HR a business Partner : Need & Required elements

Whenever I think of an organization I am reminded of “Symphony”. In a symphony there are several singers singing and several musicians playing different kinds of instruments to produce desired music.  You would all agree  that the success of the symphony  lies not in individual brilliance of any single musician but  in the combined effect that their playing together leads to . It lies in the understanding of the Composer to use which instrument , which note, which musician to  “play what” and  “play when” to produce the magic of music, the success lies in the co-ordinated efforts of 100s of individual musicians playing individually but  in a co-ordinated  unison.  The difference between music and noise is because of the fine art of  coordinated actions of these individual fine musicians . If each of these musicians were to play what they wished and when they wished  to, all it would create is noise even if you had all the  star musicians  performing together .

An organization is one such Symphony , one such well oiled machine where the success of the organization depends on the efforts of various departments and  various individuals working towards a  preconceived objective . The better the Top Management ( Composer ) understands the   interplay between various elements  like  Objective, operations , Strategy , Processes , HR  , Sales , Finance , Marketing, Competencies etc and the better they are able to align all these elements , the better the organization  will perform . Some thinkers like Mckinsey created a framework called the 7 S framework  to understand and depict this interplay.

It is quite evident from the  model  that we are talking about aligning the 7s’s and fine tuning them to produce the desired results and the custodian of as many as 3 S’s ( structure , Staff  & skills) is the HR function .

I guess keeping this in view of and  the fact that Human Resource is one of the major resources required for a business to succeed apart from the Financial and other resources , Dave Ulrich popularised the Concept of HR Business partner

 

The Idea was that as we  move from ‘day to day’ focus on ‘ Processes and People’ to” future / Strategic” focus on “Processes and People’ the role of HR will also need to evolve from “Admin and Employee championing”  to “Change agent and  Strategic Partner “. What it meant is that organizations  actually need active participation of HR function as much as of any other function like  Sales & Marketing , Operations and /or Finance in setting the blue Print / direction of the Company .  It will not auger well for an organization if the HR is seen only as a service Function .

Typically , a business usually writes a business plan where it envisages the revenue and the costs based on its understanding of the Industry , the Business, the markets, its specific strategy , its target customers , it various Processes  etc . The biggest variable in the business Plan is the effort envisaged  ( read structure, staff , sales & Marketing effort etc ) and the result envisaged ( read revenue, Objective etc ) . In my own experience of more than two decades of working with several organizations , I find the inability to model the correct structure , correct people , correct effort to get the desired results,  as the single largest cause .which leads to underperformance and / or failure.

Hence the strong need for a HR  to act as a business partner . While the need has got established ,  I still find  gaping holes in many cases in the use of HR function both from a Top Management structure perspective ( read what does the Top management think of the role of HR ) and from the practitioners own Competence perspective ( what all does the practitioner need to know to be able to contribute as an Business partner ) . In most cases the Practitioners unknowingly are stuck in the mindset of an administrator or at most of an “ Employee Champion “  ( keeping in mind the needs of the employees to keep them motivated , engaged etc ) or that of a “change agent” ( read helping organization to change through trainings , organization development etc ) .

Mindset of a strategic HR business partner is to think about how the interplay of HR , the structure , the people etc.  can help in the organization achieving its “Shared Objective” . Mindset is that can I bring differentiation in the Organization and its deliverable products / services by organizing , aligning , hiring and structuring the Human Resource of the organization to improve Top line , Positioning ,  EBIDTA , PAT etc .

This is not an easy task and it is then no more just a fashionable statement to make  “HR as Business partner “. It is a huge responsibility and the success and failure of the organization, then depends as much on the decisions of HR ,as it depends on any other function, if not more .

My feeling is that the gap in expectation from HR to act is a business Partner to what it actually does,  is that our training in HR is still stuck in  the past era . Maybe the HR Professional are also themselves to blame since their assumption about their own role has to evolve further .

The critical elements for all young HR practitioners to focus on in case they wish to be seen as serious contenders for Business Partner role  are as follows ;

1.       Clear understanding of the industry that they operate in , its macro/ micro  parameters, the external environment ,  etc

2.       Clear understanding of the business  that they operate including its customers , its USP , it operational aspects, it’s marketing / Sales dynamics,  etc

3.       Clear understanding of all  financial aspects of the concerned business. Knowing various financial ratios / parameters .

4.       Clear view on how the interplay of structure , Staff, Competencies etc can have an impact on the Business, its USPs , its products/ services, its services, Quality etc .

The journey of HR as a service function to that of becoming a business Partner is thus dependent on the ability of HR professional  to understand all business dynamics and the ability to influence the outcomes of an organization by the interplay of various HR elements to create unique / profitable and sustainable businesses .

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Have our Management Practices really changed ???

We all need to build competitive advantage in order to survive in this immensely competitive environment. There have been many attempts to build this advantage through initiatives in Quality, lean manufacturing practices, Branding etc. with the same basic thought of providing a value proposition superior to the competition. Unfortunately all these practices provide competitive edge for some period and then every other organization within the same space benchmarks it, adopts it and sometime betters it. Then again the quest for some other element which can provide for that edge begins. In all this the only thing which seems to be constant is the quest for change and the ability of an organization to think innovatively to keep ahead of the competition. It is also a well known fact that some organizations keep doing this with ease and thus excel year after year, decade after decade and somehow always seems to be in sync with the present and always ahead of the competition. Some others who are brilliant at one time seem to fade away with time as they do not change with it.

What has always baffled m e is this difference in the organizational capability to usher change. What instigates this in one company and not in the other? Is it something to do with the resource availability of an Organization? Is it to with the CEO? Is something different in the people who work in these organizations? Or is it plain cycle of creating an advantage by some means and then becoming complacent with the achievements. This cycle of course seems to be omnipresent whether one talks about individuals, families, nations or whatever.

Even the Hindu belief system talks about the presence of “Kaal Chakra”. It talks about samay (time) bringing about changes. If it seems so omnipresent what do we do or what can we do?

We probably need to hit at the basics of Human behaviour and somehow create some means by which the success does not define the behaviour pattern. Do something that helps to maintain the balance between conviction of thought which is so important to creates a bias for action and questioning the validity of the same thoughts with changes in environment and time(kaal). Now of course the question is who thinks and who questions. The paradigm of management has always been to increase productivity by channelizing the Human effort for a given goal. Who decides the Goal? Obviously the management ( CEO/ Directors/ owners) decides it because they need to know where they are driving the Flock (employees) to. This paradigm of command and control is deeply etched in our Psyche and rightly so because we have practiced it successfully for decades. From the time when any sort of organized work started we have been conditioned to accept practices and procedures for granted and follow the command . So it has always been a couple of brains and whole host of hands and legs which have defined a company.

The thought is thus confined to the think tanks of the organization which at times are the owners. We then come back to the issue of complacence? Who becomes complacent? When we say organizational complacence we actually are talking about think tank complacence .We of course have progressed a lot because we have now started to alienate ownership from management and this brings in more longevity as managements are atleast bound to change and hence bring new thoughts. But that is just touching the tip of the iceberg as there is a huge potential still lying untapped which is the entire workforce whose only contribution is hands , legs and specific competencies. The sad part is that most current management practices are still based on paradigm of command and control. Even when we talk of Empowerment , the paradigm is of command and control and not participative management because the present work culture and practices in most organizations are the manifestation of long years of implementation of Theory X ,where the basic premise is that people are lazy and hence need to be micro-managed. We are slaves of this tradition and whatever effort we make are in the direction of improving the existing practices which leads to further ingraining of the earlier paradigm.

The need today is to change and create a new paradigm and question ourselves as to how can we bring in more engagement of the entire workforce? How can we get a contribution of their thoughts and their heart? We need to ask why people are so detached from whatever they do. Why is their an activity orientation? The answer is simple because normally people don’t own what they are doing. And it is our own management style which makes this happen . The years of supervision and task orientation of supervisors and managers detach people from what they do. It is thus important to realize that we need to bring in participative management so that people get enthused enough to think .

The need is to really believe that all people are capable of accepting responsibility and redesign our management style to inculcate the feeling of teamship. We need to identify and build team leaders as opposed to traditional supervisors and managers. The role of managers needs to change to coaching and mentoring rather that controlling and commanding. There needs to be better goal clarity right upto the bottom and there needs to be total involvement of people in deciding these goals. This would bring about a culture change , a change in communication patterns, a change in the role of managers and a structural change as well.

I know that it is a painful process as it is always easier to stick to whatever one is used to doing. It is also difficult as this paradigm creates an open and questioning organization where the managements are naked with absolute transparency. But the fact is that it is worth taking the trouble and effort as it leads to increased effectiveness of all resources and hence greater shareholder value and of course it beat the Kaal Chakra.

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have b...

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have b...: "Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have been plagued by a dise...: 'Managements world over have been plagued by a disease called in..."

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have b...

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have b...: "Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have been plagued by a dise...: 'Managements world over have been plagued by a disease called in..."

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have been plagued by a dise...

Rajeev Gupta's Blog: Managements world over have been plagued by a dise...: "Managements world over have been plagued by a disease called incrementalism and satisfactory under-performance. Organisations are thus alway..."

Managements world over have been plagued by a disease called incrementalism and satisfactory under-performance. Organisations are thus always thinking about incremental growth and are happy to look at enhanced market share, improved customer satisfaction, higher IRR, ROI etc., based on previous years performance. This approach has been practised many a time fairly successfully especially in countries like India, working in closed economies. The driving force in these economies has come from a comfortable ROI, obliviated from the fact of competitive inadequacy in terms of global competition. Paradoxically this success contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Decade by decade, thinkers have suggested various tools and techniques to improve the business performance. In the recent times Core competence, Reengineering, TQM, empowerment of teams and the like has been thought of as the panacea. Over the years it has become apparent that many new tools and techniques got delegated to fad dustbin by organisations, barring a few who made them work.

Per se, conceptually, the tools and techniques are excellent. The critical question is that do they work by themselves? The answer is decidedly no — successful application is directly relatable to organisation culture, which is nothing but the collective operative mind-sets and calibre of the individuals in the organisation. Human capital development is thus at the apex of any change process.

The essence and quality of such development is steeped deep into the roots of one’s value system, which is a natural evolution from the socio-cultural fabric of a nation. No organisation can thus grow by imitating others but has to develop and follow its own national and organisational culture.

Optimising performance has been the major concern of business enterprises everywhere. At the organizational level, our operational processes, systems & equipments have undergone a metamorphosis. Ironically the management thought paradigm of which we are still proud of is about 2500 years old.

· With increased integration of world economies, can we still live with this incrementalistic approach?

· Do we not need to redefine our thoughts, our parameters, our philosophies, management structures, strategic intents, definition of competitive advantage, value chains, human resource, etc.?

Given the current scenario, can business community in India take radical steps to be a world class economy? If so, how?

We thus now need to brainstorm on ways to redefine management.

Redefine what and why?

Redefine why and how?

Redefine how and now?

And ultimately - now and in India?