HR

the business-human paradox

Business cannot get done without humans, yet we forever want to ignore the human side of the equation. It’s messy and we can’t control it as much as we’d like and it’s unpredictable and it’s really stinkin’ hard to quantify and it requires a long-term focus in a short-term world and, and, and…

So we choose to downplay it, put it aside, focus on the things we can quantify and control. Yes, we need to get that side of business right too. But because that side is where businesses would rather spend their time, it is much more difficult use it to gain much of an advantage over the competition. And because  the human side is so hard, the companies that get it right reap some phenomenal long-term benefits.

It’s really interesting that, because business cannot get done with humans, businesses WILL address the people issues sooner or later. When you focus on and nail the human side you free up time to really concentrate on making and delivering great products and services. When you ignore the human side, you spend every waking moment dealing with people issues. The paradox – the cosmic joke – is that the more you ignore it, the more time you spend dealing with it.

 

[Note: this is a slightly expanded version of a comment I made on Gareth Jones’ blog in response to his post, Organizations: The World is Still Flat. That’s twice this week he’s inspired me – thanks, Gareth!]

are you a simplifier or a complicator?

In an interview in the June/July 2012 issue of Switchback magazine, Specialized founder Mike Sinyard mentions that bike designer Robert Egger has told him, “Hey, you want people here that are simplifiers not complicators.”

No surprise, but I love this concept. Simplifiers make it easy to get things done, make it easy for the customer, make it easy for employees, make it easy for leaders. Complicators bring the drama, politics, the tome-thick rule book, bureaucracy, silos, fiefdoms, roadblocks…

This applies to every position in every department in every organization, but I bring it to HR. I touched on this a little bit with the post simplify, then add lightness. Now, let’s go further. Imagine what HR would look like, how HR would operate if it was a simplifier that made it easier for leaders to make great decisions. I’ve never really had words for it before, but that’s what HR looks like inside my head.

So which are you?

hr: bring the noise

Gareth Jones recently blogged on the question, “HR: Where’s the Passion?” There are some massively talented, bright, and passionate people in HR. I’ve worked with a few, met a few, and regularly read blogs by a few. There are some really inspiring superstars out there, but on the average…? Gareth got me thinking a bit and maybe you really don’t see much passion overall.

I think HR is one of the best fields there is because it lives at the intersection of Business and Humans. Companies die, survive, or thrive based on the people they attract, retain, and develop and HR is the department that can make that happen. What could be cooler?! (If you want more of my take on the awesomeness of HR, try why HR rocks or human resources’ top goal? .)

Of course, I also wrote why I wouldn’t hire an HR person for an HR job so even though I’m passionate about the field I do have concerns. So, as Gareth asks, where is the passion? I don’t know for sure, but do have a few thoughts:

  • Until recently, HR was very administrative as a field and it still is in many organizations. Processing and filing paperwork as the focus of a job does not require passion to be successful. In fact, having passion probably makes you ill-suited for any long term success at the job.
  • HR in some organizations can get overly focused on bureaucracy and make policy enforcement the core function. Again, not a place that rewards passion.
  • HR managers who believe their #1 job is to prevent lawsuits end up with HR departments that are fearful, rigid, and focused on everything you can’t do instead of what you can do. Passionate people want to be engaged and  active and accomplishing, not timid roadblocks.
  • HR theoretically extends throughout the organization yet can end up very siloed or excluded. That doesn’t attract or keep people who want to make a difference.
  • In times past, HR was often a dumping ground: a place for people not meeting expectations who the company didn’t have the heart to get rid of or a place to “promote” secretaries to when the company didn’t know what else to do with them. These were people who didn’t love HR to begin with and were just coasting out the end of their careers.
  • HR is a tough, tough job. Employees and managers are often only involved with HR when things are intense and going badly. Tough decisions have to be made. Laws and regulations are often ambiguous, confusing, or even contradictory. People get nervous when you call them, fearing the worst. Not many people stop by just to say thanks. So, even those who enter the field all full of passion and zeal can get beaten down pretty quick.
  • Finally, because of all this, I think there are very few role models to teach newcomers that it’s ok to be enthusiastic and love your work and do great stuff and HR is the place to do that.

But, I think it’s changing. I’m seeing more and more blogs by folks who see HR as the place to make a difference. Social media is letting like-minded folk across the planet connect and share ideas and see that they are not alone. We are getting more and more role models in the field.

Speak up, make some noise, and rock the HR banner a little higher!

ways to make HR awesome

If you think the purpose of HR is to prevent the company from getting sued, please quit and go work for the competition right now.

Realize HR has customers.  Make life simpler, easier, better for your customers. Solve your customer’s problems.

Become so good at customer service that people brag that your company has the Nordstrom’s of HR.

Consider the possibility that the purpose of HR is to help leaders make better decisions. [So says David Ayre of Nike and I agree with him.] Own it, rock it, develop processes around it. Make it your mission to help leaders make better selection, training, retention, and de-selection decisions.

Making a difference in people’s lives and impacting results is fun. Administration is the necessary evil of HR. Nail administration so you can move on to the fun.

Develop a love and understanding for business. Read the HR mags if you want, but also get into Forbes, Fortune, WSJ, Fast Company, Time, The Economist. Maybe inc. or Entrepreneur. Become a business person who gets HR rather than an HR person gets business (or worse, an HR person who is vaguely aware of this thing called “business”).

Ditch the HR mags and read the scholarly journals like Personnel Psychology.

Attend conferences focused on the core business of the company you support. Maybe skip the HR conference this year (blasphemy!) and attend a manufacturing, banking, engineering, retail, etc. conference.

Leave your office. Go talk to people outside your department.

Attend conferences for the departments you support. Do you have any idea how much you would learn and how much you would freak people out if you attended, say, a CFO conference?

Spend a day observing and shadowing a key customer.

Play to win. Have fun. Make a freakin’ difference.

Other ideas?

creating HR value

Creating value is about making things simpler, easier, better, quicker, or more effective for the customer. If it’s not solving our customer’s problems – and solving them better than the other options – it’s time to seriously re-evaluate why we’re doing it. Unfortunately, bad HR doesn’t get that: 1) HR has customers; and 2) it’s all about customer service.

[I originally wrote this in response to a great blog post by Tim Sackett but it stands alone pretty well.]

4 types of people at work

At risk of oversimplifying, we tend to view people at work in one of four ways based on their productivity and personality. Selection, promotion, and development decisions are made based on what category we see people in.

It looks a little like this:

 

Jerk

Good with People
High Results

Tolerate?

Super Star
Low Results

Why are they here?

Tolerate?
  1. Good with people and gets great results: we all love these folks. They’re great to be around and they get things done. Co-workers like them, customers like them, and management likes them. We hate, hate, hate to see these people go.
  2. Pleasant person with low results: we tend to like them, wish they’d do more, but make allowances for them because they are easy to work with and don’t cause anyone trouble. They do a great job of building relationships and are liked by customers and liked or tolerated by co-workers and management. Nice compensates a lot for low productivity.
  3. Jerk with high results: we can’t stand them, but they are often tolerated by management because they get things done. They often don’t realize how much they are getting in their own way and how much higher their career would climb if they were easier to get along with. They don’t understand that relationships matter.
  4. Jerk who doesn’t do anything: universally hated. Don’t be this person; don’t manage this person. Any manager who keeps one of these folks on the team instantly loses credibility. They thrive in teams with weak managers and cause a disproportionate amount of damage to the culture and work environment. In an ideal world, everyone in this category would be working for your competition. Realistically, there are a few in your organization right now acting as giant brake on progress.

What do you think? Spot on? Too simple? What are your experiences with these four types of people?

now that i know the answer, what was the question?

This week I turned 42, which, as two different people reminded me, is the answer to life the universe, and everything. In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series a supercomputer determined that the answer to life, etc. was “42” and then suggested that if people didn’t understand what the answer meant perhaps they needed to figure out what the question was.

How often do we come to conclusions based on false assumptions, brought about by poor questions? Closed-ended questions, leading questions, questions that are very open to interpretation, and just garden variety misunderstood questions all provide answers. They just don’t give us information.

Better questions lead to better answers which leads to better decisions, better actions, and better results. Any guesses where poor questions lead?

keepin’ it relevant

Recently my daughter and some friends were doing a scavenger hunt where they followed a series of clues to discover the prize at the end. One of the clues was, “The place where we get bills.” Immediately, my daughter rushed to the computer because that’s where we pay bills. Uh oh. The last thing a business wants is to be irrelevant to the customer.

Your business, your department, and even you become irrelevant to your customers the second they no longer think of you as a resource and solution to their problems. Few think about it that way, but it’s true. Customers are trying to solve a problem they have and need you to do it. Put another way, from the customer’s point of view, your business (department, team, etc.) is useful and relevant only if you can solve their problem.

Banks exist to solve the problems of safely storing and accessing money. Lawnmowers exist to solve the problem of an unkempt lawn. Car dealers exist to solve personal transportation problems. Human Resources departments exist to solve the problems of finding, hiring, managing, and developing people. And so on. Internal or external, it doesn’t matter – your job is to help your customers solve their problems.

When salespeople don’t listen to the customer, they don’t (can’t!) provide solutions. When employees judge their worth to the company by their tenure rather than the problems they are solving, they are missing the point. When HR departments focus on administration they are solving only the lowest level of problems (which are easily outsourced). When your potential customers avoid you or work around you or tolerate you because you are the only option (for now), you become a problem to them.

You become a problem that they will look to someone else to solve.

simplify, then add lightness

I’m a big fan of good policy and process because it allows for quick, consistent, and better decision making. It says that when this event happens, we respond this way. No agonizing, no reinventing the wheel, no he said/she saids or playing mom off of dad. Policy defines how we as a company have decided – in advance – to deal with certain situations. Process defines how we will do certain tasks and ultimately supports and makes it easy to adhere to policies.

Great policies and processes enable decisions to be made as quickly and as low in the organization as possible. Decisions made on the ground are always more relevant to the immediate situation than decisions made even one or two levels up.

The problems start when we adhere to policy for the sake of policy, rather than to help make better decisions. Policy should guide thinking and decision making, not replace it. Once we let policy and process replace judgment and thinking, then we must exponentially expand the number of policies and procedures to cover every possible situation that could possibly come up. When new situations arise, even one-time anomalies, another policy must be added. The more specific the policies, the more policies we must have. Soon, we’re crushed with bureaucracy and we’re safe because we’re sticking with policy even when it’s the wrong thing to do.

Unfortunately, thriving in this world requires dealing with new situations. Little to no innovation is possible in bureaucracy. The tighter the policies, the less judgment allowed, the higher in the organization decisions must be made and the less we are able to innovate, adapt, and invent.

Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Cars and legendary race car engineer, famously once said that the secret to building a winning race car is to “simplify, then add lightness.” Simple parts and systems are less likely to break. Reducing weight makes a car quicker, better handling, more responsive, and reduces the amount of strain and wear on critical components. He understood cars, but might have well been talking about organizations.

The internet is full of people babbling on about the need for companies to be more innovative, react more quickly, and adapt faster. But it misses a crucial point: nimble companies react quickly, ponderous companies don’t. You can’t be driving along in a city bus and expect it to stop, accelerate, and turn on a dime just because you want it to. Mass creates momentum. Yet, we smugly suggest that bus size companies should behave like race cars.

Solution? Simplify, then add lightness. Good policy and process provides just enough framework to make decisions consistent with the strategic direction of the company. And not a gram more.

Four prime examples:

1. The US Constitution. This document is a miracle of simplicity. The few Americans who have actually bothered to read it know that it is amazingly stripped down and simple. In fact, it’s only about 7,400 words long (call it about 16 pages). Knowing that they couldn’t accurately imagine every possible situation that would need to be accounted for, the authors simply created an enduring framework that would enable adaptation. It was so simple and brief that they had to immediately amend it to establish and protect basic rights.

2. Nordstrom. Nordstrom’s focus is customer service and they want nothing to get in the way of employees providing phenomenal service. Their entire employee handbook is reported as listing only ONE rule: “Use good judgment in all situations.” And then there is brief mention to feel free to ask the department or store manager or HR any question at any time.

3. Apple Computers. Steve Jobs genius was not leadership: it was an unrelenting focus to make things as simple as humanly possible and then make them even simpler. How many steps does it take to get to any song on an iPod? (Hint: you won’t come even close to using all the fingers on one hand when you’re counting.)

4. Amazon. 1-click ordering. Enough said.

Um, how big’s your policy manual again? How many pages does the dress code really need to be? How many steps are truly necessary to for a customer to return an item? How easy is it for the customer to give you their money?