The Harvard Business Review published three articles in the summer which attracted general interest. Many HR professionals consider them controversial because the HBR certainly did not mince words. We mentioned them in this article.
The first of those articles dealt with the question Why We Love to Hate HR…and What HR Can Do About It. The second article described the Juniper Networks, an innovative company that is based in Silicon Valley, and its approach to HR. Its experiences show that constant evolution and innovation is absolutely essential for HR. HR must understand which activities and initiatives are able to attract talented people to the company, since these people will subsequently come up with their own innovations. This article is called Bright, Shiny Objects and the Future of HR.
Sometimes it is much better to try to think about a problem and every factor that has an impact on it than to reach for the first possible solution too quickly. Stay receptive and try to examine the problem you face thoroughly and all the consequences. You might discover unexpected, and in the end, beneficial connections and links. In the case of the Juniper Networks company, there had to be the right mental attitudes first in order to discover the right solutions, says the author of the article John Boudreau, Professor and Director of Research at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
The problem itself is sometimes more than the solution
Leaders are the ones who should come up with big and breakthrough ideas, so sometimes it is really worthwhile to delve into a certain issue or problem deeply and thoroughly examine it. In 2009, top managers in Juniper discussed what to do in order to once again become a company that is different from the others. Eventually they planned an activity to support the corporate culture. There were 75 sessions scheduled, each with three top executives of the company. They visited many different locations of the firm and built relationships with talented local people while discussing Juniper’s culture.
A young engineer spoke during one of the sessions. He complained about the way the company was evaluating staff performance. He said that people were quite demoralized by it and as a result they even fought against each other. That was directly in opposition to the company values that Juniper wanted to promote – especially the focus on authenticity and mutual trust. According to the young engineer, it jeopardized the effort to create a culture open to innovations, which was one of the company’s goals. The engineer was very frank and what he said urged the senior managers to try to find out how the company should approach performance management. Did they really believe in their people's talent? Could the company use performance evaluations in order to differentiate itself from other companies?
This problem arose when neuroscience was entering the world of business. Research at that time proved that evaluation schemes that had been used before undermined the much proclaimed culture of trust, cooperation and deliberate risk-taking.
New evaluation system
Finally, in 2011, Juniper was one of the first global companies to do away with the old evaluation system, which was a quite tightly defined procedure. Now evaluation does not seek to spread the people along the Gaussian curve. It aims to look for the best that is in every single employee. Evaluation that was done only once a year was replaced by frequent "conversation days" when development possibilities, goals and the employees' future prospects are discussed. That is why the vast majority of employees today can really use their skills. This alignment enables the company to achieve increasingly higher business goals.
The whole change was possible only because the senior management decided to do something real about the whole issue of performance evaluations. A team of experts from the Center for Creative Leadership was formed. It helped the company to radically change the way how HR was done there, and there were significant changes for the better. What mattered was that people were not afraid of what seemed to be an enormous task.
How to do it?
When you care more about the problem than about the very first possible working solution, that doesn't allow you to get engaged in many different and unbounded programs and initiatives. There are four basic and important steps.
1) Get an idea of the big picture
Be it personal interviews with all senior managers, or even with those in lower management, you must try to really understand the overall situation. Juniper’s HR professionals asked managers what they believed were the key external challenges the company was facing. They also asked them how these challenges affected their particular team. People from HR also wanted to know which element of Juniper's business strategy and its implementation fascinated and motivated people. They were also interested in concerns the managers had. The risk was that HR would hear about a lot of issues, while it couldn’t offer any quick solutions.
Key problems were identified – too many priorities and too much effort to avoid conflicts. Also, the processes in place were too complex. The major problems that were identified went far beyond the topic of regular performance evaluations. As a result of this initiative, among other things, decision-making processes were simplified. Now only a maximum of six people are needed to make any decision in the company.
2) Pay attention to beneficial insights
A deep understanding of how business works can allow HR leaders to find and implement the best management solutions and thus improve the way the whole organization operates. It is even possible to combine corporate values, performance evaluation processes and neuroscience. HR can also, if it is not afraid of discussing operational matters, work on improving customer service.
For example, if some problems regarding communication arose with a key customer, the traditional approach would be to focus on the sales representatives who negotiated with the customer. However, a closer examination of the issue revealed that there was not sufficient cooperation between various teams and departments – that was the real cause of the problems. Therefore, it was necessary to turn collaboration into a topic for further discussion. Eventually, it turned out that there were 900 employees involved in working for that one client.
People in Juniper eventually not only described the informal network – they even began trying to optimize it. Thanks to analysis, they can now make decisions more quickly, decision-making rights were clarified and bottlenecks, which make information more difficult to get, are identified and got rid of.
3) Conclusions should be applied with caution
You have to apply your insights carefully, since you need to integrate the new steps with the existing initiatives and programs. It is not enough to only follow best practices. New initiatives must have a clear purpose and be built for a reason. Every single company is special and unique in some way. Best practices should therefore be broken down into basic knowledge and elements that will subsequently be applied, perhaps a bit differently, customized for your company. The results are better when new initiatives are linked and connected with those that are already there.
Juniper, for example, approached something that is traditionally perceived as a barrier (whether geographic, horizontal, vertical barrier in relation to the stakeholders, or a demographic barrier) as an opportunity for innovation. The company brought together more than 80 people from various positions and roles. Their experiences and backgrounds were very different. They were asked to collaborate for three days. Their assignment was to prepare proposals for new products. People were tremendously excited about this experience and that changed their attitude about their own abilities to innovate. They also discovered that it is always good to test a new idea on a manageable scale as quickly as possible, in order to generate knowledge about what is working and what is not. New ideas should also be paired with the strategic priorities that have already been approved.
4) Always strive for an impact on business results
Even in HR it is true that behavior is to a large extent shaped by what is being measured. So if you are thinking about intentionally changing the role HR plays in your company, then you also have to think about how you will measure progress and improvement. Your measurements must look forward rather than backward, meaning that your metrics and measurements should enable you to learn and adjust what you are going to do in the future. You have to use an attitude that is a little experimental. Be OK with the fact that occasionally something can go wrong, and that sometimes you will have to do something again and better.
Measuring the exact return on investment of new ideas in HR is impossible. That does not mean that HR cannot bring profitable investments to the table, nor that it is impossible to measure any impacts. It is certainly possible to map the logical links between HR initiatives and business results. Concentrate on what can be measured, and estimate the rest.
In the case of Juniper, that three-day session mentioned above, when cooperation was fostered and encouraged, was a big help. Before that, in answers to the question whether they understand the company's strategy, whether they know their role in this strategy and whether they feel sufficiently inspired and engaged so that they can help the company to achieve its goals, less than 50% of employees responded positively. However, four months after the session, after which participants were actively promoting collaboration and innovations, 80% responded positively.
HR can come up with new ideas
Innovative HR must strive to build a reputation as a department that is able to come up with new ideas. You are not research and development, nor are you a university – you don’t employ social sciences researchers and there are no scientists specializing in data processing in your team. Your ideas will sometimes result from not-so-scientific articles and informal conversations. You cannot, however, be superficial and you always need to put together some reliable evidence. Do research. Only then can your activities will have real impact. In order to be able to bring truly useful innovations, your plans must be aligned with business objectives. The goal is that your HR activities do not look the same as those of your competitors – these activities should be different, and they should be a part of your competitive advantage.
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