More than you want to know about HR

Here is a paper I wrote to be published, the likes of which are being contemplated by several editors in the form of "how many more ways can I say no to this guy?" But here it is for your reading enjoyment and so I can say I have been published, if nothing else on my own blog!
________________________________________________________

Nearly 20 years ago, I received my degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources and became part of my first HR team. Through these decades, I’ve seen HR professionals across all industries seeking something elusive – notoriety, recognition, support. Since I’ve been in HR, it has always been about getting “a seat at the table” – the chair, the voice, the seat, the nirvana of many HR professionals. Once there, we finally will have arrived. Right?

According to Webster’s dictionary, a profession is “a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation.” Using this definition, HR would need to possess a recognizable and distinct set of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be easily differentiated from other professions, much akin to lawyers, accountants and engineers. But these professions came to be in a completely different age, a completely different time. Different times call for different measures. These professions are separate and distinct departments from the core operations of the businesses they support, unless the business happens to be a law firm, accountancy or engineering firm. Their professionals take pride in the requirement to have a license to practice them. They base much of their credibility in business on their unique offering of skills and qualifications and on their distinction as being wholly different from any other part of the business.

Is that what HR really aspires to? We appear to be working diligently to progress down that path.

I don’t accept this traditional HR vision, and I don’t think that it’s best for our profession. Licenses and designations for HR are fine if their mission is to promote the very best HR practices. Admittedly most fulfill this role quite well. But I don’t believe we should be seeking to distinguish HR professionals from other business leaders as a means of gaining notoriety, recognition and “our seat”: because HR is a discipline for all of the business, not just those with full-time HR responsibilities or those with full license and designation to practice.

I believe most of my HR colleagues, like me, entered HR for a completely different reason. We didn’t join the HR department to incubate, develop and justify the development of HR as a profession. We weren’t after what consumes most of our HR trade journals pages and is the most widely discussed topic in HR today. Ah, finally HR will be the profession bravely envisioned by those personnel departments of the past. I didn’t seek a career in HR to gain membership to an exclusive HR organization, nor is it why I wake up with a passion for HR everyday. Rather, quite the opposite.

I don’t want a separation from the business I support. I don’t want to be a unique, differentiated and established profession. How can we possibly be seeking this objective when we are supposed to be partnering and aligning with the businesses we support? I just don’t see those paths as linked, or even as near parallels.

I’m not trying to earn notoriety and support for an HR seat at the table. Instead, I’m trying to grow closer to the business I support, trying to establish an indistinguishable alignment with the essence of the business and what it is trying to accomplish. That’s partnering. That’s value creation. And I believe that’s what the C-suite wants. Value creation comes from what HR does to support the business and align with it, not from being a separate profession of qualified HR professionals who began meagerly from personnel departments and have evolved to a larger necessary evil with an expanding portfolio of services to deliver to the business. In most businesses HR and the functions we execute are overhead – cost and expense to be managed, monitored and controlled – optimized at best, limited at worst.

Let me paint a very different picture of what I believe HR departments and professionals should be striving for. We should work toward becoming so intertwined and indistinguishable from our businesses that HR IS THE BUSINESS, and THE BUSINESS IS HR.

Now that’s an aspiration, mission and vision that I believe all HR professionals can get behind. We will encourage all leaders to take personal accountability for the most complex and dynamic business challenge in the world today – leading, managing, rewarding and engaging people. We’ll hone our collective expertise on the subject in a way that creates a business that cannot be replicated, a business whose competitive advantage can be sustained. Now that’s a leadership challenge that shouldn’t be reserved only for HR professionals or those so called people businesses. No, it’s a challenge for all leaders of all businesses, with HR professionals guiding, educating and leading the way.

Now, this message will likely come as a shock to some of my HR colleagues. I will be accused of over simplifying and generalizing the current state and mission of our HR profession, slighting the real views of my colleagues. But I’m doing it for a reason – because there is far more truth to what I’m saying than most HR professionals are willing to admit. We seem to believe that the establishment of HR as a separate and distinct profession will take us where we want to go, take us to where other professions are today, trusted and respected. I just don’t believe that to be true.

No separate seat at the table – all the seats at the table! Yes, CEO. Do you want to lead an organization? Then you have to be an HR professional. You’ll need the HR stamp in your leadership passport. It’s not a separate profession, but a fundamental business competence that is mandatory for business success. Without the HR stamp in your passport, entry into the boardroom will not be possible or at least ill advised because the business is likely to fail. This is true for the CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, etc. It’s time we created collaborative independence for our C-level colleagues, not separate dependence.

Passion

Passion is a marvelous thing. It can bring out the best and the worst in people. But whichever the case, it brings out people from their often otherwise muted feelings and personalities.

In some contexts passion is down right ugly, among the worst displays a person can reveal - anger, frustration, and revenge. But conversely it can be among the most magnetic, engaging and positive of all expressed emotion as well - love, excitement, happiness, laughter, optimistic.

So why then is passion something that is so forbidden in most personal and professional contexts. Why is it more often the shouldn't than the should? Can one imagine the world without passion, would we not lose one of the most human of all expressions in emotion. The catalyst of nearly all things human?

They haven't yet (and I say yet) created any non-living creature that has passion. Other animals may display emotion also, but not nearly to the degree of people. We have been provided with many gifts to display our emotions:

Eyes: The window to the soul. Many times our emotions can be seen through our eyes.
Mouth: We can often speak passionately via the tone/volume we use. Language and words also play an important role in passion served via our mouth.
Ears: Hearing emotion is easy. Just imagine yourself on the phone when you've heard passion in what others are saying.
Nose/Tongue: I won't go so far as saying that these can't be utilized to show emotion and will just leave it at that.

I've taken this farther than I intended but just am interested in why passion is such a taboo when it oftentimes is what makes leaders (and followers) of people, and which more than perhaps any other quality, defines us as human. Isn't that a good thing?

Discuss.

Ed on Why Our Dad is Awesome

Good story Brad, and one that I'm sure Marc and I could offer parallel stories that support the Dad fame of "it's never too old to take care of".

This is one area where as brothers we probably all have a slightly different take on Dad and his all his qualities, we each admire them none the less. The same is true of Mom, but perhaps that is a later post.

Back to your post, lawn mower maintenance is one of the few forays that you haven't explored in your handyman nature. You have a woodworking shop in the fifth stall of your six stall garage, and have more tools (properly placed I might add) than I can even identify or name.

Marc, in some contrast, has more of a McGyver mentality and has a way of fixing, repairing and replacing things with nothing more than his Leatherman and a paper clip. How he's done the things he has with the tools he has in his box (not garage, but a box) is beyond me.

Now me, I'm a bit of a poser. I have a work bench, vice, and tools strung all over the place. I like gear and I have a lot of tools to show for my limited use of them. I'm a left handed cog in a right handed wheel when it comes to handyman matters. While I pride myself on having a pretty impressive mower I've also outsourced maintenance of said machine. Why? For the same reasons Brad listed.

But I also don't achieve the threshold of competence when it comes to anything "handyman" that my two younger brethren are known for. Both Marc and Brad piss more handyman skills in a day than I have reasonably acquired over my lifetime. Yes, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder over that. But it is, none the less, a true statement.

So, whether it's the two wheel pick up truck stories, the limb cutting activities, or the general reputation I have for utilizing family labor for all of my blue collar duties, I have built a reputation in my family of not knowing the difference between a straight slot and Phillips screwdriver. Some of my reputation is earned, and some it is ... well ... you can judge for yourself.

Why our Dad is awesome

For about a month Dad was fixated on cleaning up and preparing my mowers for the season. I'm sure in no small part due to his knowledge that I do little to nothing in terms of maintenance on these machines. Why don't I maintain my mowers...part lack of expertise, part lack of time, and a big dose of not caring that much. Due to the inconvenience of working on them at my house (another story for another time) he picked them up a couple weeks ago, took them home and worked them over, and returned them to me a few days later.

On Saturday, since the weather was beautiful I pulled my riding lawnmower out of my garage, engaged the blades and prepared to start mowing. This is where it starts to get interesting...

As I pull forward and turn to go alongside the house, my hands slip off the steering wheel and I darn near run right into the side of the house. WHY YOU ASK??? Because Dad has put so much Armor All on the wheel I can hardly grip it to steer. Of course he had to do it so that the black steering wheel was not outshone by the fresh coat of wax on the shiny green body of my 10 year old Craftsman lawn tractor.

I made sure my grip was secure and I mowed my lawn. Of note, the mower ran as smoothly as it has since I purchased it 10 years ago. I'm in no position to complain about the service from Big Al's Mower Maintenance!

Ed on God's Debris

It's surprising that such a message "a conversation can never be useless" could come from someone who so sarcastically writes a comic strip. That was shocking to me when I read your blog. According to Scott Adams of Dilbert fame almost all conversations are useless, at least in the office context.

And one other point to make - sometimes the most gracious way of giving someone some of your precious time is by listening, not conversing/speaking. That might be an even better way to show respect, courtesy and appreciation. After all, we've all heard the saying "there is a reason why God gave you two ears and only one mouth".

God's Debris

On my reading list was God's Debris by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame). It is neither about Dilbert nor comedic. It is a self described "thought experiment" and tells a twisting story of a old man who knows everything. Its a little too nebulous for me, but there is a particular passage I enjoyed...

"Conversation is more than a sum of the words. it is also a way of signaling the importance of another person by showing your willingness to give that person your rarest resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce. Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless."

For the next few hours the old man revealed more of his ingredients for successful social living. Express gratitude. Give more than expected. Speak optimistically. Touch people. Remember names. Don't confuse flexibility with weakness. Don't judge people by their mistakes. Remember that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will not be useful to anyone else.

Go Blue Devils!

If Duke wins I will get 1st or 2nd in my office pool. I can't believe it, but I'm rooting for the Dukies!