Author: Shari Caudron

It’s Thursday morning, March 23, and I’ll be spending the day at the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, one of 23 prison facilities managed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. As I back my car out the driveway, I notice tulips and daffodils starting to push their fresh green tips through the hard-crust dirt of my neighbor’s yard. It snowed earlier in the week, but the snow has melted and the sun is now shining with the kind of bright-chrome brilliance Colorado is famous for. It’s the kind of spring day that makes you believe in God, and glad you haven’t committed any felonies. Not that I ordinarily spend time obsessing about breaking the law, but today, I’ll be talking to people whose jobs are to manage the flow of inmates through the state’s prison system. Crime is on my mind.

I’m eager to talk to these people because I can’t imagine a less enticing place to work than a prison, especially on a day like this. Like many Americans who vote, recycle, and go to bed at the same time each night, when I think of prisons I envision beer-bellied Southern guards and tin cups clanging across metal bars. Prison is a place bad people are sent. It’s not the kind of place where you’d willingly spend time.

How does the Department of Corrections keep its prisons staffed in an economy where fast-food workers are making $10 an hour? I’ll spend the next six hours trying to find out. The Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center is a 400-bed maximum-security compound located on treeless, high-desert ground in east Denver. Here, all newly sentenced inmates run through a battery of physical, psychological, and vocational assessments before being assigned to a regular prison to serve their time. Diabetics may be sent to one facility. Schizophrenics may go to another. But the goal of the center is not just to recognize physical needs and mental disorders. It’s also to identify and recommend education and training programs for each offender.

Unlike penitentiaries where prisoners are sent to do penance — to think about what they’ve done wrong — the Colorado system appears to take its goal of corrections very seriously. Inmates may enter the system as twitchy little car thieves in orange jumpsuits, but if the state has its way, upon release they’ll be ready for work in such respectable jobs as check-out clerk, highway worker, or computer technician.

It’s the job of employees at the DRDC, which processes 35 new inmates a day, to determine the best way of correcting these offenders.

Upon arriving at the center, I park facing a two-story metal fence topped with coiled razor wire and enter the glass-and-cinder-block reception office. Behind the counter is a sign alerting visitors that no glass, Corning Ware, tin foil, or metal utensils are allowed. Corning Ware? I wonder what they do with that.

After exchanging my driver’s license for a plastic security badge, a tall, fair-skinned young guard marches me through a metal detector and two locked gates, and deposits me in the prison’s administrative offices to wait for Al Weber, my host for the day. Al is a personnel manager for the Department of Corrections. Although he works from the department’s central office in Colorado Springs, about 90 miles south, he is here today to conduct a “personnel assistance visit.” These visits, which began five years ago when the DOC centralized its personnel function, give Al the opportunity to answer human resources questions and see if any workplace issues need his attention. At this point, I’m assuming prisons are brimming with employment issues.

Al arrives, offering me a broad grin and a firm, warm handshake. He reminds me of the actor Brian Dennehy — granted, a nicer-looking and friendlier version of Brian Dennehy — but he has the same silver hair and firm, barrel-chested presence. I like him immediately. He offers me a tour and I accept eagerly.

Being self-employed, I like to play this little game whenever I visit a new workplace. It’s called, “Could I work here?” If my throat constricts and I begin to visualize employees pacing their cubicles like tawny zoo lions, I win and vow to keep my work situation as is. I’ve been playing this game for 16 years and I still file a Schedule C, which may provide some indication how I feel about most work environments. This one will be no different, I’m sure.
I straighten my jacket, follow Al, and start playing my game.

First, we meet Dawn Hausner, an eager 20-something with straight brown hair who manages the inmate phone system. Now, I’ve met people who are born actors or born politicians, but this is the first time I can recall meeting someone who is a born inmate-phone-system operator. Dawn swoops up a stack of phone logs and describes to me in great, fluttering detail how many numbers each inmate is allowed, how often they make calls, and how darn crafty they can be. “We catch ’em trying to arrange drug deals while in prison,” she laughs. “You have to watch ’em every minute.” I nod gravely as if this is the kind of thing I know all too well.

We leave Dawn happily arranging forms on her desk and come to Ramona Toomey’s office. Ramona manages a sundry array of personnel duties at the facility. She’s calmer than Dawn, and we have a very adult conversation about the state’s prison system. I learn there are approximately 15,000 incarcerated inmates in Colorado and 5,000 more in community corrections. To manage these offenders, the DOC staffs more than 6,000 employees, two-thirds of whom are “blue suits.”

“Are these the guards?” I ask hopefully, looking for a way to segue into a discussion about the dank interior of prison life.

“We never use that term,” Ramona admonishes. “We call them ‘correctional officers.’ We’re working hard to overcome the stereotype of the brutal prison guard made famous by Hollywood.”

In addition to the guards — or officers — the DOC staffs people in more than 200 occupations, including chefs, electricians, doctors, dentists, nurses, clerical workers, psychologists, and laundry personnel. “It’s like staffing a small city,” Al explains.

I find this all very interesting, but because I’m playing the could-I-work-here game I urge Ramona to tell me what it’s really like to work in a prison. I want to hear about grit and fear and evil.

“I like it,” she says simply. “I’ve been given a lot of opportunity. Most people associate prisons with what they see on TV, but it’s not really like that. It’s actually a very relaxed working environment.”
I’m skeptical, but her boss is standing nearby.

We leave Ramona’s office and Al introduces me to a string of office workers, including a personnel liaison, the plant manager, an office manager, and the warden. They talk breathlessly about their jobs. They press business cards into my hand, flip open newsletters, point to articles, and arrange for me to view a Power Point presentation on the facility. They tell me how long they’ve worked for the DOC, surprising even themselves with the statistics. Six years! Nine years! “Over 20, if you can believe it!” They laugh at each other’s jokes and urge each other to tell me stories.

Listening, I start to sense that the DRDC doesn’t get many visitors who aren’t in handcuffs. Any minute now, I just know I’ll be handed a paper plate and told to help myself to the cupcakes and Jell-O salad in the lunchroom. This isn’t at all what I expected.

My face must give me away because Al starts reciting some amazing statistics. The employee turnover rate here is between 6 and 7 percent annually, making the workforce at the Colorado Department of Corrections the most stable of all prison systems in the country. Furthermore, the level of absenteeism is the lowest of all state agencies, including the parks and recreation, housing, and transportation departments.

The low turnover and lack of absenteeism is remarkable on its own, even more so when you consider the phenomenal growth the department has experienced. Over the last five years, the number of employees has swelled from 3,500 to over 6,000. During the same time period, the inmate population has grown by 43 percent due to tougher sentencing laws.

I’m intrigued, and as Al leads me out of the offices toward the jail cells, I wonder aloud what it is that makes people want to work here. “I’ll introduce you to some folks,” he smiles. “You can ask them yourself.”

First, we meet Larry Jenkins, kitchen supervisor, a squat 57-year-old recently hired by the department. “The DOC doesn’t care about my age,” he says, while proudly showing me the facility’s glistening stainless steel and white tile kitchen. “Here, I’ll qualify for retirement in five years, and the state has a good pension plan.”

As Larry talks, I notice several women in yellow jumpsuits quietly placing fried fish patties on aluminum trays. First, I think they are food-service employees. Then it dawns on me that they are prisoners, and I catch myself thinking how normal they look.

“What is it like managing inmate employees?” I ask.”Interesting,” he says, “but not all that different from managing employees in any other restaurant. Of course, you have to keep the male and female prisoners apart. Otherwise, they start acting like junior high students.”

Next we meet with Peter Salus, a correctional officer who works in one of the inmate housing units, which, by the way, have no bars — only inch-thick layered glass. I’m struck by how small Peter is. I’m 5-foot-8 and I’m looking down at this slight, dark-haired man in the blue suit. There goes my image of brawny guards. A 14-year veteran of the department, Peter tells me what he likes best about his job.

“Inmate behavior is fascinating,” he says. “They have their own priorities and value system.” Intrigued, I ask him to describe a typical inmate’s values. “Mail and personal visits are important, and you don’t dare mess with their personal property. Even a little thing like a bottle of shampoo is a big deal.”
I nod, thinking how much my shampoo matters to me.
“The other thing I like about working here is that I never take my work home with me,” he says. This is something few people I know can say with a straight face.
“Do you find the environment stressful?” I ask. “Yeah, but you get used to it, and things don’t come up too often. In the last four months I’ve only had to use force once with an inmate. They’re pretty relaxed here.”
Relaxed? In prison?

As the day progresses, employee after employee confirms that prisoners here are relatively content, all things considered. Why?

“Because we treat them with respect and dignity,” says one officer. “They have better food and medical care here than they do on the outside,” says another. “The facilities are nice, the cells are clean, and each inmate has a window and running water. Because they are happy, they don’t give us any trouble.”

I don’t know about other prisons in the state, but I have to agree if you’re going to be incarcerated, this particular facility doesn’t seem that terrible. Take away the cameras, barbed wire, and brick guard tower, and the DRDC looks a lot like a college dorm wrapped around a green-grass quad.

Even the director of the medical clinic, another 14-year veteran of the department, talks about her job enthusiastically. “I feel much safer here than I would at a city hospital,” she says, standing in a windowless office surrounded by bales of stacked paper. “Here, the inmates are dried up, cleaned up, and have to check their weapons at the door.”

It’s now about 2:30, and as Al and I head toward the exit, two officers stop him to chat. This has been happening all day, not because employees have problems to discuss, but because Al, himself a former correctional officer and 20-year DOC veteran, is like an old friend. In fact, at one point an effusive black woman with tiny perfect braids and clothing the color of rainbows ran up to Al and hugged him as if she were eight and he was the Easter Bunny. I don’t know many personnel professionals who provoke that kind of unrestrained joy in employees.

As Al talks to the officers, I stand to wait for him near six orange-clad inmates who are lined up along a sunny brick wall waiting to get inside the medical center. They are not handcuffed. There is no guard keeping them in line. And surprisingly, I’m not afraid. One of them looks at me, looks at Al, looks back at me and asks earnestly, “Is he the warden?”
“No,” I quickly reply. “He’s the human resources manager.”
“Ah,” nods the inmate knowingly. “Human resources for us,” he asks pointing toward his chest, “or for them?” pointing toward a group of employees.
“For them,” I say, silently amused by the thought of HR programs for prisoners; like they need to worry about compensation and benefits programs.

But as I think about what he said, I realize that human resource management in a prison is all about the human resources here. And in a weird sort of way, the prison environment provides a great lesson on how HR should work in any organization. Treat people well, they won’t cause problems. Give them a nice environment, they won’t act up. Develop their skills, they’ll become more valuable citizens.

Driving home, I realize how wrong I’d been about working in a prison. The prison environment is really no more or less remarkable than any other workplace — with one key exception. The employees here don’t convey the caged-lion sense of entrapment I get from employees in many of the other workplaces
I visit. How ironic.

Yesterday, I attended a memorial service for abillionaire. It was my first. I don’t normally travel in such circles.Maybe you’ve heard of this billionaire. His name was Bill Daniels andhe’s known in business circles as the father of cable television — his firmis credited with developing more than 50 of the biggest cable companies in theUnited States. But among the 2,000 people who gathered yesterday in his honor,Daniels wasn’t remembered for his business acumen. He was lauded for being“a good boy.”

    Yes, it’s an odd term todescribe someone who had been married several times, who fought — andeventually won — a decades-long battle with alcohol abuse, and whose languagesounded more like a dock worker’s than a high-tech executive’s.

    But Daniels, in the tearfulwords of his employees, family members, business partners and colleagues, wasthe kind of man who comes along once in a lifetime. Countless mourners worebuttons that said: “Bill Daniels touched my heart.” How many corporateexecutives can you say that about? 

“Good” doesn’t always mean “nice”
    What was it that made Mr.Daniels such a good boy — the kind of boy that caused employees to weep openlyat his funeral? It wasn’t that he was always nice. Daniels could actually bequite demanding.

    He expected employees to keeptheir desks clean, dress well, be supremely punctual, and whenever possible buyAmerican and vote Republican. No, Daniels wasn’t concerned with being liked asmuch as he was concerned with being ethical and doing the right thing for otherpeople.

    When the Utah Stars, abasketball team he owned, was forced to declare bankruptcy, Daniels saw thatevery season ticketholder was paid back, with interest, even though it wasn’tlegally required. When friends had financial problems he would leave unmarkedenvelopes full of cash at their doors before speeding off. “Drive-bygiving,” his stepdaughter called it.

    At his memorial service,stories were told of employees who received airplane tickets to visit sickfamily members, clothing for an important event, and rent money during hardtimes. He even paid for plastic surgery for a receptionist who was veryself-conscious because of an eye disorder.

    Yes, Bill Daniels had themoney to change people’s lives. But it was Daniels’ ability to inspireloyalty and help others realize their potential that made this man so memorable.As I listened to the tributes, it dawned on me that effective leadership isn’tabout being nice, in the way that realtors and Avon Ladies are nice. As BillDaniels demonstrated, leaders can be tough, demanding and even irrationallyneat, and people will still respect and admire them — as long as those leadershave the best interests of people in mind. 

Leaving a legacy of goodness
   I never knew Bill Daniels. I attended hismemorial service because I’ve been doing work with the Daniels Fund, thecharitable foundation that will inherit the lion’s share of his billion-dollarestate. But as I thought about his legacy, I thought about people in my lifewho’ve been tough but good to me. My favorite college professor was also themost intimidating. My favorite boss is also the one who fired me. My favoriteeditor regularly challenged me to find my own voice — and to rewrite piecesuntil that voice was apparent.

    There’s a lot of talk today about how to makemanagers more effective. In fact, this month’s cover story deals with thatvery topic. But I have to wonder if we’d really need all the business books,workshops and high-priced consultants to tell us how to cultivate trust andinspire loyalty if only we had more role models like Bill Daniels.

    Maybe what the workplace needs is not moremanagement development initiatives, but just a few more good boys and good girlswho make decisions based on a solid sense of what is right and wrong for thepeople involved. Is this too simplistic? Probably. But I also firmly believe wedon’t have to make things hard to make things right.

    The next time you’re facing a tough businessdecision, think how you would like be remembered at your funeral and actaccordingly. Chances are, Bill Daniels would have agreed with you.

Workforce, May 2000, Vol 79,No 5, p. 18 SubscribeNow!

One of the biggest challenges that organizations face is that while CEOs are sold on learning, they’re skeptical,” explains John W. Humphrey, chairman of The Forum Corporation, an international learning company based in Boston. “They’re not seeing a link between training and business performance.”

The training profession has done a remarkable job in recent years of educating businesspeople about the benefits of ongoing employee development. Today, we read with some regularity about the correlation between workforce education and innovation, recruitment, retention, job satisfaction, and even sales and gross profits.

Chuck Rabin, vice chairman of The Delta Consulting Group, based in San Francisco, agrees. “Most executives look at traditional training and assume that new skills and knowledge will be developed, that training will be aligned with business objectives and that employees will be able to transfer what they’ve learned to their jobs,” he says. “Unfortunately, these assumptions don’t always prove true.”

By all indicators, employee education has arrived and business leaders now understand that ongoing learning is a vital contributor to success. But although corporate executives seem to like learning, they’re not big fans of training.

If trainers and HRD professionals are to capitalize on the growing wave of support for learning, they have to understand why the training function has lost respect and what needs to be done about it. By necessity, the trainers of tomorrow will have to act very differently than they have in the past.

The problem defined.
To understand how the training function needs to reinvent itself going forward, you need to understand what’s currently wrong with it. Simply stated, training—on its own—doesn’t work enough of the time.

In 1992, Chicago-based consulting company A.T. Kearney estimated that 80 percent of all workplace training is lost and never used back on the job. “These numbers haven’t changed much since then,” explains Ed Gordon, president of Imperial Consulting Co. based in Oaklawn, Illinois, and author of “Skill Wars: Winning the Battle for Productivity and Profit” (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000). The money wasted on training is due to several factors.

First, trainers have done a poor job showing the impact of training on the bottom line. This is because trainers tend to focus more on inputs, which are the types of training courses that are delivered, more than they do on outputs, which are the business results of training. According to the 1999 State of the Industry Report prepared by the American Society for Training and Development, a scant 15 percent of training courses are ever evaluated based on business results.

Instead, the most popular evaluation method remains the reaction of participants. But just because someone liked a training course doesn’t mean it enhanced that person’s performance back on the job. “Senior line managers are focused on business needs and outcomes, and they want trainers to be focused on the same things,” Humphrey says.

The second problem with training as it currently exists is that many trainers and organizational development professionals tend to compartmentalize themselves by content area, be it sales training, leadership skills or time management. But complex organizational issues cannot be solved by singular content-based solutions. “We end up with a continual mismatch,” Humphrey says. “We keep trying to put a round content peg into a square issue hole.” This is not only true of in-house trainers, but also of external suppliers.

A third problem is that the training function often operates in isolation. “A lot of training organizations are sitting in the corner of the HR group offering individual skills courses out of a catalog and never getting involved with the company’s core mission,” says Dan Tobin, dean of Getronics Virtual University in Billerica, Massachusetts, and author of “The Knowledge-Enabled Organization” (AMACOM, 1998). “If you don’t understand what the company is doing, how can you support it?” he asks.

To be fair, many trainers are grappling with these issues and trying to make significant changes in the way training is delivered. In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of corporate universities, just-in-time training, distance learning, technology-based solutions and a shift in focus from skills to competency-based training. But these are all tactical solutions to training inefficiency. If corporate trainers are to capitalize on the growing receptivity to corporate learning, they have to seriously rethink the entire way training is structured and delivered.

Move to a new training model.
While there’s no single, best-practices model that exists for how to transform corporate training, training strategists agree on one overriding principle: Training must be run like a business.

“You must start by understanding the business issue, not the training need, then bring back a learning solution which may or may not involve training,” explains Edward A. Trolley, senior vice president of The Forum Corporation, and co-author of the book, “Running Training Like A Business” (Berrett Koehler Publishers, 1999).

Everything training does has to become more effective and efficient, he adds. Being effective means delivering training services that tangibly help businesses to achieve their goals. Being efficient means making the true costs of training clearly evident and highly acceptable.

“When trainers operate like businesspeople, their mission becomes unashamedly economic,” Trolley says. “Education is still what training does. But business education is a means to business results, not an end in itself. [Furthermore], training organizations that run like a business aren’t allocated a corporate budget. They in effect sell their services every day, as does any business enterprise. The survival of this training enterprise, therefore, rests on its ability to address strongly felt customer needs.”

So how do trainers begin to make this strategic shift? How do they become trainers of tomorrow who lead their companies forward into a perpetually changing business landscape?

Here are a few guidelines:

1. Link training objectives to business strategy.
Several years ago, Dan Tobin was asked to help trainers at an international technology company develop an employee development guide for managers.

“They wanted my input on how to structure an efficient employee development process,” he explains. “I asked them for a copy of the annual report, a listing of the three top objectives of each of the business units, and for copies of customer brochures. The training managers told me they didn’t have access to ‘that kind of stuff.’”

Recalling the situation, Tobin laughs incredulously. “There’s no way you can create effective training programs unless you understand the corporate strategy,” he says.

Not only will tomorrow’s trainers have to understand specific business objectives, but they’ll also be charged with making sure everyone else in a company is pointed in the same direction.

2. Address the corporate culture.
To create long-lasting organizational change trainers can’t ignore the influence of corporate culture.

According to William F. Brendler, president and founder of ebusiness-erm.com and Brendler Associates Inc. in Houston, Texas, one of the common mistakes companies make in trying to create learning organizations is to think that a few training programs and proclamations about empowerment, self-direction and risk taking are all that are necessary.

“All the training programs in the world will be ineffective unless you first address cultural barriers to learning, such as fear, blame, reluctance to take responsibility, self-justification and so on,” he says. Why? Because corporate culture supports the emotional process of learning.

“If I’m going to teach you how to work in a team and teamwork isn’t the cultural norm, the training will be wasted. For any training to be effective, you have to confront the culture.” Because of this, the ability to diagnose, understand and address cultural issues will become a key competency for trainers in the new millennium.

3. Focus on outcomes.
Prior to developing any learning initiative, trainers must focus on business results. Humphrey calls this “results contracting.” “Let’s be clear about what we’re trying to accomplish and what outcomes we want,” he says. Is it better customer service? Higher telephone sales? State-of-the-art technical knowledge? How will we know we’ve achieved these things? You can’t possibly develop successful learning activities until you know the outcomes you seek and the how those outcomes will be measured.

4. De-emphasize training.
One of the problems many trainers face in making the strategic shift to performance consultants is that they’re heavily invested in the learning methodologies they grew up with, which tend to be face-to-face classroom instruction. But traditional training is only one way of teaching. In reality, a lot of learning occurs very naturally on the job through team meetings, conversations with the boss, self-study, conference calls, reading of industry magazines, etc.

“Trainers have to begin to take advantage of the naturally occurring predispositions to learning,” Humphrey says. “If you can embed learning into the core business processes, you’ve gone a long way toward making the learning more appropriate, comfortable and memorable.”

While embedded learning is happening to some extent—electronic performance support systems are a prime example—tomorrow’s trainers will simply have to learn to more about all the various ways people learn on the job and focus their learning activities to those natural proclivities. Instructor-led classroom training—which currently accounts for a whopping 78 percent of all learning methods—will have to be minimized.

5. Allow employees time to process what they’ve learned.
If you were to ask trainers in 10 companies what attributes their companies currently seek in employees, chances are at least eight of them would respond with words like innovation, creativity and critical thinking. This isn’t too surprising for a knowledge economy, because a company’s only sustainable competitive advantage comes from the knowledge and talents of workers. However, while you can teach the tools of creative problem solving and critical thinking, these higher-level thought processes require time to develop.

For this reason, part of every trainer’s future challenge will be to find a way to create more time for employees to process information, gain understanding and draw relevant and creative conclusions. “In the Information Age, information isn’t hard to come by,” says Gordon. “It’s knowledge and wisdom that take time. Because of this, I predict that within the next decade, the world standard for workforce education will be one month per year per employee.”

6. Demand the same strategic shift from your training suppliers.
When we talk about reinventing learning, we’re not just talking about changing the practices inside of companies. The entire learning industry—including external providers—must learn to focus on strategic business objectives. “Right now, the value chain in this industry is so sloppy that we could probably take 20 percent to 30 percent of the costs out of training and still improve quality,” Humphrey says.

Granted, there are some suppliers that understand the importance of focusing on strategy, culture and outcomes. Educational Discoveries Inc., a Provant company based in Boulder, Colorado, uses an “accelerated learning” model that takes business context and objectives as the starting points for developing highly customized training programs. NETg, based in Naperville, Illinois, works with divisions of Drake Beam Morin to help clients articulate their business needs, set expectations, and design implementation plans.

But companies like this are in the minority. Vendors, like many trainers, still tend focus more heavily on selling their products—be it communication skills training or online learning programs—than selling solutions. Part of the internal trainers’ ongoing challenge will be putting pressure on vendors to also focus on results contracting.

Be active in dealing with ROI.
Though one of the most vexing issues facing the training industry is the problem of calculating return on investment, the whole issue can be minimized if trainers follow the above guidelines and become more strategic in their approach.

“I call this the fallacy of ROI,” says Tobin. “If a training organization ties everything it does to specific business objectives, trainers will never be asked to do an ROI calculation because their programs will have built-in importance.” Brendler adds, “The process of measuring ROI becomes clearer when everything is aligned around business objectives.”

Because of this, a final mindshift that must occur for trainers is not to focus so much attention on calculating returns after the fact. Instead, worry about how to build in relevance up front. Let business strategy, culture and outcomes determine your learning needs, and then create learning opportunities that make sense for your particular group of employees.

Yes, business leaders want more employee education and learning. Will you be able to deliver?

First thing in the morning, you go for a run wearing Nike athletic shoes. You shower and dress for work in a Ralph Lauren jacket. You drive to the office in a new Lexus, and stop along the way for a tall, double-skinny latté at Starbucks.

These aren t mere shoes, clothes, cars and coffee we re talking about. These are brands, and chances are you ve chosen them not only because they meet your basic requirements for clothing, transportation and sustenance, but also because the brands promise a certain quality and style that you ve come to rely upon.

In an overcrowded marketplace, companies like Nike, Lexus and Ralph Lauren understand the importance of brand identity. That s why they spend millions of dollars to develop and communicate to customers who and what their brands stand for. Think about it: Marlboro stands for rugged individualism. Rolex stands for quality. And McDonald s stands for cleanliness, consistency and quick service.

Now, take a moment and think about human resources in your company as if it were a brand. What does your HR organization stand for? What have your customers come to expect from HR? When HR is mentioned, do managers picture savvy strategists, backward bureaucrats or pleasant people-pleasers?

Granted, it may sound like a bit of a stretch to think of HR as a brand to be developed. But the fact is, in many companies the HR brand is suffering from a poor image and reputation. “Rarely has human resources made a stand as to what their brand image is,” explains David Roberts, vice president of Kuczmarksi and Associates, a branding and marketing strategies company based in Chicago. “Instead of taking the time to define who they are, what they stand for and how they accomplish their mission, the HR department often does things a certain way simply because it s their job.”

Because of this attitude, the internal reputation of many HR departments is tarnished, particularly in comparison to other departments. For instance, marketing is often regarded as a high-value Mercedes, or finance might be viewed as a reliable Honda. Too often, HR is seen as a state-manufactured Yugo; it does what the customer wants—most of the time—but it isn t always reliable or fun to drive.

If you want your organization to be perceived as more strategic, more valuable, more reliable, more whatever, you need to start thinking about what customers want from you, how well you deliver it, and how to improve your overall brand image. This isn t just about fancy packaging, catchy slogans and name changes, either. Managers and employees will see right through surface-level improvements. This is about thinking like a business with a product to be developed, marketed and reliably delivered to customers who want your services.

Why should an internal function with built-in customers care about their brand identity, you ask? After all, selling HR services to employees isn t the same thing as selling khakis to teenagers, is it?

Actually, in a way it is. As companies continue to streamline and outsource non-value-added activities, HR is facing competition on many fronts from outside vendors. If corporate HR people don t work to shore up the profession s overall image and reputation, they ll increasingly lose business to companies that understand what customer service and accountability are all about.

If you have any doubt about this, just take a look at all the brand names that are eager to steal business from inside your department. Kelly Services—”Look what we do now”—would love to handle all your staffing requirements. Achieve Global—”Learning that works”—will gladly take over training and development. There are even comprehensive local HR service firms like Bewley & Associates in Denver that will gladly help you “Unload your HR worries.” For corporate HR professionals to retain their competitive edge, they must start thinking of themselves as brands to be marketed.

To help you get started, Workforce talked to some heavy hitters in the field of brand development, including companies that have worked on such notable brands as Microsoft, Coors, Rubbermaid, IBM and Whirlpool. Because brands involve image and public perception, we also talked to public-relations specialists, and media and speech consultants.

We asked these people how human resources could go about changing its brand identity from reactive to proactive, from tactical to strategic, from conservative to innovative, from “people people” to “business people,” and from a cost center to a corporate contributor to the bottom line. On the basis of their input, we ve been able to develop the following “HR Brand Development Process.” This process roughly follows the same steps that all brand name companies go through in building and enhancing their own image and reputation.

1. Identify your customer s needs and perceptions.
The first step in creating or enhancing a brand identity is to determine who your customers are, what they need and how they currently perceive you. Are your primary customers upper managers, line managers or the entire workforce? What products and services do they use from HR? What would they like from HR? Do they use any HR services from outside vendors, and if so, why? How do they perceive the internal HR department? Asking questions of your customers isn t only a way of identifying new business opportunities, but also a way to find out how to improve your current line-up of products and services.

To get truthful and useful information, it may be worthwhile to hire an outside specialist to conduct these interviews in private. Employees are more likely to state their true feelings about HR if they are guaranteed anonymity, and don t have to share their opinions in front of peers and co-workers.

It s important to start with this kind of gap analysis because, in today s companies, there are so many ideas about what HR is, explains David Redhill, executive director of global communications for Landor Associates, a global branding and design consultancy based in San Francisco.

“When one thinks of human resources, they think of training, recruitment, personal welfare, salary and bonus, the corporate environment, and a whole range of concerns which can make brand development trickier,” he says. “But this isn t an unusual branding problem. Companies often start selling one product or service and then expand into other areas. They acquire and divest other companies, get into new technology, converge into new product areas and pretty soon they ve outgrown their brand.”

Similarly, HR now encompasses so many different activities that it s hard for internal customers to know exactly what HR is all about. To begin to fix this, HR professionals must research their current brand to figure out where they stand.

2. Craft an identity based on customer needs.
Once you determine the needs and current perceptions of your existing customers, you can begin to decide how you would like the HR department to be perceived.

“All HR departments wish they could be strategic,” Roberts says. “They all want to be the Hewitt Associates HR function.” But this may not be the most appropriate goal for every HR department in every company. In some companies, internal customers may want the HR department to provide great service in all the traditional HR areas. In other companies, customers may expect HR to take responsibility for productivity growth. “You have to decide what brand identity works best for your particular culture and then work to create a mission statement and an organization that supports that identity,” Roberts says.

To get an idea of how this works in the real world, take a look at the difference between two retail clothing stores: The Gap and Nordstrom. The Gap brand is associated with cutting-edge fashion trends. Its stores look very contemporary, and are staffed by young people wearing Gap clothing. Nordstrom, by comparison, doesn t try to be on the bleeding edge of fashion. Instead, the company focuses on providing premium clothing in a nice atmosphere by helpful sales clerks. Service is Nordstrom s brand identity; cool clothing is the Gap s. “Neither one of these strategies is better than the other,” Roberts says. They are both executed well for their particular customers.

By the same token, HR professionals should take time to decide what works best for their particular customers. “Developing a brand is all about making tough decisions as to what you will and will not stand for,” Roberts explains. In your company, for example, it may make sense to outsource routine tasks such as payroll processing so that existing HR people can concentrate on more strategic issues. “To develop a solid brand identity you shouldn t be all things to all people,” he adds.

3. Develop a mission statement to guide you through the change.
Once you ve determined what your brand identity will be, take the time to craft a mission statement that ll guide you through the improvements that need to be made. This statement should define the mission of the HR function, the values and core principles the department will uphold, and the benefits to the rest of the company.

The mission statement is important because it ll help you define the future you wish to gravitate toward. “We call this ‘aspirational branding, ” Redhill explains. “The mission statement isn t empty rhetoric. Rather, it s a charter that outlines the HR pledge to the rest of the company.”

4. Clean house.
Let s suppose that, based on customer input, your HR department needs to do a better job providing customer service. Whether it s hiring employees or conducting team-building sessions, customers want you to be more responsive and, shall we say, pleasant to deal with. Because branding is about delivering a promise, you must ensure the people, practices and systems in your department all work to support the goal of customer service. “There has to be an alignment between the brand promise and what you actually deliver,” Roberts explains.

Just as The Gap doesn t hire retired men in leisure suits to sell its hip, young clothing, you shouldn t staff people who are unwilling to go the extra mile for line managers. For a brand identity to work, the systems must back it up.

5. Update your packaging.
In the world of consumer goods, few—if any—products are packaged without a distinctive logo, slogan and type of packaging. For example, a can of Coors beer looks very different from a can of Coca-Cola. These companies understand that the look and feel of their products communicate strong, albeit subtle, messages to consumers.

Does it make sense for the HR department to create its own logo and slogan? Is the look of the HR department itself important in communicating brand identity? Let s put it this way: Packaging is an extremely valuable way to communicate and reinforce what a brand is about, but it won t work unless there s substance behind it. If your HR department has made substantial improvements, then packaging can be a way of communicating those improvements to others.

According to John Recker, director of strategic brand development at Libby Perszyk Kathman, a brand identity firm based in Cincinnati, more than 80 percent of stored memory comes from the visual sense. “What you see you remember more so than any of the other senses,” says Recker, who has managed brands as diverse as Oil of Olay, Pampers and Pringles. Consumer companies understand this, and that s why they spend enormous sums developing logos with memorable type, images and color, he explains.

If you think developing a separate logo for your HR department will make it stand out and get noticed, there s no harm in it. A verbal tag line can also be an effective tool in getting your message across. But probably the most important packaging item is the HR department itself.

Emmanuel A. Smart, an image consultant and owner of Smart Expressions, a corporate-image consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, suggests that HR people visit their own departments as if they were customers. “What does the body language of the person behind the desk say? How does his or her voice sound on the phone? How long would you have to wait to get service?” he asks. “Research shows that the first seven seconds is critical in making a good impression.” If you want the HR brand in your company to convey top-notch service, make sure that visitors to the department get what they need—in a hurry.

“Branding isn t just about a label, logo, name, environment or color,” Redhill adds. “It s all those things, but more to the point, a service brand—which HR is—is about people. It s about how those people act and talk and treat others.” You could spend millions of dollars redesigning your department, developing a logo and tag line and communicating the new brand identity, but if the people in HR are impossible to deal with, forget it. You ve accomplished nothing.

6. Spread the word.
Okay—so you ve determined what your brand identity is, you ve worked to create a system in which you can consistently deliver the brand s promise, and you ve packaged the department in such a way as to subtly communicate that improvements have been made. Now is the time to begin tooting your horn.

However, unlike Pizza Hut or Nike, HR doesn t have the opportunity to use paid advertising to get its message across. A better way to communicate the new brand identity is by taking advantage of tried-and-true public-relations techniques. Nicholas Kalm, senior vice president and head of the employee engagement Practice at Edelman Public Relations Worldwide in Chicago, suggests that human resources determine how it wants to be perceived, and then craft three to five key messages to support that perception.

For example, if you want human resources to be perceived as strategic, take time to quantify the strategic impact of a recent HR decision, or find an anecdote that shows how HR contributed to the strategic direction of the company. Then communicate those messages any way you can: in board meetings, through the company newsletter or by developing special “HR performance reports.” The key thing is to back up the overall message with tangible data and specific success stories. “Spin is no good unless there s substance behind it,” Kalm says.

Another tip: Be sure to use language that employees will understand. “Don t get so caught up in HR jargon or terminology that you end up losing the audience,” he warns. “Craft messages that speak to the recipient, not to you.”

7. Enhance your visibility.
Another PR technique that ll help you spread the good word about HR is to be as visible as you can—not only within your own company, but also in the larger world of human resources. “Reach out to magazines and speak at HR conferences,” suggests Kalm. This gives external validation for the brand changes you ve made internally—and sometimes that s what it takes to get managers to pay attention.

8. Keep on keeping on.
“Product branding used to be regarded as a once-every-10-years kind of thing,” says Redhill. But today, brand management is an ongoing discipline. The business world and customer marketplace is changing so rapidly that companies have to keep reviewing and revisiting and updating their brands in order to meet changing customer needs. And so it goes with HR.

As HR struggles to gain a foothold in the rapidly changing world of business, the profession must regularly subject itself to self-scrutiny and be willing to make tough choices about what it will and will not stand for. The HR brand is in transition, but with careful attention the brand can harness an identity, learn to compete with external vendors and provide what customers expect.

The trick is to remember that branding is not a paint job. You can t dress up the HR department in new colors and expect people to believe everything has changed. Branding is only convincing, credible and effective if it reflects changes in substance.

So pull out your Palm Pilot, PowerBook or Parker ball point and make a note to yourself: The brand strategy works and HR can take advantage of it.

About five years ago, the human resources professionals at Motorola realized their company was facing a problem – a huge problem – one that if left untended could affect the competitiveness, profitability and future growth of the technology giant.

    The problem involved nothing less than the CEO and many members of the senior management team. The problem had nothing to do with how well those executives were doing their jobs, but rather who would do those jobs once they retired. You see, like many large, established companies, Motorola’s most senior people – the strategists and visionaries who run divisions and manage critical functions – are in their late 50s and set to retire in the next few years.

    According to Susan Hooker, director of global organizational learning and development at the Schaumburg, Illinois-based company, if Motorola’s HR department didn’t turn up the heat on the company’s leadership-development efforts, there would be no qualified successors ready to step in when the company’s key executives retire. Fortunately, Motorola has done just that, and is now planning for the retirement of key executives with confidence. Other companies, unless they act now, may not be so lucky.

    A recent study by Development Dimensions International Inc. (DDI), an organizational development firm based in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, reveals that one-fifth of this country’s large, established companies will be losing 40 percent or more of their top-level talent in the next five years as senior executives reach retirement age. This, on its own, wouldn’t be so bad. What makes this a potential crisis is that – thanks to a lack of planning and a lack of people – there’s a severe shortage of qualified replacements.

    To date, companies faced with executive retirement have simply recruited experienced leaders from other companies. But stealing talent from the competition is no longer a viable option. Not only is this costly, but studies conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership reveal that a staggering 66 percent of senior managers hired from the outside usually fail within the first 18 months. The smart way for HR professionals to combat the looming leadership crisis is to identify and develop the internal talent needed for key executive positions – and start now. 

What’s behind the numbers?
    Before we talk about the work HR needs to do in terms of executive development, let’s elaborate on the reasons why this has become such an urgent matter. Byham explains that because of large-scale hiring during the Eisenhower years, companies are now finding that many senior executives are reaching normal retirement age at the same time. In addition, there are also many younger executives who are retiring early thanks to money gained from stock options and investments. These widespread retirements are coming at a time when the demand for executives is actually on the increase due to ongoing economic growth. Together, these factors are creating a lot of holes at the top levels of many companies.

    Unfortunately, these openings are occurring at the same time there are statistically fewer people to fill the jobs. “Over the next 15 years, there will be a 15 percent decline in the number of 35- to 44-year-olds,” explains Tom Saporito, senior vice president, RHR International in Chicago. “This means there will be fewer people available for the top management slots and high-performance executive talent will be in demand.”

    Furthermore, there are no significant countervailing trends on the horizon. As a report by McKinsey and Company explains, women are no longer surging into the workforce, white-collar productivity improvements have flattened, immigration levels are stable, and executives – at this point – are not prolonging their careers.

    Sadly, even younger managers who are available and eager for more responsibility are not, in many cases, prepared to take on that responsibility. This is because downsizing caused many companies to eliminate the middle managers who were the traditional source of executive talent.

    The imbalanced supply-demand ratio is challenging enough. But the numbers tell only half the story. Not only will companies need top-level executives, but they’ll also need executives who possess a more sophisticated set of skills, including global business acumen, technological literacy, multicultural fluency and the ability to manage non-hierarchical, ever-changing organizations.

    Yet there are so few of these qualified individuals out there that those who do have the right skill mix are being aggressively sought out by companies of all sizes, from the high-tech start-up to the established manufacturing giant. Consequently, even if you do manage to snare a talented top dog from another company, you may not be able to hold that individual for long. “Poaching from other companies has already pushed up salaries,” Byham says. “I’ve even heard that some top executives are getting agents to negotiate deals for them, much like sports figures and movie stars.”

    Put all this together and you begin to realize that the only way to combat this looming crisis is by growing the talent you need from within. Sure, you may already be doing some succession planning and leadership development, but it’s time to shift those efforts into high gear. 

Succession planning calls for a new approach.
    Traditionally, succession planning was a simple matter of moving people through positions on an organizational chart. Because the business environment was stable, companies could tell employees, with relative certainty, where their careers would be in 15 years, given the achievement of certain business objectives.

    But today, the organizational chart doesn’t exist anymore. Business is changing so rapidly that companies are having a tough time forecasting what industry they’ll be in five years from now, let alone what kind of executive positions and leaders they’ll need. For this reason, forward-thinking companies like Motorola, American Express Financial Advisors, Medtronic and Kraft Foods have replaced traditional succession planning with ongoing business planning and leadership development. By staying abreast of business changes and continually growing the leadership skills of existing employees, these companies are making sure there are people ready to step into executive positions at a moment’s notice.

    While the planning process differs slightly at each of these companies, there are some similarities in how they go about ensuring their need for top-level talent will be met. The six steps listed below summarize these similarities:

1. Forecast business and leadership needs. “It’s impossible to build talent if you don’t know what business you’re going to be in,” explains William Rothwell, author of Effective Succession Planning, (Amacom, 1994). Because of this, companies must start with a thorough assessment and planning process, even if they don’t have a clear vision.

   Motorola actually has three very institutionalized strategic planning processes: a long-range planning effort, a technology review, and an organization and management development review. “These are annual processes that start at the grass-roots level with managers identifying changes in structure, uncovering business issues and developing the business strategies necessary given the current environment,” explains Susan Hooker. Once these things have been identified, managers and HR make sure the organizational structure supports these initiatives. Once the organizational structure has been revised to support the business goals, the current and future leadership needs for each sector, unit and division become apparent.

   
   

2. Generate a list of competencies. Once the business goals and leadership needs have been identified, companies can begin to assess what competencies will be needed by employees in those leadership positions. American Express Financial Services, based in Minneapolis, creates leadership profiles based on three different kinds of competencies. According to Laureen Braaten, vice president of field leadership development, these include: leadership competencies such as the ability to lead change; functional competencies that include technical knowledge about such things as recruitment and marketing; and personal competencies such as resilience and achievement drive.

   
   
3. Assess internal talent and identify gaps. Once you know what competencies are needed – and where you need them – you can begin to compare those needs against the existing talent pool. This will not only show you what talent already exists, but also where the developmental needs are. American Express relies on 360-degree assessments and feedback from managers to identify existing competencies and uncover the gaps. Additionally, the company’s managers routinely have conversations with employees about their career goals and their interest in leadership. After all, it doesn’t make sense to groom employees for positions they aren’t interested in.

   A similar process at Kraft Foods in Northfield, Illinois, helps individual managers assess the performance and potential of employees throughout the organization. “Once individual managers have identified their high-potential people, the managers get together in their functional areas and determine the highest trajectory employees within each function,” explains Charlotte Damron, director of management and organization development. “We do this at all salary levels in the organization so that over the long term our key executives be coming from deeper and deeper in the organization.”

   
   
4. Provide developmental opportunities. Once you have an understanding of who the high-potential employees are, you can compare the performance and skill level of those individuals against the necessary competencies. Then, you can provide opportunities for ongoing development. Although development can occur in a number of ways, including mentoring, coaching and skills training, when it comes to developing future leaders, many companies agree that job-based activities are the most effective.

   “We create action-learning experiences in which groups of individuals become steeped in important issues and are chartered with figuring out solutions,” explains Hooker. One group may focus on understanding emerging markets, for example. Another may try to project the future software needs of the market. Assignments like these stretch employees in such a way that they are actually preparing themselves for the next level.

   
   
5. Hold people accountable for their own development. A key issue involved with developing high-potential employees has to do with whether or not those employees should be told they’re being groomed for higher-level positions. In the days when business was relatively stable, successors typically were told what jobs they were being prepared for. But in the wake of downsizing, many companies gave up this practice out of fear of making an implied promise of employment.

   “Our leaders tell people what they should be doing is putting themselves in a position where they can be offered opportunities when those opportunities arise,” explains Braaten. “Although we know how many leaders we’ll need and when, we don’t make any promises of advancement to employees. We encourage them to keep themselves developed so that when opportunities arise they can make the choice whether or not to go for it.”

   
   

   By framing the issue in this way, companies are, in effect, holding employees accountable for their own ongoing development. But to make sure employees continue to develop the necessary skill sets, all employees should be evaluated based on the successful completion of individual development plans that are updated on an annual basis. At Medtronic, for example, a medical technology company based in Minneapolis, 75 percent of people in the company have development plans to which they are held accountable during the performance review process.

   
   
6. Make succession planning an integral part of business planning. A key to making executive-level succession planning a success is to make internal talent development an integral part of the business planning process. Just as individual employees are held accountable for their ongoing development, managers must be held accountable for projecting leadership needs and identifying available talent.

   Though HR has a key role to play in the succession planning process, line managers must have final ownership of the executive development process. “They’re the ones building their organizations for the future, so they must be the ones to take responsibility for thinking about how to develop their people,” Damron explains. 

   
   

Don’t forget retention!
    Any discussion about how to battle the upcoming leadership crisis would be incomplete without talking about the vital need for retention. Companies should be doing everything they can to retain current leaders with incentives that mean something to them – be it job-sharing, added vacation benefits, higher incentive pay or the ability to work from home. “To retain key employees, you have to listen to what employees say they need,” explains Diane Gherson, a principal with Towers Perrin, located in Irvine, California.

    But retention is still only half the battle. You can retain all the employees you want, but if they aren’t prepared to lead the company, your company won’t prosper. By starting now to assess and develop your internal talent pool, you’ll be in a much better position to fill the shoes of retiring executives. Like so many other issues in business today, the leadership crisis can be averted but only if HR acts now. Top executives aren’t created overnight. They’re developed through years of careful planning and forethought.

Workforce, September 1999, Vol 78, No 9, pp. 72-79  Subscribe Now!

Pull together a group of human resources professionals, ask them about the state of relations between HR and line managers, and they ll likely tell you something like: “HR has moved away from its administrative role and has become a full and strategic partner in the business.” In fact, two-thirds of HR executives recently surveyed by The Conference Board said their companies are now engaged in some type of HR transformation process in order to become more of a “strategic partner,” “change agent” and “employee champion.” Sounds pretty promising, doesn t it?

But if you want to know what line managers really think of HR, ask someone like Ray Jones (a pseudonym), a manager at American Express Corporate Travel Services based in San Francisco. “HR is out to lunch,” he says with disgust. “Because they re sheltered from the real world of irate customers and problem employees, the only way they know how to solve problems is to go by the book.”

While it s tempting to disregard Jones comments as those of a disgruntled corporate clone, the fact of the matter is that HR still has an image problem with its chief internal customer: the line manager. Yes, the relationship is getting better in many companies. But work remains to be done. Understanding why the relationship is so tenuous, what the line needs to be successful, and what steps HR can take to be a good partner can help alleviate the decades-old tension between these two entities. The world of business is simply too complex for HR to continue to play mailman to the line manager s Doberman pinscher or vice versa.

A short history.
In the olden days say, 10 to 15 years ago HR was seen as nothing more than an administrative bureaucracy. “We were helpful in processing benefit claims and lining up applicants, but we weren t seen as a mainstream part of the business,” explains Frank Z. Ashen, senior vice president of HR at the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, personnel professionals, as they were called at the time, were even taught to think as outsiders.

“In 1978, in my first personnel class in college, my instructor made it very clear that personnel people are not managers, and that we shouldn t regard ourselves are part of the business,” recalls Tom Hirons, director of the Graduate Management Institute at Ashland University in Columbus, Ohio. “My professor reinforced the notion that HR is merely an add-on administrative cost.”

Because of the administrative slots they had been shoved into, HR had little power and influence. All power resided with line managers, who had very little if any respect for the back office, paper-pushing personnel bureaucrats.

But in the last decade, the sweeping changes in business have significantly changed not only the role of HR, but the role of line managers as well. Today, due to such things as downsizing, reengineering and self-directed work teams, there are fewer line managers to go around, and those who remain have much greater responsibilities. They re managing more people and/or bigger projects, and they re being called on to make quicker business decisions. As Steve McElfresh, president and CEO of the Saratoga Institute Inc., an HR consultancy in Santa Clara, California, explains: “Before, line managers were masters of routine. Now they must be masters of change.”

But that s not all. The primary responsibility for managing the new deal in employment relationships has also fallen squarely on the shoulders of line managers. They re being called on to develop, motivate and communicate with employees to an unprecedented extent. Why? “Because studies have shown that people don t leave companies, they leave managers,” explains Brian Hackett, senior program manager of The Conference Board in New York City.

Because line managers have been saddled with so much more leadership responsibility, they ve started to look to HR for help. No, that s too strong a statement. In most cases, they re not yet reaching out to HR. They are, however, beginning to realize they need assistance with employee-relations problems, as well as general business issues. “Line managers want HR to run fast, talk their language and work very hard to help them meet the ever-changing and escalating demands for productivity, cost control and sales,” says McElfresh. “The line just can t do it all anymore.”

HR, for its part, is stepping up to the plate to help meet these needs. As The Conference Board study indicates, there s a general awareness among HR executives that they ve got to understand business issues and become more strategic. Unfortunately, they ve got quite a ways to go. The same study reveals that line executives consider HR to be most successful only as administrative experts. When it comes to such roles as strategic partner, change agent and employee champion, only 13 to 18 percent of line executives rank HR as being very successful.

“HR still tends to be reactive and confrontational, and much of the time, line management views HR as the government. The line doesn t want to go to HR, and they certainly don t want calls from HR people,” explains Paul Falcone, director of employment and development with Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, California.

Lilly Eng, who spent 10 years in line management at Allstate Insurance Company in Northbrook, Illinois, before transferring to the company s HR department five years ago, agrees with Falcone. “In many respects, HR is viewed as a company policeman who takes away the line manager s flexibility,” she says, adding that many managers get tired of HR telling them “no,” so managers start to work around HR instead of with HR.

Stories of HR s inflexible, police-oriented, ivory-tower mentality abound. McElfresh tells the story of a university dean who was recently trying to hire a bright staff person from another department and was told by HR that the employee couldn t be elevated two pay grades. The HR staff did concede, however, that the person could quit and be rehired at the new pay rate. “HR s world of standardized linear approaches just doesn t fit with many management needs,” McElfresh says.

Hirons tells an even more disturbing tale. “In February, I was consulting at a company and one of the company s buildings burned down, destroying the HR manager s personal computer and all the personnel records,” he says. This forced her for the first time in 28 years to interact with employees to gain lost information. After talking with employees in the plant, this woman came back to Hirons saying she couldn t believe the “humanness” of the employees. She was so used to dealing with employees as only names on a computer screen that she had lost sight of them as real live human beings.

Or how about these missives, posted recently on a Web site devoted to discussion about IBM s new pension plan: “The mathematically disadvantaged half-wits in HR can t hold up a conversation on the topic of calculating anything,” wrote “IBM-Ghost.” Another posting by “Idontknowaboutyou” said: “They re more like used-car salesmen trying to sell a car with a sawdust-filled transmission. (My apologies to any used-car salesmen, as you probably have more integrity than HR.)”

Ouch! Why are such stories still so predominant? Why haven t more HR professionals made the shift from bureaucrats to strategists? The simple answer is that change takes time. But the real reason is much more complex. To begin with, HR and line managers come from different cultures, and their training, experience and objectives are very different. “Most of HR comes from a background that is behaviorally based, as opposed to line managers who are bottom-line oriented,” explains Robert Brodo, senior vice president, Strategic Management Group in Philadelphia. “HR wants to talk about resolving conflict, whereas the line wants to know how to drive market share.”

Annette Simmons, author of A Safe Place for Dangerous Truths (Amacom, 1999), adds that HR and line managers live in different worlds. “Line managers are concerned with whatever works,” she says. “They re concerned with moving ahead and getting the job done because that s what they re evaluated on. People in HR, however, are being asked to manage systems, and they depend upon rules to create fairness within those systems. Line managers don t care about the rules, they care about getting the job done. And when HR tells them no because the rules say so, line managers think HR is out of touch with reality.”

But it s not enough to blame the rift between HR and the line on culture alone. After all, cultural differences separate every corporate function. Marketing differs from IT. Sales is miles apart from research and development. The difference with HR is that the function isn t standing on a respected platform in the organization. “Engineers may hate what marketing puts them through, but they recognize that marketing is a fundamental and valuable part of the organization,” explains McElfresh. HR, on the other hand, hasn t firmly established its value and credibility. Until HR professionals do that, the tension between HR and the line will no doubt remain.

Why should HR concentrate on improving the relationship with the line? For one thing, it ll make the work of HR a heck of a lot more enjoyable if there isn t constant tension between the department and the employees it serves. But more importantly, Falcone says, “HR must improve its credibility because the only job security an HR person has is the loyalty of the line.”

Improving relations.
So what can HR do to build its credibility? How do you go about turning around perceptions that are 10, 20 or even 30 years in the making? Sadly, there s no silver bullet or magic pill that will instantly make HR realize its potential. There isn t any one thing that HR can do to improve its corporate standing. Instead, improving relations with line managers takes a concerted effort on many fronts.

Workforce Magazine polled consultants, academics and HR executives at companies where the function is an integral part of the business and came up with the following list of suggestions. The more of these you implement, the better your standing will be.

1. Do the nuts and bolts of HR really well.
To enhance your reputation in the company, you must first do an excellent job managing day-to-day HR operations. Why? Because the first exposure many managers have to HR is when they have questions about policy and procedures. By proving your competence on routine HR issues, you ll increase the willingness of managers to consult you on larger business concerns. “If someone has a problem with a paycheck and we can t help them, they certainly aren t going to ask us to help them improve employee satisfaction,” explains Eng.

2. Get rid of HR efforts that don t add value.
Take the time to analyze every HR contribution in terms of what it offers to the organization and whether or not it meets organizational goals. “HR has to get used to setting standards and expectations and holding the department accountable for change,” says McElfresh. The way to do this is by being willing to validate every HR effort from child care centers to the employee newsletter and get rid of those that don t make sense.

3. Understand the business.
You ve heard this one a lot, but it bears repeating. For HR people to become strategic partners, they must understand bottom-line business issues. This not only means learning more about the specific objectives of your own company, but also understanding the competitive environment and marketplace trends. After all, how can you begin to determine what competencies employees need if you don t know what business you re in?

At the New York Stock Exchange, Frank Ashen holds his HR team accountable for knowing and understanding and being involved with the business. “They re expected to read the same reports line managers are reading,” he says.

4. Develop relationships throughout the organization.
Just about everyone Workforce talked to says it is HR s responsibility to cultivate relationships throughout the organization. Don t wait for line managers to come to you with problems. Seek them out and learn about their business issues. Get yourself invited to department meetings. Volunteer for task forces. Ask for managers advice. “Don t sit in your office and wait for the phone to ring,” Eng says. “Get in their face.”

5. Help line managers become more confident in their HR role.
“I can t tell you how many times I ve heard HR make comments about how stupid line managers are,” says Falcone. “Well, they re right. Line managers are stupid because HR hasn t trained them to be competent in their HR role. We can t expect managers to know how to do such things as interviewing, hiring, progressive discipline and running staff meetings unless we train them.”

Eng agrees. “Instead of fixing problems on the back end, HR can help managers avoid problems and become more competent by providing them with coaching and training,” she says. Ironically, the more you help managers do the work of HR, the more valuable HR will become. Why? Because helping managers become more competent at routine HR tasks frees up your time for more strategic, value-added work.

6. Develop the ability to articulate your point of view using the language of the line.
“If managers haven t listened to you, it may be because you ve been speaking the wrong language,” Simmons says. “Line managers care about outcomes, not rules or fairness. You need to be able to articulate your point of view using those terms.” Just as if you want to be heard in France, you speak French, if you want to be heard on the line, you need to use terminology they understand.

7. Become more flexible.
Although HR has had to establish policies, rules and procedures in an effort to create fairness, HR professionals need to understand that rules can and should be broken when an individual situation calls for it. “HR is used to creating universal policies and initiatives,” McElfresh says, “but managers are looking for assistance that is finite and granular.” In other words, line managers want HR to tailor solutions to their particular needs, not offer one-size-fits-all programs.

8. Become generalists who understand big-picture HR issues.
Ashen says one reason his HR team has become a strategic part of the New York Stock Exchange is because each member of the team is a generalist. “It helps our relationship with the line to have generalists who can problem solve in a broad sense,” Ashen explains. “If the comp-and-benefits person is dealing with the line and an issue related to organizational structure comes up, that person can deal with it. This helps build our credibility.”

9. Focus on same goals.
For line managers to trust you, they have to know you re working toward the same objectives they are. In most companies, this means focusing on bottom-line goals such as customer satisfaction, competitiveness and profitability. How can you ensure that you re working toward the same things? Joan Hoffmaster, HR generalist at W.L. Gore and Associates Inc., in Elkton, Maryland, suggests getting involved in the business-planning process. “Here at Gore, we not only have an HR segment in our business plan, but there s also an HR component to each line business plan,” she says. “Because HR is involved in the business-planning process, we know what we need to do to be competitive and profitable.”

10. Remember the three Cs: collaborate, cooperate and communicate.
For HR to become more visible and less misunderstood, HR staffers must talk, work and communicate with line managers on a regular basis. In theory, it sounds simple. In practice, this kind of regular contact is much harder to maintain.

In fact, when you look at all the individual suggestions for improving HR s relationship with the line they look pretty simple. But as anyone who has been in the profession for any length of time can tell you, HR s job is anything but simple. “It was very eye-opening when I got to HR from the line five years ago,” says Eng. “I d never realized how difficult it was to be in HR and juggle so many balls. It s tough being an advocate for employees while also protecting the company, management and company assets.”

McElfresh agrees. “Most people get to serve one master,” he says. “HR doesn t have that luxury. HR people must service the line, employees, management and stockholders. It s a terribly difficult balancing act.”

But it can be done. By focusing on business drivers and understanding what the line needs to be successful, HR can not only make itself an indispensable part of the business, but also have a profound impact on the business itself. Just take a look at Allstate. Five years ago, the company s HR function wasn t seen as an integral part of the business. Then, HR managers started to assert themselves. They started sitting in on business meetings, talking to line managers, and analyzing every aspect of how the company s people strategies impacted larger business goals. Today, according to company surveys, a whopping 84 percent of line managers are “completely satisfied” with HR services a 23 percent increase from just four years ago.

If the suggestions mentioned earlier seem like more work than you re willing to tackle, just take a moment and think about how much easier your job would be if, like at Allstate, 84 percent of your internal customers were completely satisfied with the work you re doing. Just think about the headaches you d avoid, the conflicts you d escape and all the rolling eyes you wouldn t have to face at meetings where HR is mentioned. If improving the state of relations with line managers seems like a lot of work from a corporate standpoint, do it for purely selfish reasons. Let s face it respect feels a whole lot better than contempt.

Workforce, August 1999, Vol. 78., No. 8, pp. 32-38.

The following guidelines represent the best current knowledge about how to promote emotional intelligence in the workplace. They were developed for the Consortium on Emotional Intelligence at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. The guidelines apply to any development effort in which social and emotional learning—and behavior change—is a goal. The guidelines are divided into four phases that correspond to the four phases of the development process: preparation, training, transfer and maintenance, and evaluation.

1. Assess the organization’s needs: Determine the competencies that are most critical for effective job performance in a particular type of job.
2. Assess the individual: This assessment should be based on the key competencies needed for a particular job, and the data should come from multiple ratings from sources such as 360-degree assessments that include boss, peer and subordinate ratings.
3. Maximize learner choice: People are more motivated to change when they freely choose to do so. Allow people to decide whether or not they’ll participate in the development process, and have them set the change goals themselves.
4. Encourage people to participate: People will be more likely to participate in development efforts if they perceive them to be worthwhile and effective.
5. Link learning goals to personal values: People are most motivated to pursue change that fits with their values and their hopes.
6. Adjust expectations: Build positive expectations by showing learners that social and emotional competence can be improved and that such improvement will lead to valued outcomes. Also, make sure that the learners have a realistic expectation of what the training process will involve.
7. Gauge readiness: Assess whether the individual is ready for training. If the person isn’t ready because of insufficient motivation or other reasons, make readiness the focus of intervention efforts.

8. Foster a positive relationship between the trainers and learners: Trainers who are warm, genuine, and empathic are best able to engage the learners in the change process.
9. Make change self-directed: Learning is more effective when people direct their own learning program, tailoring it to their unique needs and circumstances.
10. Set clear goals: Be clear about what the competence is, how to acquire it, and how to show it on the job.
11. Break goals into steps: Change is more likely to occur if the change process is divided into manageable steps.
12. Provide opportunities to practice: Lasting change requires sustained practice on the job and elsewhere in life.
13. Give performance feedback: Ongoing feedback encourages people and directs change.
14. Build in support: Change is facilitated through ongoing support of others who are going through similar changes (such as a support group). Coaches and mentors also can be valuable in helping support the desired change.
15. Enhance insight: Self-awareness is the cornerstone of emotional and social competence. Help learners acquire greater understanding about how their thoughts, feelings, and behavior affect themselves and others.
16. Prevent relapse: Use relapse prevention, which helps people use lapses and mistakes as lessons to prepare themselves for further efforts.

17. Encourage use of skills on the job: Supervisors, peers, and subordinates should reinforce and reward learners for using their new skills on the job. Change also is more likely to endure when high-status persons model it.
18. Develop an organizational culture that supports learning: Change will be more enduring if the organization’s culture and tone support the change and offer a safe atmosphere for experimentation.

19. Evaluate: Find unobtrusive measures of the competence or skill as shown on the job, before and after training, and also at least two months later. One-year follow-ups also are desirable. In addition to charting progress on the acquisition of competencies, assess the impact on important job-related outcomes and indicators of adjustment such as absenteeism, grievances, health status, etc.

About five years ago, Annie McKee, managing director of the Center for Professional Development at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was meeting with the executive board of a Fortune 50 financial-services firm. The topic? A proposed leadership-development program for the company’s senior executives. Just as McKee finished explaining how the program would work and what skills would be developed, one board member jumped to his feet and started pounding his fists on the table. “This program sounds fine,” he said. “But how do we teach our executives to trust one another?”

McKee was startled. “This wasn’t the kind of place where you’d expect to find much tolerance for any discussion about emotion, but this was exactly what was happening,” she says. Intuitively, this board member recognized that if the company was to be successful, its most senior leaders would not only need the right knowledge and experience, but they’d also have to be skilled at the softer side of management. Since that time, McKee has seen a dramatic change in the response of corporate executives to the notion of soft skills. “They’re starting to get it,” she says—and it’s about time.

Companies have offered soft-skills training to employees for years. But as every battle-scarred trainer knows, these programs are typically the first to go when budgets are cut. Given a choice between funding a course on computer skills or a course on active listening, corporate bean counters more willingly sign off on the computer course. Why? Because until recently, there had been no hard evidence that soft skills make a difference.

But as McKee’s experience indicates, a new era is dawning in Corporate America and executives are starting to talk about the importance of such things as trust, confidence, empathy, adaptability and self-control. As a result, soft-skills training is gaining new respect. What accounts for this sea of change in thinking? It can be summed up in two words: emotional intelligence.

In 1995, Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and former New York Times reporter, published the international best seller, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Bantam Books, 1995). In it, he brought together years of research to show that emotional intelligence—which can loosely be described as a person’s ability to manage his or herself and relate to other people—matters twice as much as IQ or technical skills in job success. The book was so successful that last fall, Goleman published a follow-up, Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1998), in which he revealed data from studies in more than 500 organizations that proved factors such as self-confidence, self-awareness, self-control, commitment and integrity not only create more successful employees, but also more successful companies.

For the legions of soft-skills trainers who’ve long been stigmatized as training lightweights, Goleman’s research is like manna from heaven. Finally, there is hard data to confirm what they’ve known all along: Personality and character count on the job. Not only that, but there’s also solid research to prove that the skills that contribute to emotional intelligence can be taught. Unlike IQ, which is a person’s intellectual potential that is fixed at birth, patterns of emotional intelligence (or “EQ”) can be developed over time.

As a result of Goleman’s research and all the publicity generated by his best sellers, employers do appear to be more willing to invest in soft-skills development, especially at the higher management levels. But if you’re a human resources manager who wants to make the case for developing the EQ of employees, you need to understand that traditional soft-skills training is just one piece of a long-term process that begins with a thorough understanding of why emotional intelligence matters, and ends with a commitment to ongoing coaching and mentoring of your employees.

Why do emotions matter?
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, cultural wisdom has taught us that the workplace isn’t a place for emotion. In the world of time clocks and balance sheets, reason and logic have been our guides, and intelligence is what we’ve honored. But all of us can probably name a brilliant high school classmate who never held a steady job or, conversely, a class clown who made his first million by age 25. This is because IQ is only one measure of performance, and it’s a limited one at that.

Like it or not, emotions are an intrinsic part of our biological makeup, and every morning they march into the office with us and influence our behavior. On some level, we’ve always known that the ability to understand, monitor, manage and capitalize on our emotions can help us make better decisions, cope with setbacks and interact with others more effectively. But thanks to the work of Goleman and other researchers, we now have hard data to prove it. Consider these statistics revealed in Goleman’s book:

• Research on 181 jobs at 121 companies worldwide showed that 2 out of 3 abilities vital for success were emotional competencies such as trustworthiness, adaptability and a talent for collaboration.
• According to a study of what corporations seek when they hire MBAs, the three most desired capabilities are communication skills, interpersonal skills and initiative—all of which are elements of emotional intelligence.
• Emotional intelligence matters in surprising places such as computer programming, where the top 10 percent of performers exceeded average performers in producing effective programs by 320 percent, and the superstars at the 1 percent level produced an amazing 1,272 percent more than average. Assessments of these top performers revealed that they were better at such things as teamwork, staying late to finish a project and sharing shortcuts with co-workers. In short, the best performers didn’t compete—they collaborated.
• Studies of close to 500 organizations worldwide indicate that people who score highest on EQ measures rise to the top of corporations. Among other things, these “star employees” possess more interpersonal skills and confidence than “regular employees,” who receive less favorable performance reviews.

In fact, enough research has been conducted in the area of EQ that a standardized testing instrument can actually determine an individual’s EQ rating or score, similar to the IQ method of determining a person’s level of intelligence. The instrument, known as the BarOn EQ-i, was developed by Dr. Reuven Bar-On, the person who coined the term “EQ” more than 12 years ago. The test, which is the first scientific measure of emotional intelligence, provides a measure of one’s overall emotional intelligence and covers 15 different emotional-skill areas found to be most important in successfully coping with life’s demands. These factors are clustered into various categories such as intra-personal, inter-personal, adaptability, stress management and general mood.

The BarOn EQ-i, a written test that’s available through Toronto-based Multi-Health Systems, Inc., contains 133 short multiple-choice items, and is computer-scored so that respondents’ results can be compared to a multicultural normative database of the more than 18,000 people who’ve been tested to date worldwide.

Additional assessments conducted by Multi-Health Systems further support the theory that emotional intelligence is an important factor in successful on-the-job performance. Their research includes:

• A study of 1,171 U.S. Air Force recruiters showing that the best performing recruiters were those who scored high on assertiveness, empathy, interpersonal relations, problem solving and optimism.
• A study of 1,000 sales personnel from a large, U.S.-based international company demonstrating that the characteristics most predictive of sales success were assertiveness, empathy, happiness, emotional self-awareness and problem-solving skills. Nothing else, including gender, education, geographic area, age or hours worked came as close to predicting success as did these emotional competencies.

And although hard data isn’t available to show to what degree training and behavior modification activities improve an individual’s EQ-i rating, it could be significant. According to Bar-On, “The measurement of emotional intelligence in the workplace is the first step toward improving it. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your teams, you can systematically work toward increasing the skills that count.”

But even without these hard numbers, there’s been a growing awareness of the importance of soft skills because the corporate environment has changed so drastically. As layers of middle management disappear and senior management trims down, organizations are demanding that people work faster, cheaper and smarter. Corporate cultures have gone from vertical to horizontal, and collaborative partnerships are replacing the old command-and-control managerial hierarchy. In this increasingly team-driven and intimate workplace, leaders and followers interact more closely and deficiencies in personality become clearer. Simply stated, we need these soft skills just to get along with each other.

The tight job market also plays a part. “The real key to keeping good people is the kind of environment that leaders create,” explains Lee Kricher, vice president of leadership and workforce development for Development Dimensions International in Pittsburgh. “As a result, there’s a much keener awareness among managers that recognizing emotions in others and handling relationships is key to creating the kind of environment that employees will thrive in.”

Kate Cannon, president of Kate Cannon and Associates in Minneapolis—and founder of one of the first corporate emotional intelligence efforts in the country—agrees with Kricher. “Because of the all the instability in the marketplace, employees are taking the need for emotional connection that they used to have with their companies and projecting that onto their leaders and managers. To be effective, those managers have to become more emotionally intelligent.”

But nothing has impacted the willingness of companies to invest in soft skills development more than the fact that there are now studies to show that this stuff really works. “There’s more empirical data coming out all the time to show that such skills as listening and building consensus really do affect the bottom line,” explains Hendrie Weisenger, Ph.D., author of The Power of Positive Criticism (Amacom, 1999). “The soft skills have become the hard skills.”

How do you develop emotional intelligence at work?
Because emotional intelligence can have such a significant impact on the bottom line, it makes sense that companies would be willing to help employees develop the competencies that contribute to EQ. Unfortunately, many employers may be going about it the wrong way.

“What’s shocking is that although there’s a lot of literature about what is needed to make long-lasting behavioral changes, a lot of people haven’t taken it seriously,” explains Murray Dalziel, global managing director of organization effectiveness and management development services at The Hay Group in Philadelphia. Instead, when it comes to developing EQ, he says the training industry is full of nice packaging, but many of these efforts are spray-and-pray approaches. “They spray employees with a concept, and pray that it will make a difference,” he explains.

Dalziel, whose company has recently formed an alliance with Goleman to create leadership-development programs based on the theories of emotional intelligence, explains that learning the skills that contribute to emotional intelligence can’t be done in a one-shot training course. This is why, although emotional intelligence has given weight to soft skills development, they aren’t the same thing.

How do they differ? Skills training is typically very narrow and focused. Courses may be built around a specific skill such as active listening, problem solving or team building. To develop emotional intelligence, however, companies must focus on the broader parameters of organizational and behavioral change. While skills training is still an important part of the process, companies need to help employees understand what skills and competencies are most important on the job, how those competencies develop—or not—over time and how those competencies work together to create emotional intelligence.

More specifically, to develop the kind of long-lasting behavioral changes that have an impact on the bottom line, Cannon says that companies must:

• Understand what competencies employees need for the organization to meet its objectives.
• Establish the outcomes that are desired from the development effort.
• Assess the current EQ level of workers using such things as 360-degree feedback.
• Provide training in specific competencies.
• Create ways for employees to develop and improve their competency level on an ongoing basis through such things as coaching.

This last piece—ongoing support—is particularly important because developing emotional intelligence takes work and practice just like any behavior modification effort. Just as courses on dieting aren’t enough for people to lose weight, and classes about lung cancer aren’t enough for them to quit smoking, training on emotional competencies isn’t enough for employees to become emotionally intelligent. Instead, employees need a plan and a lot of practice and support.

Although most EQ development programs center around soft-skills training, the broader focus on behavior and organizational change means that EQ efforts typically take much longer and are more involved than your average skill development course. To get the bottom-line benefits from soft-skills development, employers have to be willing to commit for the long haul.

“In one day of training, I can provide an awareness of what emotional intelligence is and why it matters,” explains Cannon. “In three days, people can be taught specific skills that can be applied right away. But it takes five days of training plus a lot of ongoing support for people to understand their own emotional makeup, learn the necessary skills, practice the new behaviors and experience the kind of transformation that impacts the company.”

Annie McKee agrees that companies have to be willing to commit the time necessary for the new soft skills to take hold. “After all, we’re talking about patterns of behavior that are engraved in one’s brain,” she says. “These patterns are difficult to learn and relearn.”

But now that there are hard data to show these patterns can be learned and that companies do stand to benefit, it’s likely more employers will be willing to commit to the development process. Soft-skills training is no longer the Rodney Dangerfield of the training world. Soft skills have come of age.

Emotional Intelligence Is …

Although there are many different models of emotional intelligence, most of them include a combination of competencies that contributes to a person’s ability to manage his or her own emotions as well as monitor emotions in others. For example, The Hay Group uses a model in which emotional intelligence comprises four dimensions, each with its own set of behavioral competencies. These dimensions and their accompanying competencies are:

• Self-awareness: Includes the competencies of emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment and self-confidence.

• Self-management: Includes self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, achievement orientation and initiative.

• Social skills: Includes the competencies of leadership, influence, communication, change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration.

• Social awareness: Includes empathy, organizational awareness, developing others and service orientation.

• It isn’t “getting in touch with your feelings” or letting it all hang out. Having emotional intelligence means to be able to manage feelings so that they’re expressed appropriately and effectively.

• It isn’t simply being nice. Sometimes being emotionally intelligent means being able to confront someone with an uncomfortable truth he or she has been avoiding.

• It doesn’t mean suppressing or controlling your emotions. It means utilizing the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time in the appropriate amount.

• It isn’t about just about personal self-improvement. The capabilities that underlie emotional intelligence are the ones that are most often associated with business success.

• It isn’t a quick-fix program in which differences are immediately noticeable. People may be able to learn word processing in an hour, but learning such things as managing anger takes a lot of practice.

I was one of those pathologically shy kids who never spoke in class and was terrified by show and tell. (I always showed.) Even saying “here” during roll call was enough to make me want to drop out of school altogether. Fortunately, by avoiding drama and never volunteering to be the captain of anything, I was able to escape the slow death known as public speaking.

That is, until the 8th grade, when a sadistic teacher thought it would be great fun for students to give oral presentations. In the midst of my demonstration on how to make lemonade from scratch, my knobby 13-year-old hands started to shake so violently that I accidentally knocked the bowl of fresh lemon juice off the demonstration table onto the floor, drenching the front of my new plaid jumper in the process. Quickly bending over to retrieve the bowl, I then whacked my head on the edge of the table. All I can remember from that point on is wondering whether or not the government’s witness protection program accepted teenagers.

While the entire fiasco probably lasted less than a minute, the mental reruns tormented me throughout puberty. Lesson learned: I was simply too inept to be an effective public speaker. Over the last few years, I’ve ditched the plaid jumper and worked to overcome my fear of public speaking. Ironically, the biggest challenge has not been learning how to speak in public, but forgetting how I once felt about it.

The key to moving on is to forget.
You see, forgetting is an important part of the learning process that most people, well, forget about. Instead, we hoard knowledge like nervous little rodents squirreling away nuts before a snowstorm. Stuffed with information that’s no longer relevant, we become immobilized in the face of new challenges. We rely on what we know to be true, instead of trying something different. But just because something worked or didn’t work before doesn’t mean it will work or not work in exactly the same way again. To innovate, change and grow, we need to spend as much time forgetting as we do learning. We need to get rid of outdated information and create room for new ideas to take root.

The ability to forget is especially important for corporate HR professionals. To become business leaders in a constantly changing, knowledge-based economy, HR professionals have to learn to let go. As management guru Tom Peters says, “You can’t live without an eraser.” In his book, The Circle of Innovation (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1997), Peters explains that although organizational learning is a hot topic, organizational forgetting is even more important. “Not to focus on forgetting is a mistake … perhaps mistake number one for your division, your unit and for you,” he says.

By my calculation, there are three things HR should try to forget about.

1. Forget programs. I was lurking around the Internet and read a post from someone looking for ideas on a “program to put more fun in the workplace.” Among the programs suggested were a “weekly milk-and-cookie break” and a “quarterly event with senior executives.” Whoa—are we really ready to have that much fun at work? Excuse my naiveté, but isn’t fun supposed to happen spontaneously? When did fun become something you do between 3:00 and 3:30 every other Thursday in the cafeteria? If you want to have fun, you have to be fun. You lead by example, not mandate. To the extent possible, HR should forget the idea of solving problems with structured programs. Sometimes it’s better to point people in the right direction and let them develop their own solutions.
2. Forget policies. The other day, I overheard one HR person telling another that she was in the midst of developing a policy on open communication. Is it just me, or does this seem counterintuitive? If you’re seeking open communication, does it really make sense to spell out what open communication is, when it will occur and how the company regards it? Policies are like the New Year’s resolutions of Corporate America. They’re well intentioned, but doomed to make people fatter and more miserable than they were previously. Communication and leadership come from actions, not resolutions.
3. Forget what everybody else is doing. The best practices movement has been a great way for managers to learn about effective workplace initiatives at other companies. But it also has created a generation of HR professionals who can’t write an employee handbook without first finding out how others have gone about it. In today’s competitive marketplace, profits go to the fastest, most innovative employers—not to those who copy their neighbors. Forget the other guy and focus on what your employees need to succeed.

It takes a lot of concentration to forget old ways of doing things, but it can be done. Whenever I’m about to deliver a presentation, I take a deep breath and look to the heavens for divine intervention. I’m not picky. A power outage, tornado or stroke would all be acceptable means of avoiding public speaking. Catching myself, I take a step back and force myself to remember the benefits I’ve gotten from public speaking. It takes some effort, but it gets me to the lectern every time. Best of all, I’ve yet to hit my head on it.