There is a television program called Undercover Boss where the owner or a high executive of a company goes undercover in various positions within their own company to understand its operation. Regardless of the quality of the show, nothing would be more valuable for the company than for an HR Director to perform each role within the company, including customer and supplier experiences, for at least one full day.
The ultimate purpose would not only be to empathize with the worker (although that is also important) but to gain firsthand experience of what is promoting or hindering the company’s success from the human resources team, as well as a comprehensive understanding of the entire business process and its elements.
Keys to Making HR a Strategic Partner in the Company
The HR leader must deeply understand what the company needs, not necessarily what the company demands.
They must see beyond their own department and be capable of having a deep vision of the business that allows them to perfectly understand the connection between the company’s ultimate goal and its human capital.
In other words, it is not the company that sets the parameters for the human team that will lead it to success and HR’s role is to select it, but HR who designs the necessary human team in obvious synergy with the company to achieve its objectives.
They Need to Transition from Being an Organizer to a Strategist
An organizer arranges given elements to fulfill a function. A strategist organizes but also creates the necessary conditions to achieve victory with a vision focused on results.
Organizing involves minimal risk, and its outcomes are predictable and limited.
Strategy entails the risk of continuous decision-making, adaptation, and change, but its impact on results can be much greater.
The organizer often does not understand why they are asked to execute an action; they simply do it as part of the machinery.
The strategist decides which cogs are necessary, where, when, and how, and instructs the organizer. To fulfill this strategic key, it is necessary to have already met the key of understanding the company.
They Need to Design a Human Structure with Organic, Not Mechanical, Principles
We often refer to the company as a “machine”; I myself have talked about cogs. However, every company, including the most technological or mechanical ones we can imagine, ultimately depends on its human team, which is an organic and social system.
A mechanical system is closed, limited, and difficult to modify, transform, or adapt.
An organic system is symbiotic, adaptive, evolutionary, regenerative.
Designing the structure and each role with an organic foundation of operation is fundamental, but it will not be achieved without meeting the previous two keys.
To be a strategic partner, a significant part of the company’s success must rest on that partner; if it is not, or if it is not perceived that way, it is not strategic.
There will be HR managers who prefer to remain “personnel managers,” and there will be a generation of HR leaders who take on the risk, responsibility, and consequences of leading their companies to new heights of success with their strategic vision of their professional role.