Getting A "Seat at the Table": One Man's Perspective

“Your place at the table.” How many articles, conversations, blogs, moaning sessions, crying sessions and musings have occurred around this topic? Countless, yet the question continues to be asked. So I figured I would put in my “two cents worth.”

In my mind there are professional characteristics and personal characteristics that enter into this discussion. The professional characteristics include:

• You must be knowledgeable in HR. Yeah I know, obvious. But I mean more than just a cursory knowledge. This means you study. Be it in school (Masters degree), be it in continuing educations (SPHR) or be it on your own (reading books, magazines, websites, blogs.)
  
• You must be knowledgeable in business, both business in general and your industry in particular. This means more education. Understand how your company makes money and what it does with it. Assets, liabilities, debt, income statements, balance sheets and the other language of finance and accounting. Understand operations issues. Supply, demand, inventories, scheduling. You get this two different ways. Read! There should be several industry journals on your reading list. Relationships! Spend time with the finance and ops people.
  
• You must be knowledgeable in the world. This means you pay attention to and understand the impact of globalization, localization, politics, social trends, economic trends, legal trends and more. This means you are an environmental scanner.
  
• You must be knowledgeable in people. This means you are a student of psychology. You understand behavior and the principles of motivation and reward. You know group dynamics and team building.
  
• You must be knowledgeable in strategy and planning. Knowing “stuff” does not do any good if you cannot apply it to the current and future direction of the company.
  
• You MUST be competent and good at what you do. If you can’t keep a file straight or keep track of a new hire why in the hell would I want you at my side advising me, if I were the president of a company.
  
• It helps if you have worked in some other area other than human resources. Sales, operations or finance will all work. That gives you great perspective on the problems departments face on a day to day basis.

The personal characteristics you must have are:

• You have to be smart. Sorry, but it is the truth. There has to be the “horse power” in the cranium. There is a lot of stuff to know and apply and if you don’t have it you won’t make it to the top. You have to be able to see the big picture and read the future and that takes some brains.
  
• You have to be a hard charger. You don’t make it to the Vice Presidential level by coming in late and leaving early. You also don’t gripe about how hard it is. You eat the stuff up. You want more. PASSION!
  
• You have to have some “backbone.” If you are afraid of making decisions you don’t have the “right stuff.”
  
• You have to learn from your errors. Don’t be afraid to admit a mistake, but move on once you have.
  
• You have to have DESIRE. You want to have that VP role then you have to ASK for it. In this case the meek shall NOT inherit the earth.

Ok. That is my take. In my experience I have met few HR professionals that meet this standard. Nothing wrong with that. There are limited jobs at the top and the rest of us will be gainfully employed in some aspect of HR. But if you want to be the “lead dog” then you need to work for it and I hope this helps.

Feel free to leave me your comments, opinions, additions or suggest a deletion.

And You Thought HR Was Easy- Are You a Competent HR Professional?

I was reading an excert from The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance, by Brian Becker, Mark Huselid and David Ulrich and thought it would be instructive to pass on some of this information. The excert was Chapter 7, Competencies for HR Professionals. One thing is clear it is not easy to be an HR professional!

From a comprehensive study they determined that there are five competency domains that are necessary. These are, in order of importance:

1. Knowing the business
2. Mastering HR practices
3. Managing culture
4. Orchestrating change
5. Demonstrating personal credibility

A bit about each.

Knowing the Business

They state that HR professionals add value to an organization when they understand how the business operates. Understanding this allows them to adapt HR and organizational activities to changing business conditions. Only by knowing the financial, strategic, technological and organizational capabilities of your organization can you play a valuable role in any strategic discussion. Further, business acumen requires knowledge, if not direct operational experience, in functional areas such as marketing, finance, strategy, technology and sales, in addition to HR. My experience has been that not enough HR people know this and make no effort to learn it.

Mastering HR Practices

This means you have to "know your stuff." According to the authors "Knowing and being able to deliver state-of-the-art, innovative HR practices builds these professionals' credibility and earns them respect from the rest of the organization."

Managing Culture

This is being the "keeper of the culture" as they say. Understand, deliver on it, preserve it, reflect it.

Orchestrating Change

According to the authors an "HR professional must demonstrate the following abilities: the ability to diagnose problems, build relationships with clients, articulate a vision, set a leadership agenda, solve problems, and implement goals. This competency involves knowledge of change processes, skills as change agents and abilities to deliver change."

Demonstrating Personal Credibility

This is "walking the walk and talking the talk." You have to be credible both in and outside of the organization. HR professionals that violate company policy, such as getting sued for sexual harassment, will not have any credibility, regardless of how much HR knowledge they may have. (Think Elliot Spitzer here.)

So, as you can see, this is not any easy job. I dare you to print this off and take it to your boss and ask if you are fulfilling this role and demonstrate these competencies. If not, you know what your improvement plan needs to look like.