s why I’ve been so excited about the theme for this conference: ‘competing on the curve: re-engineering IC for agility, productivity and impact’.  Exactly.

In fact if I can digress further I'd like to quickly comment on a theme running out of some business meetings recently.  These are all large UK companies, but aren’t performing particularly well.  In one meeting in particular my contact was at pains to stress that the company is well in the top quartile for their HR support.  However he/she never goes to conferences - so how do they know? - and where's the impact?

In one of the meetings, we talked about how the senior HR leader never even use the corporate social networks which are heavily promoted by their IC teams (I think I've posted on them as a case study before too) - and they don't know anyone who does.

And one of my contacts talked about his experience in developing as a leader as being about ironing out all of their quirks (whereas I talked about becoming more and more eccentric!).

I don't think any of these companies understood the need for a new model (a more personal and social one).  And they're not doing any thinking about how they need to change even if they did.  Their own hubris about their own effectiveness also isn't going to help.  So I can't see their business performance increasing at all - can you?

In fact I think they’re all likely to become increasing misaligned with the needs of their business and even more so, the hopes and expectations of their employees.

Going back to Susan's presentation, we need to develop beyond being simple HR or IC experts and become Achievers and Strategists (from Torbert):

• The Expert asks "Who am I?" They lead through controlling the world around them through the quality of their knowledge, intellect and expert ability.
• The Achiever asks "Am I successful?" They seek to manage people efficiently and effectively to achieve work goals.
• The Strategist asks: "What can we contribute together to make a difference?" They are clear about their gifts and are seeking to discover how to integrate them with the needs of their organisation and of society

 

IC business partners therefore need to let go of their expert identity in order to start building a new one.

I think the suggestions from the groups when we got into talking about the capability needs for IC teams suggested most attendees are still focusing on themselves as experts rather than strategists.  I'd also suggest this is the reason for the different perspectives on measurement I commented on yesterday.

I'd finish with another of Susan's quotes from Vonnegut:

"We are who we think we are, so we should be very careful who we think we are."

 

I think we need to do more thinking.  Now this is probably more of a comment for those IC (and HR) people who aren't here, rather than those who are.  But one of the other things Susan talked about was Syngenta always making time for development - taking 40 people at a time and ensuring they know what they need to.  I bet not many companies here do that on a regular basis.  (Although I see from the slides from one of the earlier presentations that I’d missed that RBS, with their 1300 marketing and communication staff!, clearly do.)

 

Mind you, the 27% of attendees whose organisations don't give access to social media sites may just be best of spending a day in the office to challenge this approach.  But that's another blog post!

 

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