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HR hopes for 2014

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 By
Dave Ulrich

 

Which of your three children do you love the most or your six grandchildren?  I was recently asked this by a sincere, but oblivious person we met.  I love all my children and grandchildren equally.  Likewise, it is nearly impossible to say “which of your themes for HR 2014 is THE most important?”   I think many of the ideas are relevant, so I will offer a menu of HR hopes for 2014.
  •  HR outside in.  Most HR work still focuses inside the company on employees, leaders, or HR practices.  When the work of HR starts with customers, investors, and communities, it focuses on the value HR can create over time.  Strategic HR still often uses strategy as a mirror to which HR must respond, while outside in uses strategy as a window to external business conditions and key stakeholders to which HR must respond.  HR responds to outside in pressures by making changes in talent, leadership, and capability.
  • Talent.  In the last 20 years, we have learned to help employees become more competent with innovations in training, then we focused on behavioral engagement.  Now, I hope we are focused on emotional engagement where employees find a sense of meaning and purpose from the work they do.  Creating meaning from work comes when employees’ personal strengths and values are used to help and serve others.  Building on your strengths so that they will strengthen others goes beyond a narcissistic view of personal growth.  Meaning is less about one’s personal values and more about how those values create value for others.
  • Leadership.  We often celebrate great leaders whose charisma and stature charms and motives us.  But great leaders go away and have to be replaced by other leaders.  Focusing on individual leaders should shift to collective leadership where leaders at all levels of an organization do the right things in the right way.  This means that individual leaders will be more accountable for developing other leaders than merely getting their way or getting things right.  Good parents want their children to be better than them.  The same with leaders who want the next generation leadership to be better.  And, to be better requires focusing more on external conditions than internal history.  These external conditions might include general social, technical, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends as well as expectations of specific stakeholders (e.g., customers, investors, and communities).  When leaders turn external expectations of a firm into internal leadership actions and organization practices, they create a leadership brand.  We found in our research among SME’s in Asia (Talent Accelerator) that leaders who attend the leadership have high impact.
  • Capability.  An organization’s capability represents what it is known for, and good at, both inside and outside the company.  A firm’s brand becomes its culture when external expectations turn into internal actions.  A litany of capabilities have been popular over the decades (quality and its derivatives, service and customer connection, innovation, efficiency).  In 2014 and beyond, I envision a few emerging capabilities that HR professionals should architect for their firms.  Simplicity has become important as the world becomes more complex.  Sometimes HR practices like performance management are avoided because they are too complex or process driven.  Terms like essence, minimalist, streamlined, focused are the themes of simplicity.  Information captures a wide range of current fads:  cloud, data, analytics, workforce planning, metrics, scorecard, and so forth.  Behind each of these HR fads is the fundamental capability of information.  As a capability, information is less about data and more about decision making; less about information and more about insight and impact.  HR needs to be very clear about what choices can be made to help an organization win through talent, leadership, and culture, then define choices and collect data to make informed choices.  Collaboration includes teamwork and working across boundaries inside the organization and forming partnerships outside the organization.   HR professionals need to model, learn, and teach principles of simplicity, information, and collaboration.

There it is … a few ideas on a menu for 2014.  Hard to say which one menu item matters most since all are important for HR to fully deliver value.

Written by Professor Dave Ulrich, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Partner, the RBL Group

HR Hopes for 2014

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  •  HR outside in.  Most HR work still focuses inside the company on employees, leaders, or HR practices.  When the work of HR starts with customers, investors, and communities, it focuses on the value HR can create over time.  Strategic HR still often uses strategy as a mirror to which HR must respond, while outside in uses strategy as a window to external business conditions and key stakeholders to which HR must respond.  HR responds to outside in pressures by making changes in talent, leadership, and capability.
  • Talent.  In the last 20 years, we have learned to help employees become more competent with innovations in training, then we focused on behavioral engagement.  Now, I hope we are focused on emotional engagement where employees find a sense of meaning and purpose from the work they do.  Creating meaning from work comes when employees’ personal strengths and values are used to help and serve others.  Building on your strengths so that they will strengthen others goes beyond a narcissistic view of personal growth.  Meaning is less about one’s personal values and more about how those values create value for others.
  • Leadership.  We often celebrate great leaders whose charisma and stature charms and motives us.  But great leaders go away and have to be replaced by other leaders.  Focusing on individual leaders should shift to collective leadership where leaders at all levels of an organization do the right things in the right way.  This means that individual leaders will be more accountable for developing other leaders than merely getting their way or getting things right.  Good parents want their children to be better than them.  The same with leaders who want the next generation leadership to be better.  And, to be better requires focusing more on external conditions than internal history.  These external conditions might include general social, technical, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends as well as expectations of specific stakeholders (e.g., customers, investors, and communities).  When leaders turn external expectations of a firm into internal leadership actions and organization practices, they create a leadership brand.  We found in our research among SME’s in Asia (Talent Accelerator) that leaders who attend the leadership have high impact.
  • Capability.  An organization’s capability represents what it is known for, and good at, both inside and outside the company.  A firm’s brand becomes its culture when external expectations turn into internal actions.  A litany of capabilities have been popular over the decades (quality and its derivatives, service and customer connection, innovation, efficiency).  In 2014 and beyond, I envision a few emerging capabilities that HR professionals should architect for their firms.  Simplicity has become important as the world becomes more complex.  Sometimes HR practices like performance management are avoided because they are too complex or process driven.  Terms like essence, minimalist, streamlined, focused are the themes of simplicity.  Information captures a wide range of current fads:  cloud, data, analytics, workforce planning, metrics, scorecard, and so forth.  Behind each of these HR fads is the fundamental capability of information.  As a capability, information is less about data and more about decision making; less about information and more about insight and impact.  HR needs to be very clear about what choices can be made to help an organization win through talent, leadership, and culture, then define choices and collect data to make informed choices.  Collaboration includes teamwork and working across boundaries inside the organization and forming partnerships outside the organization.   HR professionals need to model, learn, and teach principles of simplicity, information, and collaboration.

There it is … a few ideas on a menu for 2014.  Hard to say which one menu item matters most since all are important for HR to fully deliver value.

Written by Professor Dave Ulrich, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Partner, the RBL Group

3 Steps to Simplicity Success

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Albert Einstein said “if you can’t explain it to a 6-year old then you don’t understand it yourself”.  Why, in this crazy world of ours, do we make things ever more complicated?  Do you ever find yourself yearning for the simple things in life?

Complexity is easy – simplicity is hard
It’s easy to make your life more complicated.  All you have to do is keep adding on to what exists and eventually you will end up with something complex.   Simple!   But to make your life simple is much harder.  Why?  Because you have to understand something very well in order to make it simple.  And that takes effort.

There are three things involved in being successful at simplicity.

  1. Awareness
  2. Skills
  3. Effort

Awareness
Its easy to let your life become increasing complicated – if you sit back and relax long enough complexity will happen all by itself.  All too often business processes and systems have evolved into ever increasing levels of complexity because no-one became aware that it was getting harder and harder.  Today, however, there is a huge awareness for the need to simplify businesses.  Companies around the world are screaming for support for simplicity.

Effort
Simplicity is unlikely to happen without a deliberate intervention.   Systems and processes do not simplify themselves – they require you to intervene and apply your mind to finding a simpler or more effective way.   It means that you have to rethink the past, undo conventional wisdom and challenging your assumptions about how things are supposed to be, should be and, potentially, could be.

Skills
When the lights have gone on and you have become aware of the need, and you are ready to put in the effort, then what?  Did you know that there are practical ways of developing the skills of simplicity?  Edward de Bono’s course on Simplicity provides leaders and manages with a practical toolbox where you will learn how to evaluate, provoke, negate, challenge and rearrange parts with the goal of always making things simpler.

Nicola Tyler | Thinker

Q & A – Bernice Samuels interviews Ricardo Semler

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Bernice Samuels of FNB talks to Ricardo Semler the President of SEMCO, and executive ranked by the World Economic Forum in 1983, as Global Thought Leader of Tomorrow, about his advice to achieve success in innovation, develop a robust participatory management model and grow a company during difficult economic times whilst managing by omission.

About Bernice Samuels

Bernice SamuelsFNB’s Chief Marketing Officer, Bernice Samuels, has made a great success of the position in the time she has held it. Her journey from telecommunications and media to banking has had interesting turns and fascinating challenges. Spearheading the repositioning of FNB, Bernice Samuels was named the 2012 Marketing Personality of the year at the Sunday Times Top Brand Awards.

With more than 20 years’ experience in business, marketing strategy development and implementation, Samuels has been a key driver behind developing well-known corporate brands in South Africa and Africa including MNET, MTN and now FNB. Since her appointment at FNB in January 2011, she has been responsible for the management of FNB’s brand and overall marketing across the business. Bernice holds a BSC Honours degree from UCT in genetic engineering and an MBA from Wits Business School.

She absolutely loves what she does and is curious about the role of emotion in influencing buying decisions. She believes that in our world of overloaded channels of communication and the general lack of trust with advertising messages, finding your brand’s true emotional core and expressing it through your brand’s story is essential.

About Ricardo Semler

Extraordinary CEO, Best Selling Author and Global Leader of Tomorrow. Ricardo is known around the globe for his extraordinary success spurring SEMCO South America to success achieving 41% return on capital for 25 years. His innovative employee centric workplace democracy arguably saved SEMCO from bankruptcy. He has authored 2 best sellers – Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend. Leaders the world over admire how he relentlessly invents and champions his causes.

Ricardo Semler will present his unconventional leadership model to South African leaders and managers at The 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013.

______________________

Q & A

? – BS – Your unconventional management model and democratic organisation has amassed SEMCO unprecedented success with growth at around 27% each year for the past 25 years. You have been a committed champion of your cause to change rigid, dehumanising workplaces into engaging, productive ones since the 80’s. It is only now, that a handful of businesses are starting to realise that “happiness” is not a “nice- to- have” but rather a “need- to –have”. In your opinion why has this become a strategic priority the world over?

RS – standard industry practices have run out of steam. This seemed evident 30 years ago, but these changes take anthropologic time, not business cycle periods. Letting people set their own modes of work, times and form has led to growth for us, but it also fits the bill of business requirements: our rate of return on capital has been 41% for 25 years, every year. Giving up control works, and well.

? – BS – Having recently won the award for the Most Innovative Bank, we place a high price on innovation. Similarly you place a high price on innovation within SEMCO. How have you achieved innovation within SEMCO?

RS – By stepping aside. Letting people set up their own solutions and even business units, and setting only the mutual goals, instead of working on structures and controls.

? – BS – How do you reward innovation?

RS – By letting people set up a mix of 11 different ways to remunerate themselves, from salaries, commissions and the usual solutions, all the way to percentages on sales, or royalties over product lines, and much profit distribution. Of course, this is in addition to the basic assumption of freedom to work anyhow, anywhere, any time.

? – BS – Your decision to apply a participatory management model took place at a time when SEMCO was facing bankruptcy. During your tenure Brazilian banks failed and countless companies collapsed. The future of the South African economy is dependent on small and medium business growth. Currently South African companies are facing some of the most difficult economic challenges. It is further estimated that South African productivity has hit a 46 year low. What would your advice be to business leaders in South Africa today?

RS – By giving up control, which is all they do not want to hear – but maybe should. It is the management of staff, assets and business plans that places the most constrictions on the ability to navigate troubled waters. Setting the course and controlling it to the hilt is what makes inevitability reign over opportunity.

? – BS – Most recently the South African mining industry has experienced broadly publicised industrial action. At SEMCO you were not immune to a volatile unionised business environment. Had you been advisor to the CEO of Lonmin in October last year, what would you have advised and how do you think that could have avoided the bloodshed and violence?

RS – After 25 years of regular industrial action from brazil’s fiercest union i took a step as soon as I began my cycle at Semco: visiting the unions headquarters. That was the first time they had ever been visited by a businessman in their history. We then opened all doors to sit-ins during strikes, gave out free lunch and set up platforms for union leaders to address workers. We then took whatever communication action we could to say that we understood, respected and would even agree with many union issues if we were workers. We then would explain why we disagree but respect the strike, and started teaching workers to read our financials. I would always advise any and every businessman to be 100% open with unions and never coerce or confront – we are no longer in the 1880’s…

? – BS – I believe you personally have a “long service award” for “not making a decision” and even though you have the controlling stock in SEMCO – you have never used your VETO power in the past 25 years? Have you ever regretted this?

RS – I’ve disagreed with many a decision, and had many pet projects sent to file, but the gain of independent thinkers and self-propulsion has always paid off in the balance.

? – BS – You will be a headline speaker at our 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013. Can you give us some insights as to what you will be sharing with the South African audience. In particular, how do you define happiness@work?

RS – I plan to speak about the reasons organizations are such shabby career decisions, and how businesses can change this quickly. Happiness in life, or at work, are similar, and they involve freedom to choose (like in a marriage, or buying a house, or having kids – I have 5!), getting management off your back (much as a spouse!) And feeling that your talents and emotions are aligned with your day to day. Easier said than done, but can be done, and is (mostly) at our companies.

Q & A – Bernice Samuels interviews Ricardo Semler

/in , ,

Bernice Samuels of FNB talks to Ricardo Semler the President of SEMCO, and executive ranked by the World Economic Forum in 1983, as Global Thought Leader of Tomorrow, about his advice to achieve success in innovation, develop a robust participatory management model and grow a company during difficult economic times whilst managing by omission.

About Bernice Samuels

Bernice SamuelsFNB’s Chief Marketing Officer, Bernice Samuels, has made a great success of the position in the time she has held it. Her journey from telecommunications and media to banking has had interesting turns and fascinating challenges. Spearheading the repositioning of FNB, Bernice Samuels was named the 2012 Marketing Personality of the year at the Sunday Times Top Brand Awards.

With more than 20 years’ experience in business, marketing strategy development and implementation, Samuels has been a key driver behind developing well-known corporate brands in South Africa and Africa including MNET, MTN and now FNB. Since her appointment at FNB in January 2011, she has been responsible for the management of FNB’s brand and overall marketing across the business. Bernice holds a BSC Honours degree from UCT in genetic engineering and an MBA from Wits Business School.

She absolutely loves what she does and is curious about the role of emotion in influencing buying decisions. She believes that in our world of overloaded channels of communication and the general lack of trust with advertising messages, finding your brand’s true emotional core and expressing it through your brand’s story is essential.

About Ricardo Semler

Extraordinary CEO, Best Selling Author and Global Leader of Tomorrow. Ricardo is known around the globe for his extraordinary success spurring SEMCO South America to success achieving 41% return on capital for 25 years. His innovative employee centric workplace democracy arguably saved SEMCO from bankruptcy. He has authored 2 best sellers – Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend. Leaders the world over admire how he relentlessly invents and champions his causes.

Ricardo Semler will present his unconventional leadership model to South African leaders and managers at The 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013.

______________________

Q & A

? – BS – Your unconventional management model and democratic organisation has amassed SEMCO unprecedented success with growth at around 27% each year for the past 25 years. You have been a committed champion of your cause to change rigid, dehumanising workplaces into engaging, productive ones since the 80’s. It is only now, that a handful of businesses are starting to realise that “happiness” is not a “nice- to- have” but rather a “need- to –have”. In your opinion why has this become a strategic priority the world over?

RS – standard industry practices have run out of steam. This seemed evident 30 years ago, but these changes take anthropologic time, not business cycle periods. Letting people set their own modes of work, times and form has led to growth for us, but it also fits the bill of business requirements: our rate of return on capital has been 41% for 25 years, every year. Giving up control works, and well.

? – BS – Having recently won the award for the Most Innovative Bank, we place a high price on innovation. Similarly you place a high price on innovation within SEMCO. How have you achieved innovation within SEMCO?

RS – By stepping aside. Letting people set up their own solutions and even business units, and setting only the mutual goals, instead of working on structures and controls.

? – BS – How do you reward innovation?

RS – By letting people set up a mix of 11 different ways to remunerate themselves, from salaries, commissions and the usual solutions, all the way to percentages on sales, or royalties over product lines, and much profit distribution. Of course, this is in addition to the basic assumption of freedom to work anyhow, anywhere, any time.

? – BS – Your decision to apply a participatory management model took place at a time when SEMCO was facing bankruptcy. During your tenure Brazilian banks failed and countless companies collapsed. The future of the South African economy is dependent on small and medium business growth. Currently South African companies are facing some of the most difficult economic challenges. It is further estimated that South African productivity has hit a 46 year low. What would your advice be to business leaders in South Africa today?

RS – By giving up control, which is all they do not want to hear – but maybe should. It is the management of staff, assets and business plans that places the most constrictions on the ability to navigate troubled waters. Setting the course and controlling it to the hilt is what makes inevitability reign over opportunity.

? – BS – Most recently the South African mining industry has experienced broadly publicised industrial action. At SEMCO you were not immune to a volatile unionised business environment. Had you been advisor to the CEO of Lonmin in October last year, what would you have advised and how do you think that could have avoided the bloodshed and violence?

RS – After 25 years of regular industrial action from brazil’s fiercest union i took a step as soon as I began my cycle at Semco: visiting the unions headquarters. That was the first time they had ever been visited by a businessman in their history. We then opened all doors to sit-ins during strikes, gave out free lunch and set up platforms for union leaders to address workers. We then took whatever communication action we could to say that we understood, respected and would even agree with many union issues if we were workers. We then would explain why we disagree but respect the strike, and started teaching workers to read our financials. I would always advise any and every businessman to be 100% open with unions and never coerce or confront – we are no longer in the 1880’s…

? – BS – I believe you personally have a “long service award” for “not making a decision” and even though you have the controlling stock in SEMCO – you have never used your VETO power in the past 25 years? Have you ever regretted this?

RS – I’ve disagreed with many a decision, and had many pet projects sent to file, but the gain of independent thinkers and self-propulsion has always paid off in the balance.

? – BS – You will be a headline speaker at our 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013. Can you give us some insights as to what you will be sharing with the South African audience. In particular, how do you define happiness@work?

RS – I plan to speak about the reasons organizations are such shabby career decisions, and how businesses can change this quickly. Happiness in life, or at work, are similar, and they involve freedom to choose (like in a marriage, or buying a house, or having kids – I have 5!), getting management off your back (much as a spouse!) And feeling that your talents and emotions are aligned with your day to day. Easier said than done, but can be done, and is (mostly) at our companies.

Happiness@Work Leadership Lessons I Have Learned from the World’s Greatest Thinkers

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Ingrid Ashwin | July 2013. Ingrid Ashwin is the Event Producer for The Progress Conference series.

For 20 years, Ingrid has built personal relations with the world’s top thought-leaders. By staying close to the local business community she has built a very real understanding of the challenges and opportunities required to create and grow value in South African organisations. In response to these requirements she has sought out and secured the participation of the most relevant thought leaders to inspire and develop new management competencies in marketing, leadership, human resources, strategy and finance.

Ingrid’s work has afforded her first hand personal insight to the thinking of Tom Peters the “uber-guru”, Professor Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School, Professor Dave Ulrich, the leading HR authority, the late Steven Covey, Dr Edward de Bono, Philip Kotler, Rudi Giuliani, Richard Koch, Martin Lindstrom, Dr Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology and others. Most recently she is working with Ricardo Semler, Tal Ben-Shahar and Jessica Pryce-Jones to develop solutions for South African organisations to achieve happiness at work.

It is Ingrid’s belief that by refusing to accept the status quo we can achieve progress.

_________________________________________________________________________

During a recession we suggest that leaders face some new questions: “What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning? In either good or bad times where do you and your people find meaning?  How do you foster abundance in people? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for your and for others?” Professor Dave Ulrich.

The lessons I have learned from eight of the world’s greatest business thinkers.

They are unanimous on one thing. The business leaders most likely to succeed are those that expect and plan towards a business environment that will be very different in a few years’ time, never mind a decade of half century. The 20th century work model is no longer relevant and there is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.

– Leaders DO People and kindness is free.

– Take care of the people. The people take care of the service. The service takes care of the customer. The customer takes care of the profit. The profit takes care of the reinvestment. The reinvestment takes care of the reinvention. The reinvention takes care of the future.

– Celebrate the small wins on your journey to the BIG wins.

– You hire adults – treat them like adults

– Corporate pyramids are the cause of much corporate evil. They emphasise power, promote insecurity, distort communications and make it difficult for the people who plan and the people who execute to move in the same direction.

– The “Seven Day Weekend” is not an elaborate game of hooky. Going AWOL is sometimes necessary. If we want people to do only the company work while they are in the office, shouldn’t we have corporate police to makes sure they are not working on weekends.

– Don’t tell your employees you trust them and then audit and search them when they go home.

– Don’t send your people on a motivational course – change their job and let them choose their own boss.

– Making meaning makes money.

– Put delight at the top of your list of contributors to meaning at work.

– Create tiny moments of appreciation.

– Notice something beautiful.

– Get a kick out of a shared joke.

– Cultivate moments of playfulness. Brainstorm sources of pleasure and fun.

– Build mental toughness, signature strengths and strong relationships.

– If your business involves setbacks. Risky decisions and problems hire optimists.

– For every negative piece of feedback your people need 3 positive inputs. It is 3:1 to sustain positive emotions and in turn resilience.

– When the going gets tough use your signature strengths.

happiness pays!

– Get people to experience positive emotions so they become more engaged in that they do, their creativity levels go up and relationships improve.

– Where there is democracy there is choice and without choice happiness is but impossible to attain.

– Encourage employees to take regular breaks for recovery to recharge their psychological batteries to fulfil their potential for creativity and productivity.

– happiness@work is not a flaky, happy- clappy new religion – it is a science.

– If you’re conscientious you’ll put in the hours, you will work hard at what you do but it may not make you happy. Engagement in isolation does not promote career and business success.

Give people the opportunity to raise issues that are important to them and to voice their perception that they are doing something worthwhile.

– Ask your people if they would be willing to recommend your organisation to a friend?

Gen X and Y people are likely to stay two years longer if they believe they are learning.

Let people do the work that puts them in “flow: – the feeling where the task is almost effortless and time passes by without them noticing.

– If your mind is dull you have no hope of impressing people in any situation. It doesn’t need a high IQ or reams of knowledge. All it needs is creativity, imagination and empathy.

– Life is something to be enjoyed and lived rather than a well of suffering to be endured on the way to better things.

– For 2400 years we have been obsessed with argument as a way of thinking. It has served us well but is ego driven and adversarial. When people think in parallel they look at the matter from the same point of view.

With final words of advice from Ricardo Semler, the CEO who leads the most unusual workplace with extraordinary financial success.

“The ostrich that buries its head in the sand has a bigger problem than limited vision; its rear end is an enormous target. It’s very simple – the repetition, boredom and aggravation that too many people accept as part of working can be replaces with joy, inspiration and freedom.”