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Why HR Stinks at “Execution”
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One of the hottest books in business right now is the book Execution, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. It’s a must read for CEOs and HR people alike. If you haven’t had time to read the book, I recommend you do. The book highlights the three major processes critical to an organization’s success: people, strategy, and operations. Leaders must be in charge of getting things done by effectively executing these three core processes. Successful managers must excel at picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations. Further reading makes it quite clear that, of the three factors, people are the most reliable long-term success factor. In fact, the book focuses mostly on people and people processes. But one of the other important messages in the book is that, quite often, managers get so “hung up” about being strategic that they fail to focus on the most important element of business: the execution of strategy. Execution is defined as a systematic process of rigorously discussing “hows” and “whats,” questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability. Unfortunately, HR professionals are notorious for failure to execute against strategy ó if they have one at all. Technology gets purchased, programs designed, and processes put in place ó but rarely does anyone follow through to ensure those programs and processes produce at Six Sigma levels. It’s nice to have the title of “business partner,” but in reality “talk” is not equal to execution. Three Key HR Lessons The three key lessons that we need to learn in HR are the importance of:
In my experience, the absence of these three factors is what separates mediocre HR departments from great ones. Firms like GE, Intel, Honeywell, and Microsoft excel at these three critical success factors. In direct contrast, most HR people avoid confrontation and honest dialogue. But a rigorous dialogue is required to ensure everyone’s buy in and to get everyone on the same page. Most HR practitioners also consistently avoid measurements like the plague, and, if given a choice, they would pay everyone the same (to avoid confrontation). HR will never be a business leader until it summons up enough courage both to measure and reward performance as well as to challenge and confront issues. 17 Key Execution Elements That Relate To People Aside from these three key lessons, there are a number of other specific thoughts and ideas from this book that can help HR and managers hire the right people and manage them better.
Conclusion HR people love to call themselves business partners. But when senior managers are polled, they consistently rate the actual performance of HR well below where HR leaders “perceive” their performance to be. It’s time for HR to “walk the talk.” Rather than just offering HR programs, let’s instead focus on execution that produces results. HR leaders must shift their emphasis toward designing and operating programs that influence the bottom line. That means increased revenues, greater market share and more products that have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The first three steps to take are ensuring an intense dialogue (where issues are confronted, not avoided), demanding metrics and individual accountability in all key performance areas, and finally, significant rewards for performance.