HR Leaders of the Future - Richard Goff

CIPD's Lee Sears and Tesco HRD Hayley Tatum gave an excellent session yesterday on 'Building a new generation of HR Leaders'.

"We don't need to spend any more time asking big, unhelpful questions about HR's value," said Lee; those battles have been won. And nor do organisations need "HR doing seminal work but sitting out of context as a specialist function", as in some organisations most affected by the Crash, where "much of HR's value was engineered out by virtue of the structure." Instead, Lee pithily summed up the purpose of HR as: "To help business be successful now and in the future."

Warming to his theme, Lee added: "First and foremost HR is an applied business discipline that looks long-term and does unique things for the business - which it absolutely understands." A good example of this came from was a CEO of part of Standard Chartered, who said of his HRD that he "understands customer-centred banking better than any banker I'd ever met." How this works in practice, Lee suggested, was for HR to contribute "a few big perspectives and potent insights virtually nobody else can see and the savvy and lightness of touch to deliver on these."

But Lee warned: "If you don't love the interface between business, context and people, you'll become increasingly marginalised as a professional." He added: "HR has become a very internally-focused discipline whereas grasping the macro-economic and societal climate is the way to work out whether your business is awake or not." HR can be the perfect 'Minister without Portfolio', with a roving brief to analyse what's going to impact next on the organisation.

Lee gave a great example of this, citing Walker's Crisps, where the HR team spotted before anyone else that societally, obesity was increasingly becoming a hot potato. At the time, only the Iraq War generated more debate online, and NGOs with a strong share of voice were demanding change. And yet every 'formal' indicator at Walker's suggested the business was going to perform well, and that there was no burning reason to rethink the products or how they were marketed. HR pulled together the relevant data, made the argument and organised the innovative talent it knew in the organisation to address an issue it knew would filter through to both brand equity and the bottom line were it not tackled.

This also showed, Lee explained, how HR needs to be 'boundaryless' - "not defined by your roles and reponsibilities, but stepping out of your brief to act on the insight HR uniquely has." This, of course, "demands a different way of thinking about being a leader." 

So what should the next generation of HR leaders concentrate on? Lee's view is that there are four strategic roles "that, if you're disproportionately good at, you have a good chance of being an HR leader: Living Strategist; Organisational Steward; Cultural Engineer; and Insight Creator." As for personal competencies, resourcefulness, acting as partner and provocateur, and showing purpose, humility and resolve are the key elements.  

This will enable HR Leaders to "Keep the organisation alert - not least to the unintended consequences of what they're doing. It's not just about survey monkeying the organisation to death."

In my next blog, we'll look at Tesco's take on some of these issues.

Richard Goff