Author: Dave Ulrich

Change happens. It is in the technology that makes our cell phones, Internet devices and our seemingly new products out of date. It is in the demographics of the diverse workforce as baby boomers learn to work aside Millennials. It is in changing global economic cycles with simultaneous growth in some markets and recession in others. It surrounds us.

Change matters. An executive recently said that a business that took 50 years to build could be lost in two if it does not change. Individuals, teams and organizations that change succeed; those that do not fall behind, unable to ever catch up. As a distinct organizational capability, change goes by many names: agility, cycle time, flexibility, responsiveness and transformation. Organizations that change respond to external demands, create higher intangible market value, implement strategies, plan for the future and create excitement among employees. Change means doing things faster, and so change enables. Instead of winning through innovation, customer service and globalization, leaders demand fast innovation, rapid customer service and swift globalization.

So what does the inevitability of change mean for HR professionals? Let me suggest three principles HR can implement to coach, design, deliver and facilitate change.

Principle 1:
Make the unspeakable speakable
    Anyone who has been in a relationship for a long period of time has discovered that without candid conversation, the parties turn away from each other instead of toward each other. This drift eventually widens and the relationship fades. To build a relationship, caring partners need to turn toward each other, which means they need to talk. They especially need to find ways to talk about the things they don’t want to talk about. They need to make the unspeakable speakable.

In almost every organization there are unspeakable viruses that limit successful change. These viruses are customs and norms that—without being talked about—shape how employees behave. In many cases, they hinder an organization’s ability to successfully change. In our work, we have identified over 30 such viruses (for a complete list of the viruses, visit www.rbl.net or e-mail me at dou@umich.edu). Here are some of them:

Activity mania: We like to be busy; our badge of honor is full calendars, even if it excludes thinking and results. We hide behind our “busyness.”

Have it my way: We don’t learn from each other, and the “not invented here” syndrome, in which outside ideas are devalued, rules the workplace.

False positive: We do “nice talk.” We are overly kind even if we disagree.

Authority ambiguity: In our organization, we are not sure who is responsible or accountable, so no one is.

Turfism: We defend our turf, sometimes to the detriment of the overall organization.

Over-changed, also known as the “full sponge”: We have a capacity problem. There are too many changes going on at once. We are burned out and stressed out on change. We cannot let things go.

Over-measure: We measure everything, even to a fault. Our dashboards are way too complex.

Under-measure: We don’t have indicators that track the important stuff. We measure what is easy, not what is right.

Going for the big win: We look for the mega change that will solve all problems instead of starting small.

When these viruses can be named, identified and talked about, they can be overcome. HR professionals can help their managers and teams detect and eradicate these viruses by daring to describe them, and then by having candid conversations about them so they don’t return.

We have found that new employees often see these viruses better than old employees do. When we visit a friend or family member, we more readily see the clutter in their house than they do themselves (and, unfortunately, vice versa). We have also found that teams can actually have fun naming, drawing and self-mocking the unspeakable change viruses that lurk in their organization. One team drew their most prevalent virus, and then posted these drawings in their offices until the virus went away.

Principle 2:
Turn what we know into what we do
    Those who have not seen me for five or six years almost always remark that I have lost a lot of weight. They want to know how I did it, and are surprised when I tell them that I have in fact discovered the secrets of losing weight (and hopefully sustaining the loss).

With bated breath, they listen to my secrets: “Eat less, eat right and exercise more.” As the reality of these “insights” sinks in, they are disappointed.

They have missed the point. The challenge of weight loss and other personal changes is not discovering a secret of what to do, but learning the discipline of doing it. Knowing what to do is much easier than actually doing it. In managing change in organizations, most leaders can accurately list within two minutes seven to 10 keys to successful change. In our work, my colleagues and I have identified a number of keys to successful change management, including:

Leadership: Have a strong leader who sponsors and champions the change by investing time and energy.

Need: Create a shared need so that the rationale for the change exceeds the resistance to the change (when people know the “why,” they accept the “what”).

Vision: Shape a future vision with direction, goals and behaviors.

Commitment: Engage and commit others to this vision by giving them information about the change and getting them to behave as if they are committed to the change.

Decisions: Build a decision protocol that segments the vision of tomorrow into decisions that are made today.

Systems: Institutionalize a change through wise investments in people, communication, rewards, information and data, and budget.

Measures: Monitor how the change is going so that learning and adaptation occur.

HR professionals help turn what we know into what we do by bringing the discipline of a change checklist to any project or initiative. Pilots, surgeons, merger specialists and fast-food restaurant managers find that the discipline of a checklist increases performance. An HR professional may regularly perform change audits by making sure that the key elements of successful change are diagnosed and implemented in a disciplined way.

When HR professionals use a change checklist within an organization, they can diagnose what investments should be made to make change happen. In many cases, this diagnostic can identify where not to invest change resources, since that one particular discipline is already sufficient for change, while other disciplines are in short supply. In one case, the first three dimensions (leadership, need and vision) scored high, but decision protocols and institutionalizing the change scored low. This team did not need to spend more time on discussing why the change should occur or what the outcome of the change was, but on how to make it happen. In another case, leaders scored high on the change disciplines, but employees did not.

HR professionals who do a change checklist make sure that knowledge about change is turned into action that delivers change.

Principle 3:
Make change a pattern, not an event
    Ultimately, change is not about a single incident, but about creating a new pattern. People sometimes ask me when I am going to go off my diet, which is a misguided question. It assumes that my weight loss is tied only to a diet, not a way of life.

In organizations, HR professionals help make change a way of life by seeing that it becomes assimilated into how work is done. Change is not something that happens in a workshop, team meeting or process review, but ­occurs naturally and continuously during all work activities. Creating a mind-set of change means that HR professionals model and encourage leaders to constantly learn, unlearn, improve and accept the inevitability of change.

A pattern means that a new culture is created. We have found that organizations are more likely to change their culture when they begin the culture discussion by focusing on customers outside the company and what the company wants to be known for by their best customers. The changes employees and organizations make inside can and should be clearly and directly linked to the expectations of customers. Change is not an idle hazing meant to distract employees, but a means of serving customers. When inside change links to external expectations, HR programs (staffing, training, compensation, communication) and leader behaviors occur because they deliver value to the marketplace. HR professionals who ensure that internal changes are linked to external expectations see change less as an event and more as a pattern or culture.

In our research on competencies for successful HR professionals, the ability to manage change and be a cultural steward were among the most critical differentiators for an effective HR professional. Change happens and it matters. By following these three principles, HR professionals can help employees discover the excitement and energy that change brings.

Workforce Management, June 9, 2008, p. 22-23 — Subscribe Now!

You can’t walk into a conference these days without bumping into a speaker who is trumpeting the value of building on your strengths. It’s easy to understand why this message resonates. From the time we start school, we are evaluated on our weaknesses. Most of us dread this. “Build on your strengths” sounds like one of those alternative schools where people played sports, painted or sang and danced all day instead of memorizing dates in history or taking pre-algebra. Who wouldn’t rather sing and dance or play sports?

    The logic of “build on your strengths” comes from outstanding work by Martin Seligman, who with his colleagues defined and shaped the field of positive psychology. Instead of focusing on what is wrong with individuals, they emphasize what is right. Instead of overcoming depression, they offer clients ways to find authentic happiness. Instead of diagnosing pathologies and overcoming them, they want to identify strengths and build on them. In Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, a 2004 book written with Christopher Peterson, Seligman and colleagues identified 24 generic strengths that individuals might possess in six domains:

    Wisdom and knowledge: the ability to acquire and use knowledge (creativity, curiosity, love of learning)

    Courage: the ability to accomplish goals in the face of opposition (persistence, vitality, integrity, bravery)

    Humanity: the ability to tend to and befriend others (kindness, social intelligence)

    Justice: the ability to experience a healthy community life (fairness, teamwork, social responsibility)

    Temperance: the ability to protect against excess (forgiveness, humility, self-control)

    Transcendence: the ability to connect to a larger universe and provide meaning (gratitude, hope, playfulness)

    A simple definition of a strength is that it’s something that we find easy, energizing and enjoyable. The authors’ premise is that when you do well in what you identify as a strength and capitalize on it—rather than trying to shore up your weaknesses—you will have more success and more positive experiences. You’ll find happiness. (You can take some of Seligman’s strengths tests here.)

    It is very hard to disagree with this logic. Marcus Buckingham and others have argued that discovering what we do well is a first step to lasting success. Leaders whose strengths are around creativity will be more successful in innovative organizations and work environments, for example.

    But building only on your strengths is not enough if those strengths do not create value for those you lead. In college, I majored in English. I developed a knack for reading novels. I could read two or three novels a week and found this easy, energizing and enjoyable. But what I have since found is that few people care about my strength of reading novels. What they really care about is my ability to analyze a situation in ways that help them reach their goals. Reading and interpreting good writing is a sustainable strength when it informs my ability to diagnose and help others work through their problems.

    According to the recent movie The Bucket List, the Egyptians believed that the gatekeepers of heaven ask new arrivals two questions about their lives on Earth: Did you find joy? Did you bring joy to others? The first question is about building on your strengths to find joy. It is necessary, but not sufficient. It is about the self, not others. The second question shifts the focus of joy to helping others find it. Put in terms of our strengths discussion, this means that we should build on our strengths that strengthen others.

    Leaders may strive to acquire strengths of authenticity, judgment, emotional intelligence, credibility and other noble attributes, but unless and until they apply these strengths in ways that create value for others, they have not been totally successful. Some in the strengths movement have missed the conclusion Seligman reached in his 2004 book, Authentic Happiness: “The meaningful life: using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.”

    For leaders, this means that it is not enough to do our work well. We must also use our strengths to deliver value to others. HR professionals who want to build on their strengths in order to strengthen others should consider the following:

    Focus on outcomes, not activities. It is tempting to focus on what HR does without fully considering what HR delivers, but it’s an incomplete goal. The outcomes of an HR activity might include employee morale, but could also be expanded to customers, investors and communities outside the organization. We have asked HR professionals to answer the query “so that …” to turn an activity into an outcome. For example: “We are investing in a performance appraisal (training, 360, communication or other HR process) so that … .” The answer to the “so that” query focuses on an outcome, not an activity. Outcomes are what we should be measuring.

    Help leaders define their results. Many leadership programs are filled with exercises and seminars meant to help leaders learn and grow as individuals. They can identify their strengths and build them. But unless and until those strengths help others, they are incomplete. My colleagues at the RBL Group and I have adapted a fantastic exercise from Marshall Goldsmith. In a workshop, we ask leaders to think about their personal strengths and what they want to improve to be better as leaders and as people. Then, we ask them to stand and talk to five to seven other people who can coach them about using those strengths to strengthen others. Suddenly the focus is not just on what they want to do better, but on how their personal improvements will help others do their own work better. HR professionals who coach leaders about behavioral change can direct those improved behaviors to improved results.

    Build a positive culture from the outside in. Most people acknowledge that companies have a culture, or way of doing things. This culture filters who joins the firm and how people act once they are in the firm. But often this culture is an inside-out view. It is defined as how we do things, our norms, our values, our expectations and our behaviors. By focusing on strengthening others, HR professionals can diagnose a culture against the standard of how it reflects desired outcomes by those outside the organization—customers and investors, for instance. HR professionals can ask leadership teams questions like: “What do we want to be known for by our best customers (or investors)?” By focusing on the strengths that others want to see in us, then translating those expectations into internal leadership and organization actions, we can make a culture an enduring source of value. Strengthening others affects not only the individual but the organization.

    Be a contributor by working with business leaders on their issues. HR competency models that focus exclusively on what the HR professional should know and do are insufficient. The real impact of HR professionalism comes when HR professionals turn their knowledge and skills into productivity for others. HR professionals should know the business so that they help their business leaders achieve financial and customer results. HR professionals should build innovative and integrated HR practices so that strategies turn from aspirations to actions. HR professionals should be credible activists so that they can help those they coach reach the results they desire.

    Develop HR professionals who are curious. In doing HR work, HR professionals should start by identifying their audience and what they want and need. This requires HR professionals who desire to learn first, then act. HR professionals should ask questions about what the business requires, about what leaders are accountable for, about what employees need, and about why customers select one provider over another. By asking these questions, HR professionals spend less time on what they are good at, and more time on what they can do to help others succeed. Curiosity means HR professionals begin their work by learning what others want rather than what they know. Strengthening others means good HR is less about what HR knows and more about how that knowledge affects others.

    Building on strengths that in turn strengthen others does not mean pandering. It does not mean you will say and do anything someone wants. It means having a clear sense of self. It means identifying, developing and investing in personal strengths without arrogance or compromise. But, it also means applying those strengths to the service of others.

    As the strength logic evolves and applies to HR, successful HR professionals might quietly say to themselves, “I am able to help someone accomplish what they need to do.” And that happened because they used their strengths to strengthen others.

Workforce Management, March 17, 2008, p. 28-29 — Subscribe Now!

Governance is a hot topic. At times, it refers to government regulation of corporate affairs (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley). More frequently, it refers to how an organization governs, or organizes, to make decisions. HR governance is about how the HR function is structured to deliver value.

    An HR structure must match the business structure. A holding company business structure would lead to a decentralized and dispersed HR organization. A single-business company would have an HR department organized by functions (staffing, training, rewards, organization design, etc.). But, since most large organizations diversify and operate with a multiple-business-unit structure, most HR departments are governed by more complex organization structures. Most large HR departments are emerging into five distinct roles and responsibilities, each with unique contributions.

Transactional work through service centers, e-HR and outsourcing
    HR departments increasingly are split into transactional work and transformational work. Transactional duties are standardized, routine and administrative, and are handled through service centers, e-HR and outsourcing. Transformational work, which is differentiated and strategic, is centered in embedded HR and HR centers of expertise.

    Service centers emerged in the late 1990s as HR leaders realized that many administrative tasks are more efficiently done in a centralized, standardized way. As one HR executive said, “If we move the HR work 400 yards, we might as well move it 3,000 miles.” Employees are increasingly willing to find answers to routine, standard questions through a service center, and technology enables these centers to access employees as well or better than other ways. Service centers enjoy econo mies of scale, enabling employee needs and concerns to be resolved by fewer dedicated HR resources. In addition, service centers require a standardization of HR processes, thus reducing redundancy and duplication. Service centers offer new ways to do traditional HR work like employee assistance programs, relocation administration, benefits claims processing, pension plan enrollment and administration, applicant tracking, payroll and learning administration.

    E-HR has gained use as technology enables employees to manage much of their own HR administrative work. They can access information on HR policy and usage, such as vacation days allotted and taken, retirement provisions such as 401(k) status, job or career opportunities and qualifications needed, and their own skill levels (via self-assessment surveys). They can also take care of many routine transactions whenever they wish, because automated systems don’t keep office hours. About 60 percent of employee HR questions or transactions can be answered online by employees themselves.

    Outsourcing draws on the premise that knowledge is an asset that need not be owned to be accessed. HR expertise can be shared across boundaries by means of alliances, where two or more firms get together to create a common service, or by outright purchase from vendors who specialize in offering it. Vendors take advantage of econ o mies of both knowledge and scale. Economy of knowledge allows them to keep up with the latest research on HR issues and with the latest technology, so as to offer transaction support that accesses the most recent ideas and is delivered in the most efficient way. Economies of scale make it possible to invest in facilities and technologies beyond what is realistic for a single company. Firms like Hewitt, Accenture and Towers Perrin are therefore able to offer bundles of HR services with the goal of moving client companies away from the traditional idea of outsourcing to multiple vendors—one for staff ing, another for training, another for compensation, and so on, all taking somewhat different approaches to their work.

Corporate HR
    HR professionals who perform corporate HR roles address six important areas of need within the emerging HR organization:

• They create a consistent culture face and identity to serve external stakeholders like customers, investors and communities.

  
  

• They shape the programs that implement the CEO’s agenda such as innovation, globalization or customization.

  
  

• They ensure that all HR work done within the corporation is aligned to business goals.

  
  

• They arbitrate disputes between centers of expertise and embedded HR.

  
  

• They take primary responsibility for nurturing corporate-level employees.

  
  

• They ensure HR professional development.

  
  

Embedded HR
    In complex organizations, some HR professionals work in organization units defined by geography, product line or function. These HR professionals, whom we call “embedded HR,” go by many titles: relationship manager, HR business partner, HR generalist. Whatever their specific title, they work directly with line managers and with the leadership team of an organizational unit to clarify strategy, perform organization audits, manage both the talent and the organization, deliver supportive HR strategies and lead their HR function.

• They engage in business strategy discussion, represent employee interests and explore the implications of change.

  
  

• They define requirements to reach business goals and identify where problems may exist.

  
  

• They select and implement the HR practices that are most appropriate to the delivery of the business strategy.

  
  

• Finally, they measure and track performance to see whether the HR investments made by the business deliver the intended value.

  
  

Centers of expertise
    The fourth HR role is the center of expertise. Centers of expertise operate as specialized consulting firms inside the organization.

    Depending on the size of the enterprise, they may be corporate-wide or regionally based—Europe, for example, or by country. They often act like businesses with multiple clients —the business units—using their services. In some cases, a fee for use or a “chargeback” formula plus an overhead charge for basic services may fund them. The financing of centers of expertise is sometimes set to recover costs, and in other cases is pegged at market prices. Typically, businesses are directed to go to the center by their embedded HR units before contracting for independent work from external vendors. If, in working with the center experts, the decision is made to go to outside vendors, the new knowledge provided by these vendors is then added to the menu for use throughout the enterprise. Center-of-expertise HR professionals play a number of important roles:

• They create service menus aligned with the capabilities driving business strategy.

  
  

• They diagnose needs and recommend services most appropriate to the situation.

  
  

• They collaborate with embedded HR professionals in selecting and implementing the right services.

  
  

• They create new menu offerings if the current offerings are insufficient.

  
  

• They manage the menu.

  
  

• They shepherd the learning community within the organization.

  
  

Operational executors
    A large number of HR departments have attempted to deliver all of the capabilities I’ve discussed here through service centers, centers of expertise and embedded HR. But many of these departments are finding that some work continues to fall through the cracks.

    While the embedded HR professionals are expected to be strategic and do organization diagnosis, they often find themselves overwhelmed by operational HR work that conflicts with their main purpose and renders them unable to make time to be strategic. They report that they spend a growing amount of time doing individual casework, such as handling disciplinary issues; performing operational tasks, such as setting up and attending recruiting interviews; doing analysis and reporting, such as managing compensation reviews; delivering initiatives, such as creating development experiences; implementing business initiatives, such as doing the analysis and execution for a new organization structure; or implementing initiatives from the centers of expertise.

    For example, Laurene Bentel, vice president of HR at Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, points out, “The operational demands on our HR generalists make it extremely hard for them to remain focused on their strategic agenda.”

    Service centers typically do not perform these operational tasks since they require personal attention. Centers of expertise do not do them since they usually require deep and unique knowledge of the business and strong internal business relationships. Line managers do not do them since they lack the technical expertise.

    Hence, embedded HR professionals feel drawn into this operational work by the volume of it, even when they have the skills and self-confidence to be more strategic and are encouraged to focus on their transformational role. It is also the case that these embedded HR professionals often come from an implementation background and lack the self-confidence and skills to comfortably play a more strategic role. For these individuals, the urgency (and comfort) of the operational present outweighs the importance (and developmental interest) of the more strategic future.

    Too often, HR professionals in centers of expertise offer insight and menus of choice, but they do not facilitate or act as partners in the operational implementation of these ideas. Service centers deal with administrative challenges, but they do not deal with implementation of new administrative systems and practices at the business level.

    What has been lacking in some HR restructurings is the capacity to deliver and implement the ideas from the center while maintaining focus on the business and its customers. While this work ideally occurs through an integrated team, someone needs to be in charge of this team and direct how it works. We are finding that companies are responding to these missing implementation requirements in different ways.

    One company established the role of “junior business partners” assigned to the HR generalists or business partners. These individuals would be required to turn the strategic ideas into operational practice within the business.

    Another company created a team of “HR operational consultants” who were assigned to a business to help turn the strategy into action. They were focused on project work with an emphasis on implementing specific projects within the business. The “consulting pool” had HR professionals who were gifted at making HR initiatives happen, and secondarily served as a preparatory and testing ground for individuals who are slated for senior embedded HR professional roles.

    A third company uses a case advisor who comes from the service center to follow through on employee requests.

    Each of these companies—as well as others—is experimenting with how to solve a common problem: making sure that HR plays a role in implementing the state-of-the-art strategies that are tailored to the needs of the business. My colleagues and I call this an “operational executor” role. These HR professionals will be required to meld what the business requires for success (driven by the embedded HR professionals) with innovative, state-of-the-art HR practices (driven by the centers of expertise) into an operational plan that can be executed in a timely way. This operational executor role will continue to become clearer as these HR professionals make sure that HR investments turn into capabilities that deliver on the vision and goals of HR.

Workforce Management, December 10, 2007, p. 40-44 — Subscribe Now!