One Minute HR Consultant

One of the most persistent mistakes made by consultants and mid-level to senior leadership professionals is an inability to link abstract theoretical organizational interventions to concrete business activity and functions.  In working as a leadership and organizational development consultant and business practitioner for six years, and an HR professional for nearly 20 years, I have witnessed this first hand on more occasion than I care to admit. 

Allow me to present a story:  Once in a history not to distant, I was a supporting initiative project team leader and change management team member working on a fairly complex change management initiative.  This robust and aggressive inititiative involved the entire organization, its business units, core business functions, staff support functions,  and information systems.  Thus, in the organizational textbook sense of change management, it met the criteria of being both complex and essential to maintaining the advantage in the industry of which it was a part. 

The concept was Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and my core role during the exploration stages was to unearth practical utility prior to  implementation stages of supporting initiative projects.  The organizational leadership, rightfully, in my opinion, did not believe in abstract concepts unless empirical evidence supported cost and effort; in other words, could a quantitative and qualatative business case be built around workforce actions built into the operational and functional actions of employees. 

The resistance to the concept initially came from my inability to link AI (in this case) into observable actions.  And here is an important point: Professionals with whom I work usually have very little issue or challenge in developing and linking abstract entities and theoretical management concepts during the strategy planning and visioning phases.  However, there is a tendency to “fake it,” or at least hope someone will not notice when it comes to relating the concept to observable actions that can be empirically measured and assessed.  As it related to my experience,  the impression formed that AI was another fuzzy management concept with no practical utility.  It became a concept in which one accentuated the positive to perhaps reach states of the ideal working environment.  Bright (2009) states that a one-sided reception of AI hinders its organizational employment potential stating, “I am concerned that an understanding of Appreciate Inquiry as simply ‘a focus on the positive’ undermines its full potential to create sustainable change in organizations . . . researchers have helped us understand that organizations are most vibrant and alive when they embrace the tensions of the human condition” (p. 2).  My point quoting bring is that this can apply to most abstract organizational intervention (i.e. emotional intelligence, cognitive diversity, etc.)

Specific to my case, I felt that AI was more than just emotional and abstract strategic entity and intervention merely to be integrated with selected management methodologies such as performance management and its accompanying tools.  As related to AI, Bright (2009) points out the operational components of AI stating that AI “. . . refers to an increase in the value of capital. Operational appreciation usually refers to the value of financial assets.”  This was my intuitive “aha” moment that allowed the concept to gain traction.  When I approached AI from both connotations (the philosophical and operational), I not only received the necessary buy-in, I received support in the infamous stakeholder meetings in which every dollar toward project and their teams has to be accounted.  To put this in a tangible perspective, what I did was capture the ideal in theory and the practical in “real world” and linked those to the core functions, tasks, and outcomes to be achieved by the workforce – related to readiness, brand equity, profitability, and organizational citizenship.  As a result (and understand I am compressing for space sake), the mind-set shifted from “we are broken” to “we have done this before and we can do it again . . . even better . . . within the context we need to move forward.”  Again, this was intuitive at the time and have I had the benefit of additional experience and sound research, the learning curve may have not been so steep.

The lesson here: Abstract entities and notions must make sense from a business and organizational perspective.  My personal experiences tell me that until you link the concept to the concrete (what is real for the stakeholders, clients, workforce, etc.), organizational interventions, especially among senior level leaders, are merely theoretical rhetoric, which captivate scholars and consultants at the moment.  It is important to know the business and the concept. 

Further Reading/References:

Bright, D. (2009). Appreciative inquiry and positive organizational scholarship: A  philosophy of practice for turbulent times. OD Practitioner, 41(2), 2-7.

One would be hard pressed to find an organization not impacted by the current state of affairs, which include calls for or against financial regulatory reform, restricted access to capital for SMB(s), and a flurry of legislation and executive orders impacting how we  conduct operations and relate to  our employees. 

Perhaps your organization is being impacted by one of these factors, but an assumption is that a combination of these factors is having an impact on  your company.  It is during these times that ambiguity increases despite well-intentioned efforts to prevent otherwise.  One of the things that we as leaders need to focus our efforts (both individually and collectively) is on continuous communication and feedback. 

The danger of organizational ambiguity can have profound impacts, which  contribute to the factors mentioned earlier and taken together result in organizational politics.  Organizational politics itself manifests within our employees in the form of  stress, intentional and unintentional discrimination, and at the extreme, turnover. 

Thus feedback should consider multiple formats addressing areas to include employee performance, organizational direction-visioning, and business goals.  Your key objective as a leader is to maintain or improve performance so that your organization maintains or ideally improves effectiveness and its ability to  accomplish its organizational objectives.  Presented below are three ways to enhance feedback and create an open-feedback culture that ideally will increase morale, diminish the impact of organizational politics, and contribute to increased profitability, readiness, and affiliation with organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs):

1.  Ensure employees have access to relevant information regarding their performance.  This includes, but certainly not limited to individual efforts within the context of accomplishing organization, unit, division and department objectives.  With this access, senor leaders, managers, and supervisors should encourage open dialogue on not only the importance of the job, but how an employee’s job performance can improve at the individual level and mapping the linkage to organizational performance. 

2.  Provide informal and formal feedback outside of performance appraisal interviews.  As I persistently state within blogs, lectures, round tables, etc. is that performance discussions should not be limited to appraisal feedback sessions.  When you, as a leader, take the time to discuss employees’ performance in settings outside of performance appraisal review sessions and interviews, you are increasing trust-building and decreasing the impact of perceived organizational politics.  

3.  Discuss importance of job performance, teamwork, and feedback as it relates to desired OCB.  Integrate what your organization stands for as often as possible.  Your goal is to impact the subconscious work efforts of employees to align their behavior with organizational goals – that is always the number one objective.  Once your employees understand how their work behavior/performance outcome contributes to the organization’s ability to accomplish its objective, you have again decreased ambiguity and set a clear standard of performance. 

In the end, you, as a leader, must exercise the behavior and activities associated with transformational leadership during difficult times.  These are difficult times at some level and through your consideration of employees’ perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes as it relates to their job, job performance, job accomplishment, and job security, you will go a long way in enhancing organizational performance through increased productivity  and morale while at the same time create an atmosphere conducive to feedback, information sharing, and building trust.

Recently, I had a conversation with a group of business executives who were hired with the sole purpose of turning the business around.  As we discussed the range and perceived intensity of the problems and issues, I quickly discovered that a deep understanding of the root causes that revealed a turnaround was even required was missing.

For example, one executive stated that he needed skill development/technical training.  My questions to him were How much was the training going to cost?  What kind of training (specifically) was needed?  And, How did would he know that training being provided was effective?  In particular, what led him and the organization to come to the conclusion that  more training was needed:  Was it market position, defect rate, employee satisfaction feedback, customer satisfaction feedback, accident rates, or lost time?  Was it a combination of all of these measures – or did you even measure at all?

The second executive stated to me that he needed to have his particular SBU performance on par with the other SBU.  He also stated that because his product/service line was new that he was under much scrutiny.  My questions continued.  How do you know that the other SBU has it right? How is your SBU performing among industry competitors (locally, nationally, internationally)?  When do you know (or will you know?) you have gotten to where you need to be when two different markets are being served? Continue reading »

Having been a member of the Twitter community now for nine months, I started to keep a notebook on the different styles of “tweeting,” and the many personalities behind the tweets.  Suffice it to say, that I came up with a unscientific method of matching twitter and leadership styles.  Here are a few humorous conclusions that one can derive from your twitter updates and what it says about your leadership style/personality.

Note:  This is just a humorous look on my unscientific approach; however, please take the time to realize that being an effective leader does not mean you follow any set pattern of leadership or some preconceived notion of someone’s notion of being an effective leader.  Effective leaders are found with varying personalities and traits.  They possess a keen sense of who they are and are aware of their strengths and weakness, maximizing the former and supplementing the latter.

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Strength:  Someone that values automation and one time effort to gain leverage.  Once system in place and/or value discovered, it is likely that you don’t want to reinvent the wheel.  In addition, you are extremely well-organized (there is a word for that), and you are also very methodical.  You will quickly move-on from one project to the next and likely are very good at starting businesses, setting a system, and moving on to the next project/phase.  Likely considered a very efficient leader who makes decisions in an effective manner.

Weakness:  Details make your eyes glaze and sometimes you are too quick to delegate.  Because you often have more than one project/program/concept going, those working on supporting initiatives are often confused as to just what is your priority. Continue reading »

Like it or not, we are in a ‘New Economy’ and your workplace may become impacted as a result.  Like many HR professionals, I am witnessing former middle and senior managers take what is being termed by the mainstream media and business press as “survival jobs.”  The challenge for us is how to handle these professionals, their goals, and their aspirations.

The complexities of managing this emerging, dynamic workforce and the accompanying labor pool are the diverse needs and aspirations of the people behind the numbers.  I predict that many will find happiness in their new roles and will want to grow with your organization.  Others are already working on consulting projects and/or planning new businesses during their spare time.  There will be others that will try to find happiness in both worlds (with your organization and on their own).  The result will be something more complex than just managing across generations and inherent skill sets; it will mean finding the right plan and approach down to the individual level. Continue reading »

This is a post that I struggled to write because it brings to task, so to speak, us as HR professionals.  However, at the same time, I feel a great need to share with you my thoughts on how we can actually seize and demonstrate value during this challenging economic cycle. Let me put it simple: This is a rare opportunity for HR, across the board, to add significant value and change the perception of our profession as a CRITICAL value-added function in the organization. In writing this, I thought about the ground-breaking work conducted by Brian Becker, Mark Huselid, and Dave Ulrich in their landmark work ‘The HR Scorecard”.  One of their observations is that HRM either adds value or does not (reference pg. 38, HR Scorecard). 

Any middle-ground has no significant impact.  Many of us can personally attest to this research in the real world as  organizations either put the thumb on us as merely daily tacticians or those that let us flourish.  Here is a time for us to flourish. Before revealing the Five Activities that we, as HR professionals, should be considering-undertaking, I want to share this observation:  A serious lack of judgment, conscious or not, is occurring each and every day amongst us as HR professionals that has potential dire consequences (or at least significant) to our organizations, which can set-up our organizations (and ourselves) up for failure – in some areas. As reported in the January issues of HRMag, EEOC complaints are up, training budgets are down, and complaints will be thrown our way from every angle from recruiting to talent management to outplacement and employee assistance.  Continue reading »