I was reading Deloitte's thoughtful 2017 Global Human Capital Trends study recently and it occurred to me that organizations that successfully transform to adapt to the unprecedented change in our business ecosystems will be ones where visionary and skilled HR leaders help drive change. At its core, it's people whose actions or inactions will ultimately determine whether companies to win or lose.
So is this era of unprecedented change really that dire? As the Deloitte study points out, only 12% of the Fortune 500 in 1955 are still in business today. In the past year alone, 26% of the companies on the Fortune 500 fell off the list. We see industry shifting plays emerge such as Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods that should give C-level executives and their boards across many industries pause. What industry shifting plays will emerge next? Can they adapt and transform fast enough?
Perhaps never before has HR been in a position to truly become the important strategic player that has been prognosticated about for over a decade. That said, HR organizations that become strategic drivers of organizational transformation will need to be different than the traditional models of today. Here are a few examples:
- Business skills need to improve - Lifelong HR people will become (except for some transactional HR areas like payroll) fewer and far between as innovative organizations seek talent with broader business backgrounds & experience especially in analytics, marketing (think employment branding) and behavior sciences.
- Ability to lead cross-functional teams - As organizations move to more initiative-based teams vs the traditional hierarchical structures, the right HR talent should play leadership roles - vs just being "on the team" - bringing business acumen as well as skills such as organizational change management, culture development, new workforce models and design thinking to the table.
- Acquiring HR talent with thought leadership - The challenge many CHRO's will face is acquiring and developing the diverse skills that the HR organization of the future will require. After all, they need to convince talented candidates that HR can be in a position to drive business impact similar to "front line" roles and that signing up for this path will offer attractive opportunities to pursue other prominent career area's down the road.
As someone who's passionate about Talent, it will be interesting to see CHRO's step up to this challenge. Lazlo Bock, the former CHRO at Google, truly was an innovator in his approach to human capital and certainly contributed to the success that Google has had in a diverse set of businesses. Who will be the next set of visionaries?