Posted on by shersh

Future of HR

I had the opportunity this morning of listening to John Boudreau, co-author ( with Peter M. Ramstad) of the book Beyond HR, The New Science of Human Capital. The presentation was sponsored by the Strategic Capability Network ( http://www.scnetwork.ca ) in Toronto.

John has eloquently provided a deep and relevant context, models and language in which HR can grow from: Personnel ( Control stage) of the profession, to Human Resources ( the Services stage where many are now) to Talentship ( the strategic stage) where we integrate past learnings and deliver a level of decision science that will now underpin our profession.

The book is well worth the read. To make it more valuable we must tangibly integrate John Boudreau’s perspectives and execute on them . I do not believe this is another “management book with fad all over it”!

It provides the essential tools to better integrate with the Business Strategy, the questions to deepen our incite, priority, and focus in terms of tangible value delivery and the metrics that make sense to complement the execution.

The book is published by Harvard Business School Press.

Posted on by shersh

Leadership is not an island

Leadership is hard sometimes. We take a new role and find that we respond to the new dynamics in new unplanned ways .
From the outside we do well assessing the business situation ( like a case at school) and creating a number of pragmatic paper opinions based on good sound logic including ourselves. But we are not logical. surprise!

As we take on new roles, we can only do “so much” pre-analysis before jumping in and being. Sure we use our leadership skills , maybe stoically at first, but reality sets in. The numbers are not as high as we “promised”, out of the corner of our eye we may see the corner of the room coming closer, our board looks at us sceptically ( did we make a wrong choice?) and all of a sudden we respond or react.
Sometimes under pressure we may say things, do things in anger ( fire someone?) as if we had to prove our command position or assert so that in some way we will get respect.

But the world has changed. how we respond under pressure, how we emotionally engage, the personality traits we lean on, are all a currency that have not be counted before.

We realize that it is not enough to do the case study on the business problem/challenge. Now, more than ever, we need to understand ourselves, and team with others who will provide the support and the insight to succeed. We need to accept that we are not alone . That no matter how strong we are, we cannot be bulls in a china shop.

So next time an opportunity presents itself consider who you are, and, using the Heisenberg Principle, understand the effect we will have when we put ourselves on the case.