HR Driven Business Sustainability Model from Harvard Business School
Background
How do HR drive organization changes in sustaining business growth? These are the burning questions for HR. As s senior manager of OD and Training, part of the HR, my job needed to face CXO and Senior Leadership Team or Senior Business Leaders from time to time. I need to find a model to create values of the business from HR perspective.
The primary concerns of an organization are two areas - Business and People. In Business, the focus is on profit and productivity while in people, the focus in on engagement and culture. With this in mind, only HR can begin to think like a CEO to be macro-minded. Finally, I found a model suitable for HR, OD and Training Profession to adopt.
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
The dotcom era of 90s has changed the business landscape. Green Project has
carefully examined more than 200 well-established management practices as they
were employed over a ten-year period by 160 companies. The finding of the study revealed those companies that outperformed their industry peers has exhibited what we call the four primary management practices—strategy, execution, culture, and structure. They also found out these companies were mastered of any two out of four secondary management practices—talent, innovation, leadership, and mergers and partnerships. These eight management practices can relate to the four key concerns of the Senior Leadership Team as shown in the diagram below.
carefully examined more than 200 well-established management practices as they
were employed over a ten-year period by 160 companies. The finding of the study revealed those companies that outperformed their industry peers has exhibited what we call the four primary management practices—strategy, execution, culture, and structure. They also found out these companies were mastered of any two out of four secondary management practices—talent, innovation, leadership, and mergers and partnerships. These eight management practices can relate to the four key concerns of the Senior Leadership Team as shown in the diagram below.
Findings
From the diagram below, one can see the difference between those companies who practiced six of the eight management practices. Those companies observed those management practices has showed the following results: Total return to shareholders is 943% growth, Sales is 413%, Operating Income 326% and Return on Investment +5.45%.
Application and Results
HR, Training and OD are in perfect position to assist the Senior Leadership Team to business sustainable growth. Looking into the eight aspects of the organization mentioned above to see how the Department can value added in sustain the growth. There are four columns in the diagnosis - strengths of the company, next area of improvement, solution and results.
Generally speaking, I use the following triangle diagram to look into the eight aspects from HR, OD and Training perspective.
I have used it in my previous three companies and discuss my observations to the CEO, MD and APAC Head. From the analysis, they have agreed to mobilize resources to strengthen those areas, we can create values - retain employees, improvement work process, develop leaders, facilitate corporate strategies, increase productivity and improve output and etc. With this approach, we can dialogue with Senior Leadership Team with their concerns in mind - profit, productivity, engagement and culture.
Authors
William Joyce is professor of strategy and organization theory at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Nitin Nohria is a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. Bruce Roberson was a partner with McKinsey & Co. for 11 years and is part of a new management team undertaking the turnaround of a major corporation.
Laurence Yap has 20 years of industrial experience in organization development and human resource development. He has served in multiple multinational organizations in Asia Pacific Region such as PayPal, Western Digital, First Solar and Pfizer. You can read more about his work in his blog Journey of HRD and Eastleaf in Slideshare. Email: laurence.yap@gmail.com
- organizational effectiveness
- organizational leadership
- hr transformation
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