The OD Quest: Part 6 – In the wonderland of HR Business Partners!

"I don’t have an opening in my OD team now. But, you can join our recruitment team and do recruitment in the OD way”, I heard the Senior HR Leader telling a candidate who was hell-bent on joining the OD team. This was my fifth ‘encounter’ with this gentleman (See 'Passion for work and anasakti ‘, 'Appropriate metaphors for organizational commitment ‘ ,‘To name or not to name, that is the question’ and ‘A Mathematical approach to HR’ for the outcomes of my previous interactions with him).

I was a bit taken aback by what I just heard. I knew that often these kind of ‘solutions’ will end in tears or worse. However, similar to what had happened during my previous encounters with him, this interaction forced me to think a bit more deeply about the underlying issue - the application of OD(Organization Development) to the various functional areas in HR (Human Resource Management). That, in turn, has prompted me to write this series of posts on 'The OD Quest' where we will look at the possibilities  that arise when OD ventures into other parts of the people management terrain.

In the first post in this series (see The OD Quest: Part 1- Mapping the terrain) we did a cartography of the Human Resources (HR) and Organization Development (OD) domains to map out the current world (the terrain) inhabited by HR and OD and also the evolving worldviews in HR and OD (ways of looking at the terrain). In the second post (see The OD Quest Part 2 : Doing Recruitment in the OD way) we made a visit to the land of Recruitment and explored the value OD can add to Recruitment. In the third post (see The OD Quest: Part 3 – Rendezvous with L&D) we covered the Rendezvous with L&D. In the fourth post we saw how OD can sweeten Rewards and make it ‘Total Rewards’ (see The OD Quest: Part 4 – Totally Rewarding). In the fifth post, we explored a domain (Industrial Relations) that has often been considered as the antithesis of OD (see The OD Quest: Part 5 - Face to face with the antithesis?). In this post let’s take our quest to the wonderland of HR Business Partners(HRBPs) and see what are the possibilities for mutual value addition. 

There are a wide range of HR roles that go by the HR Business Partner (HRBP) title. For the purpose of our discussion, let us focus mainly on ‘pure’ HRBPs – HRBPs whose role is that of being a strategic business partner - to the business they are supporting. This would mean that they are supposed to have very little or no transactional /operational HR responsibilities. So these roles (HR roles that don't do 'usual HR work') are some sort of freaks of evolution*- in the evolution of the HR function. As they don't have too many operational responsibilities, the pure strategic HRBPs tend to gravitate towards the business transformation, strategic workforce planning, employee engagement and culture building kind of work. This brings them closer to OD. 

The other kind of HRBPs, who have more operational roles (who focus on employee life cycle management) would  have another kind of overlap with OD. These HRBPs (HR Operations Managers) are closer to action (they are often embedded in the business they are supporting) and hence they are in a great position to know the pulse of the organization which is very essential for the diagnosis, solution design and implementation of OD initiatives.

The traditional distinction between HRBPs and OD has been that the specialists (including OD specialists) are supposed to do the design part and the generalists (HRBPs) are supposed to do the implementation part. In reality, these boundaries are fuzzy. Design can't happen in a vacuum (e.g. only based on underlying theory/principles and external best practices). Design has to be based on an accurate diagnosis of the organization context. HRBPs are closer to the context as compared to OD managers. Business relationship management is a key part of the HRBP role and this also gives them an opportunity to build close working relationships with the business leaders. So the diagnosis for OD initiatives is best done in partnership with the HRBPs. Also the partnership with HRBPs would make the OD designs more implementable. Similarly implementation can’t be done effectively without a deep understanding of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of what is being implemented. This means that the HRBPs should work closely with the OD managers for carrying out their job effectively.  

I have seen 3 common modes of partnership that HRBPs have with OD Managers: 


1. I will do all interfacing with MY businesses leaders!! I will call you if I need OD help!
2. Do your work directly with the business leaders. Just don't create any trouble or additional work for me or my team!!
3. Let's work jointly on this!

Based on the discussion above, it is clear that the mode 3 is the most effective one. This brings us to the important question of why (if this is such an obvious choice for both the parties involved) mode 3 is not always adopted. To me, the most important issues here are related to trust, perceived value addition and sharing of credit.

For any partnership (including HRBP - OD partnership) to work both the parties should derive net value from the partnership (the benefits should be more than the costs/investment). If the HRBPs perceive that the OD Manager brings in a certain deep expertise that would be beneficial in meeting the HRBP deliverables and that the OD Managers won’t create  unwanted issues for the HRBPs, HRBPs would be keen to partner with OD Managers. A track record of consistent value addition creates trust and credibility. Similarly if the OD Managers perceive that the HRBPs can help in contracting with the business leaders, in  diagnosis, solution design & implementation and in sustaining the results, they would be keen to partner with the HRBPs. Yes, this would also mean that OD Managers should invest time in building/enhancing the OD skills of HRBPs by giving conceptual inputs, training on tools and by working together. Once the net value addition,  trust and credibility is established then it is easier to tackle the issue of sharing of credit. Of course, if HRBPs and OD Managers have different reporting lines both of them can claim ‘full credit’!

Where does this leave us?

In OD, scalability and the organization-wide impact and sustaining the new patterns of working post the OD initiative  are the most difficult challenges. Since OD would always be a small team, building OD skills in the HRBPs (in both the strategic and operational HRBPs, may be at different levels of proficiency depending on the nature of their job/involvement in OD initiatives) can help in scalability and organization-wide impact (beyond doing isolated ‘hit and run’ Interventions). Again, working jointly with the HRBPs would help in better diagnosis, solution design, implementation and sustaining the results of OD initiatives. Similarly, effective partnership with OD Managers can help the HRBPs to  build skills, climb the value chain, created differentiated value for the business they are supporting and develop the credibility to be true strategic business partners (See nature abhors vacuum for what could happen when the transactional responsibilities are removed from HR Managers). Of course, this also means that OD Managers should develop a very deep technical expertise in OD coupled with business understanding so that the HRBPs would have a logical reason to get them involved. Again, OD Managers, being relative outsiders, are in a better position to surface certain difficult issues with the business leaders and to have courageous conversations’’ with  business leaders that the HRBPs, being embedded in the business, might find more difficult to pull off (See OD Managers as Court Jesters for a related discussion)!

In a way, the separation between the OD and  HRBP roles are arbitrary with the strategic/pure HRBP roles gravitating towards the business transformation, strategic workforce planning, employee engagement and culture building kind of work that very much overlaps with the traditional OD domains. In one of my previous companies, people like me who were on OD roles were moved to HRBP roles worldwide as it was felt that the HRBP roles require an OD kind of skill set. Also, I  have seen many senior HR generalists do the kind of great process facilitation/ process consulting work with business leadership teams that would make any OD specialist proud. But usually these HR leaders don't call it OD and they don't talk too much about it - may be because they see it as a very natural part of their job and may be also because they don't want to annoy the 'designated OD specialists' in the organization!

Thus, the HRBP-OD partnership can be highly beneficial for both the parties involved. The key requirement is to address the key issues of perceived value addition, trust and sharing of credit as we have seen earlier! 

Any comments/thoughts before we take our OD quest to the next domain in the HR land?!

*Note: Freaks occur in the course of biological evolution also. But they are unlikely to create much of a problem as they usually don't live long enough to reproduce. However since HRBPs can (and do) survive long enough in organizations to create (hire/develop) more HRBPs, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at them and their world - especially in terms of the intersection with the world of Organization Development.

A political paradox for OD & HR

“This is a political issue and we should resolve it politically”, said the senior consultant. I heard this interesting piece of ‘wisdom’ at an early stage in my career as an OD/HR consultant and it had left me somewhat confused.

I knew that as external consultants one of our main tasks was to diagnose the core issue/root problem correctly (as opposed to merely documenting the symptoms) so that we can design an intervention at the appropriate level. I also knew that ‘workplace politics’ existed in many of our client organizations. What confused me was the part that said ‘we should resolve it politically’. ‘Organizational politics’ was a ‘bad’ word for me at that time – something that incompetent people do to further their selfish motives – something that we as external  consultants should keep a safe distance from. So the suggestion that we should use political means to resolve the issue alarmed me. Over the last decade, I have developed a better understanding of the paradoxical nature of organizational politics and its implications for anyone who wants to lead/facilitate change in business organizations. 

As we have seen earlier (see 'Paradox of business orientation of HR'), a paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to be in conflict with one another. Let us look at some of these opinions about organizational politics.

1. Politics is essentially about power. Any activity that reinforces or alters the existing power balance in a relationship, group or organization is a political activity. Organization development(OD) is about facilitating change. To make change happen power needs to be exercised and hence all Organization Development is essentially political.

2. Politics is based on informal power - power that is not officially sanctioned. Hence politics is illegitimate in the organization context.

3. A large part of the work in any organization takes place through the 'informal organization' (informal channels that are not captured in the organization structure/job descriptions/chart of authority/operating manual). Keeping this in mind, one can't claim that organization politics is illegitimate just because it is based on informal power.

4. Organization politics is undesirable as it is all about pursuing selfish interests.

5. Organization politics need not be about pursuing selfish interests. It is necessary in order to secure resources and further ideas in an organization. Both ‘bad politics’ (characterized by impression management, deceit, manipulation and coercion) and ‘good politics’ (characterized by awareness, creativity, innovation, informed judgment, and critical self-monitoring) exist in organizations.  

6. A good organization culture can eliminate organizational politics

7. Politics will be present in any group of human beings. The only way to avoid politics is to define and enforce detailed rules and procedures for all activities and interactions among the employees. This would be very difficult to do in most organizations and this would get more difficult when uncertain and fast changing business environment requires organizations to be dynamic and rapidly evolving. When an organization is in transition there won’t be clearly established rules/procedures and hence politics will become more prevalent. Since organizations are likely to spend increasing amounts of time in the ‘transition state’(because of the multiples waves of change), politics will become even more prevalent.
8. Politics is a social construct. Hence the behaviors that are perceived to be 'politcal' in one organization might not be perceived as 'political' in another organization.

So where does this leave us? I think that organization politics is  a reality and any one driving or facilitating change in an organization (like a business leader or an HR/OD professional) need to develop an accurate understanding of the power structure and political dynamics of the organization. One of the key reasons why many of the change efforts fail (and why many of the consultants’ reports/recommendations gather dust without getting implemented) is that they didn’t pay sufficient attention to the political dynamics of the organization. As Human Resource Management (HR) professionals move from transactional roles to more consultative/'change agent like' roles, they need to develop the ability to naviagte the 'polical waters' of the orgnization better. Again, if the change facilitators don't pay attention to the political dynamics, they might end up as ‘pawns in the political game’ or even as ‘sacrificial lambs in the political battle’

I also think that both formal and informal influence needs to be used to maximize the chances of the change effort's success. This will become increasingly critical as the organizations become more fluid (with less rigidly/clearly defined procedures) and dynamic (fast changing with higher degree of uncertainty both externally and internally).

However, I feel that the OD consultant should not ‘play politics’ (i.e. become a political activist) as that would mean driving a political agenda/imposing the consultant’s agenda on the organization. This goes back to the ‘process consulting’ foundations of OD where the consultant’s role is to enable the organization to solve its problems (and to increase its problem solving capability) as opposed to providing solutions. Yes, I agree that all HR/OD consulting need not be process consulting and that the dividing line between the mandate of the HR/OD initiative/project and the political agenda of the consultant (especially internal consultant) is not always clear.

Hence, my current thinking is that the change facilitator/change leader should gather data on the political dynamics of the organization (power structure, various clusters of interests and their assumptions/world view/agenda/unstated concerns, interrelationships among the various clusters etc.) and leverage the same to improve diagnosis, solution design and implementation. This includes presenting (at appropriate times/stages) relevant data on the conflicting assumptions/interests without taking sides. This can also reduce the relevance of politics by making relevant parts of the informal (unstated/implicit) elements of the organization dynamics more formal (stated/explicit). This is not unlike a psychoanalyst helping a patient to be more psychologically healthy by enabling the patent to make some of the relevant parts of the unconscious more conscious (and hence better integrated). Most managers consider politics as a routine part of organizational life - though they might not talk about it openly. Hence, incorporating (without any negative associations) discussions/training on 'understanding and managing the political dimension of change' in the change management intervention, will give the leaders/managers a legitimate platform and skills to surface, talk about and deal with this dimension thereby increasing the probability of the successful implementation of the change.  

Another relevant analogy is the approach for incorporating feelings and emotions into the decision-making process. Feelings and emotions are real – though they might not be rational – and hence they can’t be ignored.  However, ‘making decisions based on emotions’ is not desirable, from an effectiveness point of view. We can improve the quality of our decisions by gathering data on the emotions/feelings of the stakeholders/ourselves (including impact of the various decisions/possible options on the feelings/emotions of the stakeholders) and using the same to inform our diagnosis, solution design and implementation. Similarly, we can improve the effectiveness of our change interventions (diagnosis, solution design and implementation) by leveraging the data on the political dynamics of the organization without ‘playing politics’. Yes, this is a tightrope walk that requires very high degree of self awareness and critical-self monitoring. But it is something that HR/OD consultants must do to maintain their integrity, credibility, effectiveness & relevance!

Thought leadership in HR in India

I have been doing some sort of an informal survey. It involved getting in touch with some people (most of them with more than 10 years of experience in HR) and asking them the following question: "In your opinion, who are the thought leaders in HR in India?".

Most of them came up with a list of 3 or 4 names. One interesting thing that came out of this was that there were not too many overlaps between these lists. Apparently, the people surveyed had very different opinions on who are the thought leaders in HR in India. This prompted me to prob a bit deeper by asking them "why did you name these particular individuals?", and that in turn led to discussions on "what is your definition of thought leadership in HR".

From these discussions it emerged that there is a wide variation in the definition of 'thought leadership in HR' among the people surveyed. Many of the names in the lists have contributed in more than one role in HR. Broadly speaking, their primary roles included those of consultants, management professors, OD professionals, senior managers etc. The underlying definitions of thought leadership that influenced the choice of HR thought leaders (depending on the primary roles of the individuals named as thought leaders - to some extent) included one or more of the the following aspects

• Creating and/or popularising new HR practices/interventions
• Understanding/predicting trends (sensing trends before they become common knowledge)
• Possessing insight and vision beyond knowledge/subject matter expertise
• Conducting research and publishing books/articles on a regular basis
• Converting insights to a solutions and getting them accepted/ implemented
• Receiving extensive media coverage (i.e. their comments are widely sought by the media on key HR related issues)
• Possessing great process facilitation and change management skills
• Having an extensive knowledge about the HR related research, HR practices and their applicability in particular organization/industry contexts
• Coming up with new/innovative solutions to key issues/complex problems
• Enjoying a great amount of influence in the HR community
• Encouraging others to think about/implement new ideas/solutions

Another interesting aspect here is the primary purpose for which one tries to develop 'thought leadership'. One purpose could be to make a significant contribution to enhancing organization effectiveness and employee engagement by designing and popularising/implementing new and innovative solutions to the key people related issues in organizations. Another could be to bring in new dimensions to the field of HR, enhancing/shaping the field. Depending on the current primary role of the 'thought leader' there could be other possibilities. For example, in the case of a consultant, 'thought leadership' is very useful for obtaining new assignments and for supporting higher charge out rates/fees. For a senior HR manager within an organization, a reputation for thought leadership could provide greater opportunities to try out new things and to take up initiatives that involve large amount of change/resource investment. Of course, for some people thought leadership could just be a spontaneous act of generosity - giving one's ideas, time/effort and wisdom to help fellow professionals.

Now let us come back to the definition of thought leadership in HR. As we have seen, there are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for may types of thought leaders in HR' ! This also gives many of us a chance to become some type/sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders' !) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers. This in turn raises interesting philosophical questions like 'Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?'.

Any comments/thoughts?

If you hang around in HR for too long...

This post is about a question that has been in my mind for the last few years. The issue is something like this: After your MBA in HR (especially if you have graduated from a reputed management institute) you can expect to be the Head of HR of a somewhat large firm in about 15-20 years, assuming a reasonably successful career. Of course, not everyone becomes (or even wants to become) a Head of HR. But in general, this kind of a time frame seems reasonable. Now, the question is 'what would you do after that'. Many people would look forward to working for at least 15 years more. So what are your 'career options' at that stage ? If we define career as 'pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution', the challenge is to find such positions/work that would enable the senior HR professional to continue to grow and contribute.

It is interesting to look at this issue from the organization's perspective also. Do organizations have many HR jobs that would require a level of expertise which would take more than 20 years to develop (Quick question : In the last 2 years, how many HR jobs have you come across for which the person specification indicated more than 20 years of experience?)? May be, not too many positions exist within most organizations that require such a level of expertise/such a senior profile.

Now, let us come back to our senior HR professional. We have seen 'solutions' found by particular individuals. They include, inter alia, moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles, starting one's own firm, HR consulting, becoming an OD/Leadership Development specialist, teaching and branching into a totally different fields. Some people also become CEOs/Heads of other functions, though they constitute only a very small percentage of the population that we are talking about. Of course, there is always the possibility of 'retirement on the job' where one stagnates, disengages and still continues on the job. If we look at solutions 'within the organizations' (like moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles etc.), it would be interesting to examine if they really solve the problem (by providing positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution) as compared to merely changing the context (by providing a different sort of mandate/experience).

Some combinations of the above solutions/options might lead to something very similar to 'portfolio living' that Charles Handy talks about. We also need to differentiate between the solution(s) found by a particular individual (or individuals) and the career options available to bulk of the population that we are talking about. So where does this leave our senior HR professional. In some cases this could lead to some sort of a 'career crisis'. It is interesting to note that this career crisis might also coincide with a larger midlife crisis which brings in additional dimensions.

Any thoughts/comments?

Notes:

1. The title of this post does not in any way imply that a long stint/career HR would necessarily mean 'hanging around in HR'. There are many possibilities for 'progressive achievement/ contribution' including those hinted at by the 'solutions' mentioned in the post. I have used the term 'hanging around' (though it has a negative connotation) for rhetorical purpose - to highlight the risk of stagnation and to stimulate discussion. It would be interesting to read this post along with the next post on 'Thought leadership in HR in India'. It can be readily inferred that the thought leaders does not hang around in the field as they redefine the boundaries and bring in new perspectives which would in turn mean that they rise above the constraints imposed by the current definition/understanding of the field.

2. It would be interesting to look at the senior HR positions in organizations and examine if the essential requirement for the position is that of a leader or that of a manager. To keep matters simple, let us go by the distinction that 'leaders focus on 'doing the right things' while managers focus on 'doing things right' (i.e. leaders focus mainly on effectiveness while managers focus mainly on efficiency).

If we look the senior HR jobs in MNCs in India (that are headquartered outside India), we might find that in many cases the 'right things' (the deliverable/tasks for the senior HR positions at a country level) gets decided at the global level and the key expectation from the HR position at the country level is to get those 'right things' done right/efficiently. The logic here is that an aggregate of local optima might not lead to a global optimum. So the key expectation from such senior HR positions is to carry out a predefined set of tasks efficiently and to keep customizations to a minimum. Thus the ideal profile would be someone who would 'completely merge into the system' and get things done without asking too many questions.

So the requirement is essentially that of a manager. If a 'leader profile' gets hired into the position, she/he might get frustrated and leave (or she/he might get forced to operate just like a manager). If the senior position is supposed to manage 'deep-specialists' (see an earlier post on 'deep-specialist' positions here) it could result in additional difficulties as 'deep-specialists' tend to respond more favorably to leading as opposed to managing. Mercifully not too many deep-specialist positions seem to exist in those contexts (see here).

3. See a related post here

'wisdom-level' consulting

I worked as an external consultant for the first five years of my HR career. Consulting allowed me to play to my strengths and it gave me an opportunity to do some decent work. It also enabled me to get exposure to various domains in HR and to the various roles in a consulting firm. So it was a good way to invest the initial years of my career. I moved on to other kind of roles after that to broaden my perspective/expertise.

I still want to go back to consulting at some point in my career. However, the kind of HR consulting that I look forward to do is somewhat different. In the initial years of my career, the kind of consulting that I was doing was mainly at the level of applying tools/ techniques/ methodologies/ approaches. Of course it also involved choice of the tools/approaches & customizing them to suit particular contexts, and, in a few areas, developing new tools/approaches. Still it was essentially tool/methodology driven. This is likely to happen in most large consulting firms, as this (tools/methodology driven way of functioning) helps the firm to create leverage and scalability that are essential for profitability and growth/size.

The kind of HR consulting that I now look forward to do goes beyond tools/ techniques/ methodologies/ approaches. It is highly customized (to the client context) and highly 'personal' (that would enable me to 'bring more of myself into the work'). In addition to the difference in terms of the degree (of customization /personalization), there is also a difference in terms of the intention (see the note below). This way of consulting mainly uses patterns/broad principles (and not methodologies) so that effective solutions can be developed and implemented in complex and dynamic environments. While it uses tools/analysis as an essential input & to validate the output, the core of diagnosis/solution design is driven by a highly intuitive/non-linear/apparently discontinuous process perfected by years of individual experience/capability building/evolved consciousness ! The output reflects simplicity at the other side of complexity !! This is what I call 'wisdom-level' consulting !!!

I am not saying that 'wisdom-level' consulting is appropriate in all contexts/for all problems. It is needed only for special problems in complex contexts where a purely analytical/ methodology-driven approach can't arrive at the optimal solution. Now, many of the typical HR consulting assignments do not fall into this category and hence it is appropriate that they are handled in a tool/methodology driven way. My point is just that there are situations that require a type of consulting that goes beyond tool/methodology driven consulting and that I hope to do that kind of consulting (wisdom-level consulting) at some point in my career.

Note:

Even in methodology-driven consulting, some degree of personalization happens by default (as the work is being performed by a particular human being/consultant). However, in the case of large consulting firms, in the case of 'main-stream assignments' often the implicit attempt is to play down the personalization aspect. This is useful for managing risk (after all it is the firm's reputation that is at stake and hence the deliverable can't get too person dependent) and for creating leverage (so that less experienced people can be trained to do most of the work). However in the case of 'wisdom-level' consulting, 'personalization' of the output (by a highly skilled consultant) becomes a key part of the consulting value proposition. Similarly, the pressure to ensure scalability (across many client contexts) makes too much customization (beyond the absolute minimum required) not so attractive for large consulting firms. More importantly, customization requires a relatively higher level of skill and hence it works against 'obtaining leverage' objective . Thus, similar to our discussion on the aspect of personalization, high degree of customization of the output to the client context (by a highly skilled consultant, who is not looking to maximize the volume of work) becomes a key part of the consulting value proposition in the case of 'wisdom-level' consulting.