HR Unplugged

Unplugged from business partner think, a concept rapidly receding in HR’s rear-view mirror.  Abandoning, jettisoning all mundane perceptions of HR as “supporting” the business.  Instead, HR subversively driving epic business results.

The helping professions have hurt HR.  Nurses support physicians, paramedics support emergency room docs, dental assistants support dentists.  HR supports the business.  Mindset changes take time, if they happen at all.

Reading a financial statement, workforce analytics, technical competence . . . the price of admission.  When a profession starts to get commoditized, it’s time to innovate.

HR must drive transformational, not incremental change.  Focus on:

• Talent marketing and employee branding, not succession planning
• Mission- Critical roles, not employee performance management
• Multi-dimensional Talent pipelines (FTE’s, Contractors, vendors, strategic partners, consultants), not job families
• Talent search agents, not competencies
• Data hunting, not metrics
• Talent planning, not headcount planning
• Collaborative learning on-the-fly, with user-enriched content, not formal learning
• Integration, conversation, collaboration . . . not silo’d, confined, disjointed effort

The game changing play is to fly above the radar, constantly on the brink of crashing . . . transforming the organization through simplification.

Simplistic is easy, almost natural,  . . . simplicity . . .  complex, often daunting.  The goal is to leverage the simplification of HR programs as catalyst.  Simplicity is not the counterpoint of complexity, it is complexity refined.  In fact, when you deliver on your promise consistently and accurately to a specific need, you become the only solution in your target audience’s mind.