TM - March 2008 - (Page 14)

[leading edge] by Dr. Jac Fitz-enz I I Reverse Engineering: Shifting Focus to HR’s Cause magine that you are senior vice president of marketing (SVPM) with a big office, big salary and big challenges. You are probably deep into dealing with declining market share, flat sales, where to spend the advertising budget, the new branding program or all of the above. Now imagine the chief human resources officer (CHRO) makes an appointment to talk to you about, guess what: HR. What can the HR director have to say that will take your attention away from your problems? Whatever it is, he or she better make it fast. Knowing the Territory You are concerned with sales, marketing, advertising, branding and the talent management aspects thereof. The CHRO should start the conversation knowing what things are top of mind for you. The CHRO can do this by listening to marketing manager conversations, reading marketing releases about the company’s response to competition, new product releases, quarterly sales reports and the like. After all, if the CHRO doesn’t care about your problems, why should you care about his or hers? Many years ago, my father was sales manager of a company. He told me he had to know his product capabilities, the competitors’ products, the customers’ needs and near-term market trends. The point is he had to know the territory. When I hear HR folks imitate Rodney Dangerfield’s no respect lament, I wonder if they know the territory. An essential part of every job is selling. We have to compete with a myriad of territory forces that are impacting our audience and vying for attention and resources. Selling the C-Suite What can the HR director have to say that will take the business leaders attention away from their problems? Whatever it is, better make it fast. I pitched the Cs on how ineffective supervisory practices were driving poor performance, employee turnover and, ultimately, sales and service. At first, the vice president of manufacturing was a tough sell. His solution was to alternate carrots and sticks. So I recruited the CFO to show the financial effects of the ongoing problem. With that help, I made the sale. To this day, I doubt either of them cared about the level of supervisory skills, per se. What they did care about were gross margins, sales and customer retention. About the author Dr. Jac Fitz-enz is founder and CEO of the Human Capital Source and Workforce Intelligence Institute. He can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. I assume the CHRO made the appointment to get some form of commitment toward a sales or service-related human capital program that will help solve sales revenue problems. This is different than wanting you to fund an HR driven training program. In the second case, that is solving CHRO’s problem. The key to garner your commitment is to reverse engineer the pitch and focus it on marketing challenges. When I joined a computer company in the 1970s, I found there were problems in the factory. Having just come from the banking world, I didn’t know anything about engineering or manufacturing. What I did know was what affected human performance. By talking with people on the shop floor and reading monthly financial and production reports, I determined productivity and quality problems lay at the feet of poor supervision. Supervisory skills were something I could affect. Last Pass If the CHRO wants you to support HR services, he or she has to see the issue from the marketing side. It is essentially a battle to shift attention to HR’s proposal. Unless you love HR — and who does — you have to see the value of HR’s proposal in relationship to marketing goals. HR must become faceless for the moment — in this case, it must be about marketing. Some HR people claim they can’t get the type of information I am suggesting they need. Bah-loney! If they can walk, talk, listen and read public documents, they can learn all that is necessary to make a value proposition. It is simply an intelligence-gathering mission. Once they know what is holding their audience’s attention, they can slip into that arena and build out from its center. Back to the SVPM situation: Keep in mind that, as SVPM, you don’t give a hoot about HR’s problems. 14 March 2008 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - March 2008

TM - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance - The Paradoxically Gifted Leading Edge - Reverse Engineering: Shifting Focus to HR's Cause Learning Connection - Sharing Talent On the Hunt for Talent Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing HR Crucial to Executive Compensation Process Downtown Management: Surfing May Not Be Slacking Think Tanks Aid Government in Talent Management Creating Consistency: Enterprise-Wide Succession Plans Battle Retention Deficits With On-Boarding Sunbelt Rentals: A Mid-Level View of HR From the Trenches Butterball: No Chicken When It Comes to Talent Management Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential - Choosing Change

TM - March 2008

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