Musings |
I have played this game with CEOs I’ve coached and it’s clearly not a game. It is an assessment of where you are now and how you might essentially reconstruct your future based on what is working and what is not working to get you to your goals.
Simple and profound, the exercise can be used in many situations. Here’s an example of what I’m suggesting and one I am deeply committed to.
I believe that Human Resources in organizations is undervalued and under-budgeted too often. What might they take on that would shift this to empower themselves?
STOP: Pretending your tools and assessments are working to produce the results senior executives expect you to produce. If you haven’t re-assessed them (your tools and assessments) in two or more years, there’s a very good chance they are out of sync with your needs. Put it into your strategy to look more deeply at what you need to assess and where you could get a better ROI, better validity, and therefore better employee engagement for instance.
START: Asking really good questions at senior executive meetings and everywhere, but particularly with senior executives. Why? Because already knowing answers to important questions is a hall pass to more of the same. The new normal is being comfortable with not knowing, and bringing curiosity to every conversation that matters.
CONTINUE: Caring deeply about how people are treated by management and how they treat each other. And if you are an HR professional who doesn’t feel that the human element of your business is sufficiently valued, perhaps you should dust off your resume and go find a company to work for who cares as deeply about people as you do.
David Haines, the former CEO of Grohe, a global sanitary fittings company, is a senior leader you would want to work for as an HR professional. I say that because he said, “We have two crown jewels. The first is the brand. The Grohe brand is renowned, in this industry and worldwide, for its quality, its technology, and its design. The second crown jewel—and the one that, as I’ve been CEO now for more than ten years, I appreciate more and more—is the people that I work with. Whether it’s in leadership functions, in manufacturing functions, whatever function around the globe. I’m not just paying lip service to this. We really try to make sure that we have the best people for the job, in the right location. Where we have great people, we often have great results.”
OK, your turn. What might your organization, or you personally stop, start, and continue? Don’t hold back! Share your insights.
