KARLA PORTER

Guest Post by Peter Lanc, F.C.I.P.D. (Fel­low of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel Development)

We all remem­ber our math class and those inter­minable equa­tions. Well, for some of us it’s been a while but mem­o­ries linger like per­cep­tions!  I am often asked what do you do?  (You HR peo­ple!) It seems as long as I can remem­ber I have been asked that.

Here’s the thing, it’s a great question.

Just get a few HR folk in the same room and ask the ques­tion. I tried it once and we all said dif­fer­ent things. Blast and they talk about alignment!

I was momen­tar­ily speech­less, reflec­tive and then pas­sion­ately said,  “I am a cul­ture agent, I make a busi­ness grow and design a place where peo­ple want to be and give of their best. I work on the soft fluffy stuff, which actu­ally is the real hard stuff that is the glue to every­thing, and I remind my naysay­ers that not much fan­tas­tic hap­pens with­out peo­ple all work­ing together, enthused and engaged!”

As the con­ver­sa­tion advanced, eyes widened and I was given a curi­ous look. I thought to myself that we have much to do (as a pro­fes­sion), peo­ple don’t get it because we don’t get it.

We need to look in the mir­ror and ask our­selves how we are going to make a REAL dif­fer­ence.  Not by sim­ply respond­ing to a perception-functional role but how to fast-forward the time machine into the future state model.

I am a proud HR pro­fes­sional, it’s in my blood, and yet, the per­cep­tion of HR is get­ting old! Why do peo­ple still think we are the “wel­fare depart­ment or just hire and fire and work on benefits”?

What is it that’s old I hear you ask?  Well it’s sim­ply the bar­rage of insults the HR pro­fes­sion con­tin­ues to get!

And … I won­der are we get­ting the per­cep­tion we deserve?

After all, we are pro­fes­sion­als. We get diplo­mas and degrees and train­ing and edu­ca­tion and we have insti­tu­tions and chap­ters etc. etc. So why have we not bro­ken out of the mold?

I recently heard that the only peo­ple who go into HR are those that could not make it in busi­ness.  I also heard from a fel­low Twit­terer that it’s all in the mind of the HR folk them­selves!! Well that is a great dis­ser­vice to our thou­sands of pro­fes­sion­als out there on the front line. That view has to come from some­one who is as dis­con­nected as the “cur­rent state” I am seeing.

Oh no, I just had a flash­back to the movie Dirty Harry, to when he gets busted and is sent to H.R. Can any­one remem­ber those fate­ful East­wood lines???

The days of being sim­ply great at the trans­ac­tional stuff are long gone and in the words of Mor­gan Free­man, in one of my other favorite movies, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, “We have to get busy liv­ing or get busy dying.”

For HR it means get­ting busy adding value and engag­ing the tal­ent in our organizations.

It’s sim­ply wrong that engage­ment lev­els in the USA are a woe­ful 20 some­thing %. That means 4 out of 5 peo­ple are not giv­ing of their best. Now that is just not right, and what are we, the “peo­ple pro­fes­sion,” doing about that (and I don’t mean sim­ply con­duct­ing surveys!)?

It has been sim­ply too many years for us to be hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion about HR being at the Lead­er­ship Table.

“If we are still not there then we are not there because? (Look in the mir­ror!) Account­abil­ity starts with you!”

I have been think­ing about this for a while and thank Bob Tarver for send­ing me a great arti­cle on the sub­ject of  “HR as Change Agents”.  My thought when I read it was that change has sim­ply passed much of HR by.

Michael Lee Stal­lard, in his book Fired Up or Burned Out, enthuses us by talk­ing about con­nec­tions and the thrive chain. Right on!! Thanks for remind­ing us. Why do we need to be reminded I wonder?

Well, it’s true, “Com­mon sense is not very com­mon and busi­ness sense is even less com­mon.” And, both are crit­i­cal com­pe­ten­cies that we share with a CEO! Stallard’s wis­dom was con­sol­i­dated when over the week­end I watched that fas­ci­nat­ing movie Into the Wild and in the words of the young Chris McCan­d­less, “Rela­tion­ships come from every­thing we do – not sim­ply peo­ple– God gave us the world.” The great­est leader of all time gave us a clue over 2000 years ago!

Both Stal­lard, and then Ulrich and Brock­bank in their book The HR Value Propo­si­tion, remind us that we need to look at the value chain.  They remind us that peo­ple don’t pay for what they don’t want! They only pay for what they rec­og­nize as valu­able to them. Why do we for­get that?

So I say, reverse the golden rule! I mean it works, but when I think of the golden rule I think of I will treat you like I want to be treated! Then I think to myself whoa… that’s not right. That means you don’t have to even bother ask­ing me what I want or find out what my val­ues are and assume I am like you! Methinks not!

So my plea is to treat me like I want to be treated. That means, you have guessed it, you need to ASK me what I want and what is impor­tant to me.

Another con­cept com­ing up:

“Ask the cus­tomer what they want and when you give it to them you have started the process of “like­li­hood to recommend.”

Trans­late that mes­sage into how we serve and impact what we do for our stake­hold­ers inter­nally and exter­nally includ­ing the com­mu­ni­ties in which we live and sud­denly rela­tion­ships and busi­ness get bet­ter! Believe me, per­cep­tions will change and the seat at the table will become avail­able, you will have not only earned it but they will want you to be there.

So what do we in HR need to do? Boils down to three things!

My 2010 Decade List

Ask our­selves three Ques­tions – Green Yel­low and Red Lights

1. What we are going to start doing?
2. What we are going to con­tinue doing?
3. What are we going to stop doing?

Get these three things right and we will change per­cep­tions and we will be mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in our pro­fes­sional and per­sonal roles. Now that’s some­thing to shout about! And inci­den­tally, it will give us the voice we seek and the lead­er­ship role we absolutely should aspire to.

So start mak­ing those lists and share them in the com­ments. We will do a fol­low up posting!!

Peter is a highly regarded, suc­cess­ful and per­son­able Business-Human Resource Leader with achieve­ments in deliv­er­ing strate­gic H.R. and change man­age­ment pro­grams in Europe and North Amer­ica. He has worked in num­ber of busi­ness sec­tors includ­ing tele­coms, auto­mo­tive, health care, tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing, lean advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, edu­ca­tion and the pub­lic sec­tor. His brand is “Turn­ing strat­egy into real­ity”. Peter enjoys life, net­work­ing and build­ing life long rela­tion­ships, read­ing and golf. You can tweet with him at @peter_lanc.