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SA Continues to Face the Triple Challenge

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Chronic high unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Q & A with Professor Dave Ulrich – January 2014

Nicola Tyler, CEO of Business Results Group asks Dave Ulrich how South African HR  professionals should respond to the challenges of industrial action and widespread retrenchment.

NT: SA continues to face the triple challenge of chronic high unemployment, poverty and inequality. One of the biggest challenges facing HR professionals in South Africa has been large scale industrial action and resultant widespread retrenchment. What is your advice to HR professionals faced with these challenges?

DU: The challenges of unemployment, poverty, and inequality are complex and long term.  They will not have easy solutions, or they would have been done.  Industrial actions where employee’s anger results in unionization efforts is clearly understandable; then so is management’s reaction to squelch the employee reaction.  This leads to a vicious circle of employee vs. management action and reaction, then government gets involved as an arbitrator which sometimes only complicates the vicious circle.

Naively and ideally, the solutions to long term problems require a shift in mindset from individual to collective action.  Labour, management, government, and academia need to find ways to cooperate to build both an overall economy and organizations that win.  A rising economic tide will help both individual employees and organization managers succeed.  This requires a spirit of cooperation where both sides focus on solving shared problems more than receiving short term gains.  Mandela’s brilliant life and message of personal forgiveness needs to be translated to a country wide message of cooperation.  Cooperation comes when each party looks beyond short term self-interest to longer term shared interest and is willing to sacrifice some in the short term to create a long term gain.   This is not easy.

Such cooperation may begin within teams and divisions of large companies where HR professionals can be the facilitators between employees and managers to find common ground.   When HR knows the longer term business goals, customer requirements, and business strategy, they can help each group see that their long term shared interest are more important than short term self-interest.

In particular, when HR sits in on management meetings, they should make sure that the employee voice and point of view is shared and heard.  When HR visits with employees, they should ensure that management’s perspective is understood.  As a credible activist, HR professionals earn credibility with both employees and management by finding common ground and working together to make progress.

HR professionals can become the architect of talent, leadership, and culture that may help one leader at a time, one team at a time, one department at a time, and one organization at a time.  By so doing, HR professionals eventually build a groundswell of support for innovative ideas and practices.

Business Results Group and GIBS will be bringing Dave to South Africa to present his 13 milestones for HR to transcend the way the deliver measurable value to their organisations. In JHB on 27 May and Cape Town on 28 May. For further information visit www.theprogressconference.com.

Professor Dave Ulrich

Dave has consulted and done research with over half of the Fortune 200. His honours exude a consistent track record of global influence and authority in human resources and business management.  His research is based on collective feedback from over 60 000 line managers and HR professionals on the competencies required to improved business performance.

An accomplished and celebrated educator Dave is sought after the world over to present his findings and educate businesses. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 25 books which he has co-authored with numerous fellow thought leaders.

 

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

How Leaders Create Value Through Meaning

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By Prof Dave Ulrich (dou@umich.edu)

This morning, people all over the planet got out of bed and got ready for work.  Some headed out before dawn in high-end cars to claim high-rise offices with high-tech computers and high-brow clients.  Some headed out before dawn to walk barefoot, wares on their head, to claim a choice spot in the dirt near the entrance to the village market.  Some people wrestled with the muses to create artistic masterpieces or solve perplexing scientific problems.  Some wrestled with boredom to complete their shifts at cash registers, call centers, or assembly lines.  Some pitched their resumes in business suits, looking for good benefits and a sure path to comfortable retirement.  Some made their pitch in ragged jeans on street corners, looking for someone to rent their muscles for at least the day.

Some people in every one of these and many other categories by which we could define work found abundance – meaning, purpose, even delight in their labor today. Other people in every category found world-weary tedium, frustration, and a sense of despair.

Which were you?

Which were the people you work with?

People find abundance or meaning in many settings – in the privacy of our homes and the expanses of nature, in churches, ballparks, and community centers, in family and friendship circles.  But work takes the lion’s share of our time and our energy.  We spend more time at work than at play, at family gatherings, at religious meetings, or at hobbies.  The organizations in which we labor are thus a primary setting for not only accomplishing assignments but for finding an abiding sense of abundance or meaning in life.  Work is a universal setting in which to fulfill our universal search for meaning.

We describe this as a meaning-making, value-creating, hope-building process for individual employees and for the leaders who coordinate their efforts.  In doing so we hope to structure the private conversations and inform the corporate decisions that shift deficit-driven thinking toward abundance at work.  Meaning or abundance is not only a prerogative for rich people, smart people, prestigious people, successful people.  Meaning or abundance is not only in short supply for poor people, mediocre people, struggling people, hurting people.  Great leaders recognize the vital importance of the search for meaning or abundance to everyone in their organization.  Including themselves.

Leaders have the task of creating a vision for their organizations that is charged with meaning – that resonates with not only the minds and hands but the hearts of those they lead.  Ultimately the crisis of meaning is always becomes a crisis of leadership.

Leaders must not only understand and experience but also institutionalize the creation of meaning at work.

This discussion provokes the following questions:

– How does employee meaning affect business results and leads to important business outcomes of customer service, investor results, and strategy execution.

– What is the role of the leader in creating employee meaning?  What is a clear definition of how leaders can and should create personal meaning in the workplace?

– How can leaders making meaning happen for employees?

– How can meaning be institutionalized in the workplace?  How do HR practices secure and sustain organization results?

Leaders need to move beyond statements about “employees are our most important asset” to showing why employee meaning leads to business results and how to make meaning happen.

How leaders create value through meaning

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By Prof Dave Ulrich (dou@umich.edu)

This morning, people all over the planet got out of bed and got ready for work.  Some headed out before dawn in high-end cars to claim high-rise offices with high-tech computers and high-brow clients.  Some headed out before dawn to walk barefoot, wares on their head, to claim a choice spot in the dirt near the entrance to the village market.  Some people wrestled with the muses to create artistic masterpieces or solve perplexing scientific problems.  Some wrestled with boredom to complete their shifts at cash registers, call centers, or assembly lines.  Some pitched their resumes in business suits, looking for good benefits and a sure path to comfortable retirement.  Some made their pitch in ragged jeans on street corners, looking for someone to rent their muscles for at least the day.

 

Some people in every one of these and many other categories by which we could define work found abundance – meaning, purpose, even delight in their labor today. Other people in every category found world-weary tedium, frustration, and a sense of despair.

 

Which were you?

 

Which were the people you work with?

 

People find abundance or meaning in many settings – in the privacy of our homes and the expanses of nature, in churches, ballparks, and community centers, in family and friendship circles.  But work takes the lion’s share of our time and our energy.  We spend more time at work than at play, at family gatherings, at religious meetings, or at hobbies.  The organizations in which we labor are thus a primary setting for not only accomplishing assignments but for finding an abiding sense of abundance or meaning in life.  Work is a universal setting in which to fulfill our universal search for meaning.

 

We describe this as a meaning-making, value-creating, hope-building process for individual employees and for the leaders who coordinate their efforts.  In doing so we hope to structure the private conversations and inform the corporate decisions that shift deficit-driven thinking toward abundance at work.  Meaning or abundance is not only a prerogative for rich people, smart people, prestigious people, successful people.  Meaning or abundance is not only in short supply for poor people, mediocre people, struggling people, hurting people.  Great leaders recognize the vital importance of the search for meaning or abundance to everyone in their organization.  Including themselves.

 

Leaders have the task of creating a vision for their organizations that is charged with meaning – that resonates with not only the minds and hands but the hearts of those they lead.  Ultimately the crisis of meaning is always becomes a crisis of leadership.

 

Leaders must not only understand and experience but also institutionalize the creation of meaning at work.

 

This discussion provokes the following questions:

– How does employee meaning affect business results and leads to important business outcomes of customer service, investor results, and strategy execution.

– What is the role of the leader in creating employee meaning?  What is a clear definition of how leaders can and should create personal meaning in the workplace?

– How can leaders making meaning happen for employees?

– How can meaning be institutionalized in the workplace?  How do HR practices secure and sustain organization results?

 

Leaders need to move beyond statements about “employees are our most important asset” to showing why employee meaning leads to business results and how to make meaning happen.