What is now business critical on the HR Director’s agenda?

 

   We’ll be following up on the issues raised in the HR Directors Business Summit unconference, and discussed in the final unpanel, at the organisers’ new community forum, HR InSights.

However, I thought my summary as chair at the beginning of day two covered both days of the unconference quite well.  The three main issues for me were:

• Performance.  Of the business, and of the HR function too (eg in Ed Lawler’s presentation, and also demonstrated in the HR with Distinction awards).
• Leadership development.  In business (particularly given the passion expressed in the unpanel about ‘toxicity at the top’) and in other areas, particularly sports (eg in Sir Clive Woodward’s presentation on coaching in rugby and basketball which suggested some interesting opportunities for business coaching too).
• Planning and analytics.  Eg I liked the way that David Clutterbuck suggested that we need to be analytical in order to remain caring for our people.

 

I also suggested that ‘social’ should be a key theme for HR, even if we hadn’t mentioned it on day 1, and would come through more strongly during day 2 - which of course it did - particularly given the unconference on the agenda.

And actually it came out in other presentions – eg Penny Ferguson’s keynote on leadership which had nothing obvious to do with being more social.  However, I think this quote is exactly what it’s about:

“We need to get to know the people and get them to open up.  You can’t be a leader unless you know the people you’re leading.”

 

-   Yes, and of course, they need to know each other as well.

 

However, in at least one way, social had already come through as a key theme in the agenda.  I noticed this looking at the hosted lunch sign-up lists after checking on the unconference grid board on the way back to my hotel after the awards dinner on day 1.

There were two lunches on performance (performance through coaching, high performance culture) – both full; three lunches on leadership (inclusive leadership, new directions in leadership development, the living leader) – all full; two lunches on planning and analytics (strategic talent planning, learning and analytics) – both full; but also one lunch on social media and the workplace – also full.  Other lunches were much less well booked up eg the one on pensions auto enrolment was completely empty still (this may be more about how people want to spend their lunchtimes than any real indication of interest, but I think it still says something about the importance of social and the other three issues I’ve listed above).

 

It was interesting, given this, that the three issues people suggested during / straight after the unpanel that they thought were missing were:

• HR innovation (I accept this omission, though I thought there was much more focus on the need for HR innovation vs just using common sense than there was in at least one previous year).
• Youth unemployment (this was also a big omission, as it tends to be in most conferences, though we have addressed it in the ConnectingHR unconference).
• Analytics...

 

Analytics was Peter Cheese’s suggestion and I can see why Peter thought it was less prominent than perhaps it should have been.  For example, look at Ed Lawler’s slides on the importance (and current ineffectiveness) of HR measurement:

 

 

But as I had said in my chairing, I do think analytics had come through as a key theme, and it could have been stressed more if people had been that interested in it.  However, it was interesting that although metrics were suggested as one topic for discussion in the unconference, nobody seemed interesting in discussing it, and we had to fold that particular group (falling, perhaps, for the pensions auto enrolment problem?).

I also thought that this may be another good opportunity to raise my own perspective that yes, measurement is important, but let’s not get too carried away!  The pig doesn’t get any fatter by measuring it – it’s what we do with our measures that counts!

This is another of Lawler’s slides:

 

It looks bad doesn’t it – 40% of CFOs have no understanding of the return on their company’s HR investments.  And this might indicate that HR really hasn’t got a good handle on HR measures and analytics.

But I don’t think it does.  I think it reflects the fact that most of HR’s outcomes are intangible – they can’t be accurately calculated.  From this perspective, the 40% isn’t a problem but a natural consequence of this type of role.

I’m not saying that HR measures, analytics, or approaches like the HR scorecard (which I think is the most appropriate basis for HR measurement) can’t help, but even then, I think ‘know’ is a bit strong.  We can certainly develop insight into this, but we’ll never be able to ‘know’, in detail, exactly what we’ve managed to achieve. 

Return isn’t the issue.  Let’s just accept this and move on – we’ve got bigger challenges to tackle - toxicity and the top; HR innovation and youth unemployment would be better places to start!

 

Picture credit: Rafaella Goodby 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,measurement,analytics,return,ROI,leadership,performance,social,media,toxicity

 

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Innovating the HR Conference (#HRevent)

 

    So you probably know that I’ve been one of the people behind the introduction of unconferences into HR in the UK.  I love these events and am really interested to see how they develop – perhaps with more small groups like ConnectingHR arranging organically to get together and learn from each other, and with the traditional conferences, outside those operating in relatively specialist areas, retreating into a smaller and smaller role – or whether the traditional conference providers get smart and update their models to make conferences less formal, more social and therefore more appealing, meaning that people might not see so much need to do things for themselves.

World Trade Group, organisers of the annual HR Directors Business Summit (plus the Pan European HR Summit, and the first CHRO Summit in the US later this year) are, I think, leading the field in looking at how the traditional model might change.  So on Wednesday last week, I chaired the second day of the HR Directors Business Summit which integrated unconferencing into the formal conference.

This isn’t a completely new idea, so for example, HR Technology US and HRevolution were run together last year, and even included a couple of HRevolution sessions on the last day of HR Technology.  But there was no real cross-over between the two (and actually, though I love HRevolution, it’d not really an unconference).

At the HR Director's Business Summit, we’d already decided to do a proper integration:

• Completing the unconference grid during the first day of the conference
• Running unconference sessions (discussions, not presentations, based on issues delegates wanted to discuss)
• Using the final conference panel session to feedback on, and get further input into, the discussions in the unconference.

 

On the morning of the unconference day, we made a further change to this, deciding to make the panel into an ‘unpanel’, in which we’d start by sitting up on the stage, feeding back on the unconference, and then move into the delegate seating area, facilitating the broader discussion from within the crowd.  (Reinforcing the point that this isn’t a completely new idea, although I thought I was making the term up, a Google search on ‘unpanel’ throws up 38,200 results!)

In general, I think it went really well, though there were a lot of things I learnt, and I’d do differently if and when I do the same thing again.  But the energy and involvement in the unpanel (at least during the last 5 minutes) were like nothing you’d get in a traditional panel, and I hope that even though it was messy, people will have appreciated the authenticity!  And by participating in the conversation, I honestly think that people will have learnt a lot more as well.

Comments?

 

We also had a twitter display up to generate inputs from beyond the confines of the auditorium (around the conference hashtag, #hrevent) - here are some of the tweets:

 

Thanks to:

• Stephen Pobjoy, conference producer at World Trade Group
• My unpanel members:
  • David Clutterbuck, Professor, Oxford Brookes and Sheffield Hallam
  • Harvey Francis, Executive VP, HR, IT and Communications, Skanska
  • Donna Miller, European HR Director, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car
  • Lisa Winnard, HR Director, Sesame Bankhall Group
• The blogsquad for the tweeting:
  • Rob Jones
  • Gareth Jones
  • Mervyn Dinnen
• All the delegates who took a risk and came along, particularly those who acted as sponsors for the discussions
• ConnectingHR, the members of which acted as a fairly large proportion of the above.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,Directors Business Summit,unconference,unpanel,David Clutterbuck,Harvey Francis,Donna Miller,Lisa Winnard

 

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Ed Lawer on HR (presenting at the HR Directors Business Summit, part 2)

 

    HR has been trying to become a better business partner for some time in order to help deal with the challenges I listed in part 1 of this post.  And we do seem to think we’ve made some progress:

 

However Lawler’s team have also looked at what HR actually does, rather than just what it thinks it does, and this isn’t such good news – particularly, supporting the conclusions of the recent CHRO study, in the UK and rest of Europe (though actually the UK has the best results for HR acting as a full partner in business strategy rather than just taking an input role):

 

This is important because it’s the strategic business partner role that provides by far the greatest input to business success.

 

In improving on these results, HR’s structural model has been one of the major change in organisations.  The major problem has been HR functions going native – only thinking about their line of business, not the corporate as a whole.

Organisations are trying different things eg double hatting but this generally ends up with everyone feeling schizophrenic – above and beyond their sanity.

A better solution may be to give HR a wider set of issues, eg this example from a US company – helping to deliver a terrific EVP etc.

 

There are also actions we can take to upgrade HR’s capabilities and structure:

 

Ie, to achieve these benefits we may need to break HR out from the function responsible for Organisation Effectiveness – allowing this higher function to be strategic and analytic – as otherwise it always gets taken over by transactional work.

I think there was some great analysis in this presentation (I often use some of the data in my workshops but haven’t seen the 2010 results before) and I’m partly pursuaded by the conclusions – in fact I referred to and supported these in my own book.  I do believe in the need to focus both strategy and structure on organisation effectiveness:

“Strategic contributor to business strategy development and implementation based on considerations of human capital, organisational effectiveness, and readiness.  Developing HR practices as strategic differentiators.”

 

However, I’m not totally convinced we need to separate HR from the OE function.

If I was ever to go back into corporate ‘people management’, this OE one is the one I’d want to have, but I’d ideally like to retain responsibility for the HR function too, so that I don’t have to do everything through influence but also have some of the most direct levels for improving organisational effectiveness under my own control.

Your thoughts?

 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,USC,CEO,HR,Organisation,effectiveness,capability

 

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Ed Lawler on Change (presenting at the HR Directors Business Summit, part 1)

 

   So I’m back here again. The main highlight today is Ed Lawer on one of his rare trips to the UK.

We start on the need to build changeable rather than simply great, but stable, organisations. This is the difference between new normal and old normal - change and accountability. We’ll never go back to the days of fixed job descriptions.

Companies don’t generate competitive advantage out of the ability to execute but from the ability to change and adapt on an ongoing basis.  They need to be able to adjust to a series of competitive advantages which are always changing.

This, for Lawler, is why 80% of changes fail – it is because they are trying to change an organisation which is built to resist change.  And we’ve moved from an era of episodic change to one of continuous change – we won’t be re-entering an era of stability.  The world is not built this way, and we’re not changing in this way.

 

Episodic Change Change capability lacking – rented when needed Focus on efficiency over innovation Stability = effectiveness Change = enemy Performance reflects change patterns Decision making centralised Resource allocation through budgets

Continuous Change Change capability embedded in organisation design Focus on ambidexterity Change = effectiveness Stability = enemy Performance reflects change pattern Decision making shared / decentralised Resources allocated through accountabilities

 

Built for stability may provide short periods of good financial results but it won’t last.  This is a major role for the HR function to take responsibility for this adaptability and it needs to impact on the reward systems it designs, the interfaces it has, etc.  We need to put people in touch with their stakeholders: customers, regulators etc – so they can see it, have to deal with it etc.

 

 

HR needs to create, not just be at the table.  This isn’t just about taking the business strategy and translating it into HR practices and organisation design.  The strategic piece is entering discussion with human capital and business data showing which additional capabilities can be developed given human capital issues (this is what I call creating value).

 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,built to,change,management,agility

 

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Unconferencing at Conferences

 

   I hope you enjoyed my notes on TRU London last week.  If you did, you really should think about joining us at our second Connecting HR unconference in London on 5th May.

The only limitation of these events to me is that we’re largely focusing on people using social media.  Not that the agendas are overly social in focus, but our promotion tends to be mainly (not totally) through the use of blogs and twitter etc.

There’s some logic – as well as efficiency – in this.  The people who appreciate the social learning context of an unconference will generally appreciate the same thing from social media.  So there is some degree of overlap between the people who use social media and those who will most naturally appreciate an unconference.

But at the current stage of adoption, the use of social media as our main promotional tool means most HR and Recruiting people simply don’t get to hear about what we’re doing.  Many of whom would, I’m sure, value the unconference experience.

So I’m really pleased that after our hugely successful tweet-up this year, next year’s HR Directors Business Summit is going to include an unconference stream.  Take a look at the developing programme, and I’ll provide more details towards the end of this year.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,HRevent,HR Directors Business Summit,conference,unconference,TRU,ConnectingHR,HRevolution

 

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More Social? – HR Directors Business Summit

 

  But of course what made the Summit as amazing as it was the inputs by yours truly.  (Well, they made it amazing for me!).

First up: the Summit (henceforth known as #hrevent)’s first tweet-up / twitter 101 class.  Running this together with Charlie Elise (@charlie_elise) from HR Zone, we expected about five people.  So it came as a bit of a shock to have what must have been close to one hundred.  This meant we didn’t manage to get everyone on twitter as we’d planned and which had consequences later on…

Then I co-presented a session on HR 2.0 with Matthew Hanwell (@matthew_hanwell) from Nokia.  If you want to know what this was about, register for my webinar on 15th March!

The session worked really well, and deserves its recognition as the conference’s best.  Shame though that, despite the tweet-up, so few people were tweeting still – meaning that our backchannel display wasn’t quite as engaging as I’d hoped.

There were other sessions on social media too – including one on social recruiting with James Purvis from CERN (@cern_jobs).  But I disagree with Richard Mosley in his uninspiring session on ‘employer branding 2.0’ that social media was everywhere this year.  It got some attention but deserves much more.  And social approaches (which were really the focus of mine and Matthew’s presentation) deserve more attention still.

Hopefully this will come through in 2012 through more speaker presentations, more tweeting, and more displays of twitter backchannels too.

 

Technorati Tags: HR Directors Business Summit,Matthew Hanwell,Nokia,HR,2.0,social,media,approaches,tweet-up,twitter,101

 

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New Optimism? – HR Directors Business Summit

 

  I’ve not been able to tweet for a while.  But I’ve got some time spare now, so will see if I can catch up.  It’s either this, or sleep (which I could very easily do too!).

First up, last week’s HR Directors Business Summit in Birmingham, UK.  As an overall summary, I’d say this was a great event – and not just because of my participation in it which I’ll summarise in my next post.  One of the things I liked about it was the much greater focus on innovation, and ambition, than last year.

So back then, I became seriously concerned, and blogged, about how depressing I found it that every session seemed to emphasise ‘we don’t need anything new in HR’.  Attendees, and even more so the speakers, seemed to got themselves to believe that HR is simple – that’s it all about doing easy things well.  One of the speakers in the final panel even put this forward as a summary of the conference herself.

What rubbish I thought – and still do when people suggest this view.  (Good) HR’s isn’t easy.  It’s not simple.  It ain’t the same as our fathers’ HR.  Good HR is complicated.  It’s focused on intangibles.  On differentiation.  On uniqueness and innovation.  And it’s based on new ideas and emerging experiences.

 

So why was I happier this year?

Well we started off with Lynda Gratton, which generally sets things off well (I do wish she would do less self-promotion though).  Lynda emphasised the need for HR to get better at understanding the future, helping us focus on the things which are most important.  She also gave a good plug for social media noting Nokia’s statistic about 5 billion people being connected around the world – and that it’s these connected people who will change the world. (She could have suggested HR people get connected too – there were very few of us tweeting in the session - see my next post.  And despite Lynda’s belief in connection, and her regular blogging, I still don’t think she really understands what social media’s about). 

Then I attended what was just about the best session for me (no, still not one of mine) – delivered by Lynne Weedall at Carphone Warehouse / Best Buy Europe.  Lynne emphasised the way that work has changed and will change further still.  We’ve come to a chasm and won’t be able to jump over it in small steps.  She talked about the need, which I have also described, to think from the future back – to have a vision and work back from there.  To do this, HR people need to pose impossibly questions or at the very least, ask themselves what would fundamentally change their organisations.  And they need to look to do things differently (to zig where others zag).  All music to my ears.

The change theme was reinforced by John Mahoney Phillips from UBS talking about human capital metrics (see slide) and even using the phrase ‘creating value’ in a meaningful way.

So – a lot more focus on ambition, innovation and a desire for new ideas than the year before.  Of course my summary could just be down to the few sessions I attended.  Or just a result of chance emerging from the speakers which were selected.  But maybe, it’s a sign that HR’s feeling more optimistic again.  That we’re starting to raise our eyes above short-term restructurings to look towards what’s going to support the future of our businesses.

 

Of course, not everything was so rosy – for example, the suggestion from Tesco’s Therese Proctor that the credibility of the HR function relies on getting the basics right.  Well yes, but… (let’s just not go there now).  And of course, this was also the point at which we learnt the UK economy had shrunk again (making Vance Kearney from Oracle’s suggestion that we’re getting bored talking about recession appear even more out of touch).  So if there was more optimism this year, it’s certainly possibly that this was badly out of place!

 

What did you think if you were there?  And if you were, or not, are you feeling more optimistic now?

 

Also see summaries of the conference at

• HR Zone
• UK Recruiter.

 

Technorati Tags: HR Directors Business Summit,Birmingham,2011,Lynda Gratton,Lynne Weedall,strategy,change,ambition,optimism

 

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Insight and pragmatism

 

   The last area I want to discuss in my summary of the HR Directors Business Summit is the need for new insights in HR.

One of the key themes that seemed to me to be coming through from the presentations (despite Julian Birkinshaw’s input) was that HR is simple and that we don’t need any new ideas.  This theme seemed particularly strong in the panel session on the Tuesday afternoon, and in Martin Tiplady’s presentation on Wednesday morning looking at HR at the London Met Police and elsewhere:

“HR’s not rocket science – it requires speed and pragmatism.”

 

(Tiplady also seemed to question some of our existing ideas - “What was ever the point of competency frameworks?”.  It’s not a question I’m going to attempt to answer because I do struggle to get excited about competency frameworks myself, but this isn’t to suggest that they don’t – or at least can’t - provide a very sound basis for a company’s overall HR architecture.)

 

I think this push back against new ideas is a bit sad actually (I could see Tiplady’s 19th century policemen resisting progress in the same way – and look how far we’ve come in that profession).

 

HR isn’t just about good management

I completely support Ulrich’s point that HR is provided through line management, and that our people’s experience of HR is mostly down to to the way their manager line manages.  But even if we could do something to get every line manager to spend time with, be interested in, support and grow their people, there’d still be a need for more.

 

We need good HR strategies

Even with the best line managers in the world, there’d still be a need for HR professionals to develop strategies, tailoring these approaches in the right way according to their own business (their own capabilities, their own management models etc).  If you’ve got the wrong strategic approach (and let’s face it, in this area at least, most organisations don’t have much that’s right) then the best, most pragmatic execution in the world, isn’t going to get you very far (at least down the road you want to go).

 

You need some new ideas

On this blog, you’ll find new ideas from Dave Ulrich on leadership brand and HR transformation, John Boudreau on talentship / beyond HR, Henry Mintzberg on communityship, Lynda Gratton on hot spots and glow, Gurnek Bains on meaning, Gary Hamel on management innovation, Peter Cheese on talent powered organisation, CK Prahalad on innovation at the bottom of the pyramid, Peter Cappelli on talent on demand, Jac Fitz-Enz on HCM: 21 measurement, John Kotter on a sense of urgency, Ed Lawe on talent-centricity, Dicky Beatty on differentiated workforce, Tony Buzan on mind mapping, Andrew Mayo on HCM measurement, Nick Baylis on happiness, Emmanuel Gobillot on leadership, Jim Collins on greatness, David Guest on HR measurement and many more besides.

Some of these ideas I agree with and some I don’t.  Some of them agree with other ideas but most of them don’t agree with all.  Ed Lawler’s and Peter Cappelli’s ideas on talent for example, are very different things.

This is important.  If you’re going to optimise the strategy you develop for your business, you need to understand these ideas, and know which ones best fit your particular organisation’s needs.

And you need to be on the look out for new ideas which can help give you additional competitive edge.

It’s time for new thinking.  It’s time to take note of new ideas.

 

Talking of time, I’ve now run out of time to post on anything else from the HR Directors Business Summit!  But thanks to Tim Taylor from TUI, Allison Campbell from Bacardi, Stefan Tonnon from Progress Software and Jacqui Summons from Intec for your time, and for sharing your own ideas and experiences with me.  It’s much appreciated and I hope I can return the favour some day.

 

Picture credit: Met archives

Technorati Tags: New,insight,ideas,innovation,HR,talent,human,resource,capital,management

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Julian Birkinshaw on Management Innovation

 

   A summary of Julian Birkinshaw’s presentation at the HRD Business Summit:

Things have changed.  Knowledge rather than financial capital is now the scarce resource and this means we need to focus on creativity and innovation rather than replicability.  But management hasn’t changed – we need to innovate it.

A company’s management model (as opposed to its business model) may be the best place to innovate.  There’s lots of opportunity here, because most organisations don’t think about whether their management models are appropriate.  So Lehman’s management model and practices for example incentivised the employee population there to do exactly the wrong things.  They lapsed into things that didn’t work.  We need to be clearer about what our management models are and change our concepts about the way large industrial companies are organised.

We also need to pay more attention to management.  Julian calls the initiative he runs with Gary Hamel at London Business School the Management Lab (MLab) rather than the Leadership Lab for this reason.  Many organisations today are over-led but under-managed - a point Christopher McLaverty made in relation to BP’s transformation post Lord John Brown:

 

 

But management is still associated with the concept of management in a hierarchial corporation.  We need to sever this link.

Some new ideas:

• Break away from the traditional view of alignment
• Understand that obliquity – going round something – may be the best way to get there
• Harnessing the wisdom of crowds
• Building ethics and honesty back into business
• Pursuing happiness
• Removing clutter (eg when organisations strip out performance management systems most people figure out what they should be doing).

 

 

In Birkinshaw’s (and my) perspective, HR Directors are the people best placed to enact management innovation.  What are you going to do about it?

 

Some resources:

• MLab
• Moon Shots (a community of management innovators hosted by yours truly)
• My post on Gary Hamel and Management Innovation
• My earlier post on Julian Birkinshaw’s Management Model

 

I’m going to be interviewing Julian about his new book, Management Experimentation, in mid-March, so watch out for a post on this too.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Julian Birkinshaw,management,2.0,innovation,experimentation,model,MLab,Management Lab,Moon Shots,Christopher McLaverty,BP

 

 

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A bit more on Capabilities from Thomas Stewart, New Balance, White & Case and KFC

 

   I had a chat with Thomas Stewart after his keynote at the HRD Business Summit on Tuesday.

We first discussed how his organisational capabilities relate to David Ulrich’s.

I explained that, to me, his capabilities seem quite like Gary Hamel’s and CK Prahalad’s core competencies.  For him, the two ideas are different because his have more focus (‘they talk about 20 to 30 core competencies’ – and ‘they don’t think in terms of systems’).

However, Stewart did agree that his capabilities are different to Ulrich’s, and this is because his own definition includes people and other things – although he also thinks Ulrich’s work on Leadership Brand comes closer to his own approach.

Mmm.  Maybe.  But I still think the analysis I provided in my last post is correct.

 

Secondly, we talked about examples of organisations’ capabilities which focus specifically around relationships between their people, ie social capital, and I’ve posted on this part of the discussion on my Social Advantage blog.

 

The other thing I wanted to do here is mention briefly some of the capabilities that some of the speakers seemed to be developing in their organisations (not that they were necessarily thinking or talking about it in these terms):

 

 

New Balance

Paul Kennedy from New Balance described the capabilities of this UK based manufacturing firm as its external relationships with customers (as well as sports people, the military and so on) which allow it to directly replenish stocks and customise orders etc.  To develop these deep relationships externally the company needs good internal relationships with its people too.

So it has invested in learning and teaming, for example:

• Introducing online learning resource centres linked to NVQs to open up peoples’ minds to learning
• Providing skills to work across jobs in the factory
• Closing the factory and taking all staff on two offsites to discuss their issues and ask for their ideas (they suggested reducing teams from 6 to 4 people) – empowering them to create their own future history and giving them confidence to take action
• Building cross-functional groups.

 

 

White & Case

Kate Griffiths-Lambeth White & Case described the capability of White & Case as specialism in international legal issues supported by experience in multijurisdictional issues in numerous legal systems.

This specialism makes recruitment more difficult, as does the company’s fast growth taking it to 600 lawyers in London.  So this has meant more focus in this area – looking for more people with the specialist skillsets required.  And also specific actions in other areas too, for example one of their award winning benefits is health screening – given the risk of skin cancer for those people who have been working in places that get a bit more sun than here!

 

 

KFC

Misty Reich from KFC described Stewart as a ‘kindred mind’ and her own company’s strategy as well aligned with his thinking on capabilities.  Her point in particular is that HR strategy needs to match the stage of growth your company is in.

KFC UK has 22,000 mostly hourly employees (it is part of Yum Brands with over 1m employees) and has 782 restaraunts which is growing by 30 to 40 restaraunts per year.  This means its main capability is being great at recruitment (or, since this is an activity, not an outcome, something about having the people available enabling it to grow).

Expectations are changing –“Gen X / Gen Y doesn’t know who to interact expect through technology”.  And it will get to a point that it will be awkward to turn off technology when wanting to explore employment.

But companies don’t currently make good use of this.  We’ve been recruiting online for 15 years and 78% of Uk employers now use corporate websites and 29% use commercial job boards for candidate attraction (but mainly just for perusal not online application ie there’s no power behind this).  And only 7% use social media for candidate attracting and networking – people don’t know what to do about social media.

So this has provided KFC with an opportunity to gain a competitive edge.  They have brought recruitment back in-house and made people experts in recruitment, supported by technology.

 

 

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European HR Directors Business Summit: Thomas Stewart and Dave Ulrich on ‘Capabilities’

 

    I’ve just got back from the last couple of days out at the HR Directors Business Summit in Birmingham, UK.  I’ve got a couple of posts coming up but wanted to start with the role of capabilities which were a key theme in both Thomas Stewart’s opening, and Dave Ulrich’ closing keynotes.

You know Ulrich, but might not know Stewart.  He used to be editor of Harvard Business Review and has written two very insight-packed books, ‘Intellectual Capital’ and ‘The Wealth of Knowledge’.  He now works as Chief Marketing and Knowledge Officer for Booz & Company.

I’ve long been supportive of Stewart’s writing – and included one of his quotes in my HCM book (pictured above).

In Stewart’s words, capabilities are a ‘source of essential – as opposed to transient – advantage’ - they ‘shape the right to win’:

 

Ulrich emphasises that capabilities are outcomes – which provide a more appropriate focus than activities.  But I think both speakers would agree with each others’ descriptions.

Beyond these points, however, Stewart and Ulrich mean quite different things.

For Stewart, capabilities are tools, processes and people:

 

For Ulrich, capabilities are more like behavioural competencies, ie social (inter-personal) rather than technical, but organisational rather than individual.  They’re what you should see as the focus of an HR vision:

 

Out of these two definitions, I prefer Ulrich’s definition of capabilities.  Take a look at some examples:

• Talent: intellectual capital, know-how, competencies, skills, commitment,workforce
• Speed: agility, adaptation, flexibility, cycle-time, responsiveness
• Share mindset: Culture change, transformation, firm identity, firm equity, firm brand, shared agenda….

 

These capabilities are really just about people (or at least the ‘organisation’ – rather than the ‘business’).  And I think that’s what they should be.  People really are the ‘source of essential – as opposed to transient – advantage’.   They are ‘our most important asset’.  They are the providers of our organisations’ capabilities.

Of course, the people focused capabilities need to be supported by the right processes and technology.  But in my view, we should select our capabilities based upon our people, and then worry about getting the right processes and technology, not mixing these all up beforehand.

My support for Ulrich’s form of capabilities is why I focus so much on human, and on social, capital – which I think are the two most important aspects of capabilities.

Where I disagree with Ulrich is his view that capabilities are “what line managers think will make the company successful”.

Behind this is Ulrich’s view that value is defined by the receiver (the business) more than the giver (HR).  I think this is a problem - yes, of course, HR needs to listen to, and satisfy, the rest of the business.  But…

Ulrich uses talking to his children as an analogy for this. If he says ‘clean your room’, they say ‘get out of my room’ and the conversations doesn’t go anywhere.  You can’t impose value on someone.

I don’t get the analogy.  You can’t impose room cleaning on your children (I can’t on mine anyway) but you can educate and incentivise them to want to do this for themselves (OK, that’s the theory anyway).

HR can educate business leaders and managers too.  It can propose certain capabilities to the rest of the business, it can explain how these capabilities would create value for the business, and it can identify the actions that can be taken to develop the capabilities which have been agreed.

HR can create value, as well as add it.  And it’s by creating value, proposing these opportunities for competitive advantage to the business, that HR becomes truly strategic.  Until this point, it’s still just a more up-market order taker.

 

 

Tomorrow I’ll provide a little more on Thomas Stewart’s definition of capabilities (which I still think is extremely useful for HR to understand) - taken mainly from a one-to-one meeting with Stewart following his session.

I’ll also be attending a seminar organisation by Kenexa, so I’ll probably be posting on that.

 

Then there will be more posts reporting on and following on from the HRD’s Business summit going into the weekend.  So keep tuned for more.

 

 

Technorati Tags: World Trade Group,European,HR DIrectors,Business Summit,2010,January,Birmingham,Thomas Stewart,Dave,David Ulrich,capabilities

 

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training -  Writing
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• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
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