“Talking Talent with the CEO”

…Human Resources and C-Level executives not on the same page!

Charles H. Bishop, Jr., PhD

Issue 1-…A small change can start to get Human Resources that seat at the table !

Overall mission of these posts: I would like to provide a path forward for organizations; in building a significantly better, more secure future for employees, shareholders and customers by attending to talent management…’talking talent with the CEO’–that is end-state of what needs to occur.

I truly believe that this is the time for Human Resources to follow a path similar to CFO’s and the head of Supply Chain have forged in the past twenty years.  Both of these disciplines now are seen as central to the success of most organizations and have ‘retooled’ themselves.  HR must get on the same page as the senior team–if not, the results will continue to be frustrating.

“On the same page”: The perception for HR and C-Level executives is ‘different’ in a number of ways:

What works: Our bias is that providing good services is the price of admission; if HR cannot operate effectively as a mini business, it is hard to convince others that its input on a variety of business issues is worth much.

In summary: This is both a skill set and ‘head-set’ issue. It is clear that HR is ‘out of sync’ with what is truly valued by Executive Management.  The time is right for HR to play a key role in business strategy development and implementation. Talent and talent management considerations are central to strategy formulation and implementation. We intend to address those issues in future posts.

How does HR discover what the needs are and then execute against those needs?  We have found that creating a Leadership Development Board is a powerful way to get HR closer to the information needed to be successful. There are always two or three members of the executive team who ‘get it’ and fully understand the issue of talent and want to engage to ‘fix’ the present situation.

Court them, create a coalition with them, add a few influential others–a senior financial officer surely helps…and have them provide direction to the HR staff about ‘needs’. I’ll provide substantial details later. This is a simple step…but, a solid start.

Then, execute very well…and, doors will open for HR!

Next up: …dealing with the most egregious boulder–Bad Data!