When we perceive the simple center in the seemingly complex, we
can change our world in powerful new ways.
Albert Einstein perceived the simple E=MC2 in the complexities
of physical reality and changed the history of the 20th century.
Big Daddy Lipscomb, the Baltimore Colts 300 pound all-pro tackle
in the 1960s perceived the simple center of what was perceived
to be the complex game of football. “I just wade into players,”
he said, “until I come to the one with the ball. Him I keep!”
— and changed the way the game was played.
Likewise, human resources, despite its complex activities,
should have a fundamentally simple mission, yet it is a mission
that is being neglected by many HR professionals. I call that
mission the Leadership Imperative — helping the organization
recruit, retain, and develop good leaders.
Clearly, without good leaders, few organizations can thrive over
the long run. What characterizes a good leader? A good leader
consistently gets results — in ethical and motivational ways.
Because they interact with all business functions and usually
provide education and training for those functions, human
resource professionals should be focused primarily on recruiting,
retaining, and developing leaders that get results. Any other
focus is a footnote.
Yet working with human resource leaders in a variety of companies
for the past two decades, I find that many of them are stumbling.
Caught up in the tempests of downsizing, compliance demands,
acquisitions, mergers, and reorganizations, they are engaged in
activities that have little to do with their central mission.
Ignoring or at least giving short shrift to the Leadership
Imperative, they are too often viewed, especially by line
leaders, as carrying out sideline endeavors.
Many HR leaders have nobody to blame for this situation but
themselves. By neglecting the Imperative, they themselves
have chosen to be sideline participants.
Here is a three-step action plan to get the HR function off
the sidelines and into the thick of the game.
Recognize. Link. Execute.
Before I elaborate each step, let me define leadership as it
ought to be. For your misunderstanding leadership will thwart
you in applying the Imperative.
The word “leadership” comes from old Norse word-root meaning “to
make go.” Indeed, leadership is about making things go — making
people go, making organizations go. But the misunderstanding
comes in when leaders fail to understand who actually makes what
go. Leaders often believe that they themselves must make things
go, that if people must go from point A to point B, let’s say,
that they must order them to go. But order leadership founders
today in fast-changing, highly competitive markets.
In this environment, a new kind of leadership must be cultivated
— leadership that aims not to order others to go from point A to
point B — but instead that aims to motivate them to want take
the leadership in going from A to B.
That “getting others to lead others” is what leadership today
should be about. And it is what we should inculcate in our
clients. We must challenge them to lead, lead for results with
this principle in mind, and accept nothing else from them but
this leadership.
Furthermore, leadership today must be universal. To compete
successfully in highly competitive, fast changing markets,
organizations must be made up of employees who are all leaders
in some way. All of us have leadership challenges thrust upon
us many times daily. In the very moment that we are trying to
persuade somebody to take action, we are a leader — even if
that person we are trying to persuade is our boss. Persuasion
is leadership. Furthermore, the most effective way to succeed
in any endeavor is to take a leadership position in that
endeavor.
The Imperative applies to all employees. Whatever activities
you are being challenged to carry out, make the Imperative a
lens through which you view those activities. Have your clients
recognize that your work on the behalf of their leadership will
pay large dividends toward advancing their careers.
Recognize: Recognize that recruiting, retaining, and developing
good leaders ranks with earnings growth (or with nonprofit
organizations: mission) in terms of being an organizational
necessity. So most of your activities must be in some way
tied to the Imperative.
For instance: HR executive directors who want to develop courses
for enhancing the speaking abilities of their companies’ leaders
often blunder in the design phase. Not recognizing the
Leadership Imperative, they err by describing them as
“presentation courses.” Instead, if they were guided by the
Imperative, they would offer courses on “leadership talks.”
There is a big difference between presentations and leadership
talks. Presentations communicate information. Presentation
courses are a dime a dozen. But leadership talks motivate
people to believe in you and follow you. Leaders must speak
many times daily — to individuals or groups in a variety of
settings. When you provide courses to help them learn practical
ways for delivering effective talks, to have them speak better
so that they can lead better, you are benefitting their job
performance and their careers.
Today, in most organizations, the presentation is the
conventional method of communication. But when you make the
leadership talk the key method by instituting “talk” courses
and monitoring and evaluation systems broadly and deeply
within the organization, you will help make your company
more effective and efficient.
Link: Though such recognition is the first step in getting off
the sidelines, it won’t get you into the game. To get into the
center of things, you must link your activities with results.
Not your results — their results.
Clearly, your clients are being challenged to get results:
sales’ closes, operations efficiencies, productivity advances,
etc. Some results are crucial. But other results are absolutely
indispensable. Your job is to help your clients achieve their
results, especially the indispensable results. You must be
their “results partner.” Furthermore, you must help them get
sizable increases in those results. The results that they get
with your help should be more than the results that they would
have gotten without your help.
For instance, when developing company-wide objectives for
leadership talks, you should not aim to have participants win
a speaking “beauty contests” but instead to speak so that they
motivate others to get increases in measured results. When you
change the focus of the courses from speaking appearance to the
reality of results, you change the participants’ view of and
commitment to the courses and also their view of and commitment
to you in providing those courses. So have the participants
define their indispensable results and link the principles
and processes they learned in the course to getting measured
increases in those results.
Execute: It’s not enough to recognize. It’s not enough to link.
You must execute. “Execute” comes from a Latin root exsequi
meaning “to follow continuously and vigorously to the end or
even to ‘the grave.’” Let’s capture if not the letter at least
the spirit of this lively root by insuring that your activities
on behalf of your clients are well “executed,” that they are
carried out vigorously and continuously in their daily work
throughout their careers. If those activities are helping
them get results, you are truly their “results partner.”
For instance, in regard to the leadership talk courses, HR
professionals can lead an “initiative approach.” At the
conclusion of the course, each participant selects an initiative
to institute back on the job. The aim of each initiative is to
get sizable increases in their indispensable results by using
the principles and processes that they learned.
The initiatives and their results should be concrete and
measurable, such as productivity gains, increases in sales,
operations efficiencies, and reduced cycle times.
The participants should be challenged to get increases in
results above and beyond what they would have gotten without
having taken the course. They should be challenged to get
those increases within a mutually agreed upon time, such as
quarterly reports.
In fact, if the participants don’t achieve an increase in
results that translates to at least ten times what the course
costs, they should get their money back.
Don’t stop there. Getting an increase in results is not the end
of the course, it should be the beginning — the beginning of a
new phase of getting results, the stepping up phase. The more
results participants achieve, the more opportunities they have
created to achieve even more results. The leadership talk
course should have methods for instituting results’ step-ups.
One such method can be a quarterly leadership-talk round table.
Participants who graduate from the course meet once a quarter to
discuss the results they have gotten and provide best practices
for getting more. Human resources should organize, direct and
facilitate the round tables. In this way, the results the
leaders are getting should increase quarter after quarter.
When HR professionals promote such leadership talk courses,
courses that are linked to getting increases in indispensable
results and that come with the “results guarantee,” those
professionals are truly seen as results partners in their
organizations.
I have used the leadership talk as an example of how you can
greatly enhance your contributions to the company by applying
the Leadership Imperative. Don’t just apply the Imperative to
such courses alone. Apply it to whatever challenge confronts
you.
When you recognize how that challenge can be met through the
Imperative, when you link the challenge to getting increases
in measured results, and when you execute for results, you can
transform your function.
You don’t have to be as distinguished as Einstein or as awesome
as Big Daddy Lipscomb, but you will in your individual way
perceive the simple, powerful center of things. You’ll be in
the thick of the most important game your company is playing
— helping change your world and the world of your clients.
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2004 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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