Share what needs to be shared, when it needs to be shared, with whom it needs to be shared – without violating the confidentiality expected by the person who is relying on your good judgment and without violating the commitment you may have made to keep what he or she told you in confidence.
Collaboration entails sharing resources, information, and talent – especially when it is not convenient to do so. It also implies an understanding of a counterintuitive fact about collaboration – that it does not occur without a healthy respect for constructive conflict and debate.
Collaboration is nearly impossible to promote if you are unwilling and unable to accept divergent points of view that enable the real issues to be surfaced and highlighted for discussion. As Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and film and co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation, once said, “Politeness is the poison of collaboration.”
Courage relies on the willingness to push back on things that don’t make sense – and to push forward on things that do make sense. Do you have the guts to stand up against things that are illegal, immoral, unethical, just plain dumb, and/or bad business? Likewise, do you have the conviction to fight for ideas, ideals, and people you believe in, even – and especially – when they are unpopular or defy conventional wisdom? I am not talking about being a perpetual contrarian. I am talking about picking your spots and standing up for or against something important.
Competence implies taking responsibility for your own development, knowing what you don’t know, and surrounding yourself with the very best people who are better than you at important things. It’s about updating and sharpening the tools in your personal tool kit and being confident and comfortable enough to ask for help from others who know more about, or are better at, certain things than you are.
I want to be known for Credibility, Collaboration, Courage, and Competence. These are the components of my personal leadership philosophy that are most important to me. They are not all-encompassing. They are not the only things. But they are the most important things to me. What is most important to you?
CHAPTER 2
Balance the Triangle
What? Who? When? Development
One of my favorite sayings is from Lily Tomlin, the actress and comedienne: “I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more specific.” HR leaders have been fighting to “be somebody” for as long as I can remember, but the specifics have been all over the place and somewhat out of balance. We talk about having a seat at the table, being business partners, and becoming more strategic and less transactional. At various points along the way, perspectives from “Why We Hate HR” in Fast Company magazine (Fast Company Staff, 2005) to “It’s Time to Split HR,” by Ram Charan in Harvard Business Review (Charan, 2014) have suggested why we should hate, eliminate, split, or otherwise restructure HR to somehow fix it.
Some people think it is fashionable to bash HR as a means of making the case that it can and should be better as a profession. We already know and accept that it can be better. But we don’t need to bash the function. We need to simultaneously love and improve it.
HR doesn’t need to be fixed any more than Finance or Marketing do. Just like most other professions, HR is an amalgamation of great people and practices, along with those we would just as soon forget. Are there areas where we can improve? Absolutely. Do we need to be apologetic for bringing humanity and sanity to organizations that are badly in need of both these days? Absolutely not. Don’t play second fiddle to anyone or feel sorry for yourself; you are better than that. Collectively, we are better than that. And HR leaders are better than Finance, Marketing, or others at making people and organizations more effective. That’s what we do.
You can also make sure you take responsibility for developing yourself to be ready and relevant for what organizations most need from HR leaders – strong business acumen, a broad base of experience, an ability to capitalize on relationships and networks that span organizational boundaries, and a keen awareness of how to take full advantage of your own developmental inflection points in the moment they are happening. Oh, and you need to be able to accomplish things and deliver results that have a profound impact on business performance. If you cannot or do not want to do these things, you may deserve the criticism that HR people sometimes receive. Or perhaps you should find another profession. If you are already doing them, thanks! Now, let’s work together to help others get better at them, too.
HR Competency Models
My biggest concern is not that HR people need to be fixed; it’s that the way we have been trying to fix them is out of balance. The vast majority of efforts to improve the capability of HR people have focused on competency models – a laundry list of what HR people need to know and do in order to be effective. These competency models come in all shapes and sizes, and there are some great ones out there. A couple of my favorites include ongoing work by my colleague Dave Ulrich as well as the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM’s) HR competency model initiative.
These HR competency models all tell a valuable story about the knowledge base HR leaders need to have to be effective, so I do not mean to criticize them in any way. What I do criticize is that most companies devote virtually all of their HR development resources to teaching content, assessing capabilities, and hiring or promoting HR talent based almost exclusively on these kinds of competency models. They are an important piece of the puzzle, but they do not portray the entire picture.
Furthermore, many HR people in organizations large and small will never see or be affected by these competency models, because they are complex and can be expensive to implement. Hundreds of thousands of HR people are being skipped over, without any access to these models as developmental tools, because they don’t have the time or money to utilize them.
Having reviewed a fair number of HR competency models over the years, a couple of years ago I decided to create what I like to think of as the “poor person’s” version of the much more comprehensive competency models that are available. I call it the HR Leadership Development Checklist (Figure 2.1), and it represents a summary of the key things I see the very best HR leaders knowing and doing, with a very simple approach to asking whether each capability represents a strength or a gap, or a place where the HR person’s knowledge and experience base are solid. While this one-page approach is probably not as sexy and comprehensive as some others I have seen, it is faster, cheaper, and more accessible than most. So feel free to use it if you find it helpful, and if your budget does not afford you the opportunity to use something more sophisticated.
Figure 2.1 HR Leadership Development Checklist
As you think about your own capabilities and knowledge base, or those of your team, let’s dive a little more deeply into each dimension to ensure understanding. Before reading Chapter 1, you completed the THREE PulseCheck that helped you better understand and assess what parts of this book might be most relevant and useful for you. We are going to address each element in subsequent chapters of this book, but a short summary here will help set the stage.
What the Best HR Leaders Know and Do
Human Capital Strategy refers to the degree to which you and your team understand how to integrate business strategy and human capital strategy and how to focus on a few priorities that matter most to the business. You demonstrate that people priorities must be derived first and foremost from understanding the value chain by which your business makes money and how human capital challenges must be overcome, and actions taken, to maximize the value chain and drive business results.
Leadership and Talent Development refers to the extent to which you and your team know the best ways to identify, acquire, and develop leaders and other key talent in the organization and have the willingness and ability