Agile Talent? Doesn’t that sound passionate? ‘Agile’ is such a big concept across all industries right now, and having agile talent seems so fantastic!

Well, the new book Agile Talent (Harvard, 2016) is certainly fantastic – though there is a lot for us to uncover and learn in this field.

Authors Dr. Jonathan Younger and Dr. Norm Smallwood describe how public and private sector organizations have increased their reliance on external talent. This is a global trend that is growing and unmistakable, and has important implications for organizations. Advisors, contractors, and gigsters play an increasingly crucial role in the work of corporations, governments, and not-for-profit agencies; yet, too often, leaders lack an understanding of how their organizations can maximize the productivity, engagement, and satisfaction of these externals. The book defines agile talent as more than an additional source of expertise, but as a key stakeholder for organizations. As such, Agile Talent looks to facilitate greater understanding of how leading organizations relate to and partner with agile talent. If you have not checked out the book, please do so here. If you are curious to hear about the research and findings directly from Dr. Younger, visit us on Wednesday and Friday for interview video clips.

Pop Quiz: What’s the number one attraction factor driving millennials to join one organization over another? Time’s up! Competitive wages? Nope, that’s number two. More learning programs? Uh-uh, third. The top reason a millennial wants to come work for you is the opportunity for career progression (according to a recent study of PWC¹).

Job rotations is a technique used by employers that lets employees rotate their assigned jobs throughout their employment.²

There are several good reasons why employers practice this technique:

• To promote flexibility,
• To serve different learning opportunities,
• To advance career progression, etc.

With the rapid change of today’s business environment and transforming models of learning, however, job rotations are also up for reconsideration. The shift in global business has inevitable impacts on our jobs. In World Economic Forum’s January 2016 report, “The Future of Jobs,” one of the new trends mentioned is the frequent change of organizational structures. If we consider the change in business models to drive frequent structural changes, we can guess there may be a skills stability issue in the market. For this, we may actually consider keeping people in their roles just a tad bit longer, to have them over time grow the specialized expertise we require of them.

The other consideration is with new and emerging roles. Did we have a ‘talent scout’ role in the past? A ‘video blogger?’  A ‘trend catcher?’ No, no, no, and definitely no! It’s virtually impossible to predict what roles will emerge, and when. That’s fair. In any case, though, as structures, roles, and realities evolve, we may need to consider hiring professionals with everlasting curiosity and openness to try new roles and responsibilities?

Finally, we need to rethink learning. As organizational and individual boundaries become blurrier (due to economies of scale), we need to consider creating flexible work arrangements and seizing customizable platforms that allow contractors, independent workers, full time employees, and customers to better collaborate.

For these reasons, expect job rotations to evolve. Perhaps we consider creating a matrix for allowing people to ‘cook’ in a particular role before moving them. Perhaps we need to rotate them fast through smaller assignments to advance their flexibility. Or, perhaps, we need to consider job swapping between external and internal roles. Whatever we decide, the future of job rotations will surely look differently. Hopefully millennials will still know a good thing when they see it.

¹ http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/talent/future-of-work/millennials-survey.html

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_rotation

There is an on-going debate about the future of performance management. Whether you take a ‘traditional’ or a ‘new-age’ approach to managing performance, we believe there are some key principles that apply at all times. Please enjoy this short video for a highlight of these principles.

The times they are a-changin’. Yessiree, Bob! At this crossroads, things are getting awfully interesting. The way we define our world is evolving – everything from how we describe our faith to what we think about work. People question authority figures more than ever. Political structures, human relations, and economic models are shifting. The nature of information is changing. Indeed, every traditional definition is up for discussion. And, most importantly to our lot, HR and OD are in great flux. This is why we created Whirling Chief, where our own people, our community, can share, learn, and inspire one another.

Take, for instance, Learning and Employee Development, two major subcategories of Human Resources and Organization Development. With the visible and transformational changes in our environment, there is a big shift in how we need to think about learning and ongoing development.

Look at the variables below from “Human Capital Report 2016” of Deloitte University Press:

• More than eight in ten executives (84 percent) in this year’s survey view learning as an important (40 percent) or very important (44 percent) issue¹
• Employees at all levels expect dynamic, self-directed, continuous learning opportunities from their employers¹
• Despite the strong shift toward employee-centric learning, many learning and development organizations are still struggling with internally focused and outdated platforms and static learning approaches¹

Though we’re starting to understand learning is an ongoing effort, we continue to offer a series of corporate programs to our cluster of employees, sometimes without even knowing why…

We still have catalogs of learning courses managed by mostly external learning management systems (LMS)…

We continue to ask generalists—who have no deep knowledge of a particular skill or a topic—to go and train a group of employees.

The focus for any development program continues to be strictly insular and internal.

If we really want to transform the way we learn and support the growth of our workforce, we need to think about development in a different way. We need to realign and reengage our workforce to enable them to think about the need for themselves to grow, and we need to get extremely comfortable using technology.

Here are a few suggestions to consider as we help build the future of learning (and we would love to hear others from you!):

1. Asking why and defining what development means for each of our organizations,
2. Redefining ownership (employee as a customer vs. management),
3. Focusing on customer first (external vs. internal),
4. Leveraging design thinking and agile methods,
5. Staying open to new technology and ways of learning (such as video gaming).

¹Deloitte University Press, 2016 (http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html)

‘Operational Excellence’ has been a big debate topic over the years, and continues to be. With the birth and evolution of our function, many of our senior colleagues and respected professors have introduced models organizations can (and should!) consider for their HR support function to be seen as ‘strategic’.

As discussed in earlier blogs, being ‘strategic,’ by definition, requires one to be able to focus on short- and long-term results at the same time, while keeping an eye on the vision. This requires us to have some level of process excellence in-house. That’s a fact.

That said, I cannot count how many times I have been told by a senior HR executive or a colleague that ‘running operations’ was not my job and, “You should make sure to continue keeping an eye on strategic items,” which I was already doing. I find this extremely perplexing – can we really be ‘strategic’ without focusing on running our operations effectively first?

To have an attractive culture, we are required to think through the life cycle of our employees and offer them a joyful experience throughout their tenure with our organization.

To have an effective organization, we are required to have a scalable structure, clear roles and responsibilities, clear governance schemas, and well-defined processes.

To develop our managers, we need to be clear about our expectations, and their involvement and sponsorship required in leading certain people processes.

To go and work on the next ‘shiny’ thing – for example, a leadership development program – while we offer a less-than-ideal recruitment or orientation experience for a particular new hire, for me, is simply naive.

We tend to think of innovation as some new idea inside our organizations where, in reality, many of the ‘new’ ideas are just novelties. How many of you have you experienced the rollout of a new program/project? Were you expected to develop an implementation plan for your business groups, only to find that after a few months of initiation the project fell flat – there was no more flow up? That’s what happens when we focus on novelties instead of considering the next best thing that supports our business moving forward.

For me, having a particular support structure is not necessarily a resolution. Perhaps, the important things for us to focus on should be:

• understanding where the business is headed,
• considering the human implications of that mission,
• aligning our human resources and strategic plan accordingly.

We need to be super clear on why we are investing in certain things and not others, rather than introducing the next shiny thing to max out people’s bandwidth.

To have operational excellence in future-looking, high-impact HR organizations, I believe, requires us to:

• Focus on business – having business acumen necessary to understand and internalize what’s ahead; having technical knowledge to build a realistic support plan,
• Be nimble – having simple, stable people processes; having flexibility, adaptability and agility to respond to unforeseen dynamics,
• Leverage data and technology – having capability to access and monitor data; increasing self-reliance through the use of technology,
• Think beyond the immediate organization – having understanding of networks outside the immediate organization (ie. social media channels) to help build organizational brand.

If you have other thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, please do let us know. We would love to hear from you!

Good Morning Everyone,

As promised during our introduction on Monday, we share with you a short video of us speaking with the founders of TAD^® – Think.Act.Deliver, a strategy execution tool/ suite. We asked Carol Bubar, Director of Corporate Strategy and Bruno Lecoq, Chief Operating Officer for adaQuest, Inc. about strategy, why they saw a need for a product in the market, what differentiates TAD from competition, about the use and application.

I am sorry to report we also had a lot of fun behind the scenes and had to cut it to make sure the video is short enough for your consumption. 🙂

We hope this video gets you closer to the product and makes you curious about the methodology. For those interested in further information, we have strategic thinking and strategy execution workshops coming up in Seattle in September.

Enjoy!

Earlier this year, I wrote an article on LinkedIn regarding a new strategy execution tool we partnered to build with a mid-size technology firm in Seattle.

The tool is called TAD^® – Think.Act.Deliver. It’s a suite offering methodology, software, and consulting services, and built on a 3 step proven methodology business leaders and consultants can leverage to successfully design and implement all elements of a company’s strategy. TAD is designed by expert process engineers, who have vast industry experience in various technology firms (such as HP, Microsoft, and Boeing).

TAD recognizes and tries to solve for many common challenges we tend to witness in the world of vision realization, from strategy execution to project management, leadership focus issues to missed opportunities, and drive alignment across groups to effective change management. It brings a single handed solution via key best practice methodology to serve for all of those common issues, plus a technology platform and consulting services, where appropriate. It’s simple and yet comprehensive, it aspires to drive the right amount of structure and process for a given culture, and it serves across multiple audience groups such as Leadership Teams, Project Management Groups, and Functional Managers. No wonder it already has several clients shortly after its launch!

This solution may come in handy, especially for those colleagues who do not have strategy making or execution as their strong suit – it can really help you build stronger muscle, so to speak, in a relatively short amount of time, whether you’re a HR professional or other.

Tomorrow, we’ll share with you a short interview we conducted with the Founders of TAD so you can hear directly from them about the benefits. In the meantime, we are including a one pager right here. Please take a look and let us know if you have any questions. You can also check out our LinkedIn article.

Happy Friday All!

Today, we are featuring a new video, sharing some non-technical quick tips for first time managers.

Whether we take part in a small or large organization, we tend to know managers play a critical role in shaping employee’s everyday reality. What we don’t discuss much is how impactful of an opportunity this is to take part in and shape someone else’s development. Effective managers help build successful leaders and healthy organizations. It is vital we take the time necessary to invest in our managers, to educate and coach them around what it really means to be a manager.

By the virtue of this post, we would like to share with you a wonderful resource in parallel: a tool, a book on Manager On-boarding by a colleague, Sharlyn Lauby, feel free to check it out!

And please, let us know what other ‘unspoken’ topics you’d like us to cover when it comes to being a manager.

Remember: The more we share, the stronger we become as a community!

I was teaching a group of senior HR Executives at a top management school in India recently. Though our topic was ‘leveraging digital technology for business transformations,’ as we were discussing challenges about driving strategy in HR, we shifted to a lengthy conversation on analytics.

What does it mean for HR to have KPIs? How can we better quantify the outcome of our work? Should we be measuring our work in all aspects? Or else what should we build metrics against, etc.?

The truth is we need to start liking analytics. I know it’s easier for some of us to say that because we like numbers – I certainly do! But even if you’re not exactly a numbers person, when we’re talking about organizational effectiveness, should we not be measuring the return of our investments?

I also do not believe we have it any harder than any other function. I think, if anything, other functions have it harder when it comes to building and measuring KPIs. They’ve just been doing it longer and stronger…

Returning from India, I shared this short summary with our participants. I know it is only a teaser and there is so much more to be said about metrics and measures, but, well, there’s always another day… We’ll bring the topic back. ☺

Strategy. Boy, is that a powerful word. There are a million books written on strategy – how to think strategically, how to lead strategically, how to turn HR into strategic partners, etc. And yet, somehow, according to studies of Norton & Kaplan, only 30% of companies really understand strategy. Curious. What is it we’re doing (or not) that’s leading us to be strategic or nonstrategic?

In our function of HR, we have seen immense growth over the last 25 years. What started as an administrative function, powered by the demands of unions and welfare around the world, has become a true business partner over the course of a decade. That’s admirable.

That said, even with the evolution of Human Resources as a function, we continue to struggle to be seen as ‘value-adding’ partners. So, can we really learn to be strategic? I am a big believer that anyone can learn to do anything – if they truly BELIEVE and want to change. Therefore, my answer is, “Yes,” it is possible for HR Business Partners (HRBP) to become more strategic. For me, the question is more about how we see and pride ourselves as a function. Meaning, do we care enough to be a business partner first, then an HR expert? Or are we happy focusing exclusively on HR?

I am not convinced all of us want to be strategy partners in our roles. Our observation—through corporate and consulting work—is that there are HRBPs who genuinely want to understand what business does and serve them accordingly. Then there are HRBPs who care primarily about the processes, practices, and functions of HR. Then, there are those who are somewhere in-between, hesitant to admit and/or decide on a path.

The unfortunate truth about strategy is that it requires care and focus for longer periods of time. We need to manage short-term investments, while preparing the organization for longer haul outcomes. It’s imperative to take care of today’s people while building talent pipelines for the future. It is both impact and numbers driven, demanding data and reporting at all times. And, to make it even more fun(!), strategy is dynamic and ever-changing, so it requires flexibility and adaptability.

Now some of us find that fact very exciting. Many of us are vastly motivated by business opportunities and challenges. Then, there are many of us motivated by doing the work we do best. Both capabilities are equally necessary. I believe our challenge as a function is not to turn everyone in HR into a strategic partner. I think it’s to be strategic doing HR. That means understanding the business context we serve in, to define HR outcomes and organize our own HR resources accordingly to drive bottom line impact. If we know our HR talent—and who is great at driving strategy vs. operations vs. administration—we could organize our talent appropriately to meet the business requirements.

Going back to the original question of, “Can we really learn to be strategic in HR?” perhaps we need to evolve it to be, “Do we really want and need to be all strategic in HR?”