Dave Ulrich

HR of the future: Conclusions and observations

The authors agree to the inevitability of ongoing change. They suggest that the pace and unpredictability of change will increase. Pace means that whatever will happen will happen faster than anticipated. Once the Internet becomes standard, for example, literally millions of people can sign-on overnite to learn new ideas for work and personal lives. What took months to share (e.g., printing and marketing a book, sharing the best practice from within a firm, or publishing research findings) may be disseminated in days or hours. Unpredictability of change means that we can not fully predict what will happen and as pace and unpredictability increase, questions which took a long time to answer need to be answered more quickly. Which organizational forms will become the norm? Which leaders who are deified today will be disparaged tomorrow? Which companies with great reputations today will lose them quickly? Most essays agree on the drivers for change. Globalization will require seeing and acting beyond local boundaries. Technology will make information more accessible and join people together electronically in ways that can impact organizations and work relationships. A more knowledge-based workforce will make many employees into volunteers because they could choose to work elsewhere for equal or more money, so they work in an organization by choice, not by obligation. Turning worker knowledge into productivity and leveraging intellectual capital will become workforce challenges of the future. Redefining firm performance away from merely cutting cost to profitable growth also will require change. Knowing the pace and unpredictability of change does not mean that firms have learned to manage change. Change redefines risk. In a low-change world, reducing risk means getting more of the right answer before taking action. In a world of high amounts of change, reducing risk means acting without full answers but having the capacity to adjust mid-stream. Agility becomes more important than accuracy in reducing risk. HR professionals cannot assume that they will design the “perfect” pro-

HR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CREATING THE FUTURE CREATORS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN BUSINESS SCHOOL

This article focuses on the development of mid- to senior-level HR professionals through a public program offered at the University of Michigan Business School. We suggest that developing HR professionals requires a theory of competencies about what HR professionals must know and do and a development experience based on those competencies. We highlight how we have created a competency model over the last decade and designed our HR executive programs to deliver against this model. We also show the pedagogical techniques used to deliver these competencies.

Judge me more by my future than by my past

Premature death rites have occurred before. Truman was prematurely declared the loser before he won the 1948 election. Mark Twain, said “Rumors of my death have been seriously exaggerated.” Huck Finn attended his own funeral. The 1969 New York Mets were deemed vanished prior to their miraculous comeback and World Series victory. Churchill changed political parties but continued to rebound. Phil Nieckro, the great knuckleball pitcher, was continually counted out but kept returning for another year. John Travolta’s career seemed moribund before he reemerged with the leading roles in Pulp Fiction and Phenomenon. Premature deaths occur not only in lifestyles, but in professions. In the field of human resources (HR), death rites have been proclaimed, eulogies written, and funerals prepared for the demise of the HR function. These eulogies are premature. While HR as we know it (with images of policy police, regulators, and administrative guardians) has passed, a new HR is emerging. If HR is to play the more significant role many advocate, then the future will have to be characterized by understanding and mastering nine challenges.

Strategic Human Resource Planning: Why and How?

Global competition. technological and product innovation. and volatile market conditions have created greater competitive pressures in almost every industry. To respond to these competitive pressures. organizations have adapted strategies. created new products. and worked to create and sustain competitive advantage (CA). One source of CA rests with how an organization manages its human resources. To manage human resources as a means of creating and sustaining CA. human resource planners must redefine their roles. This article describes why human resources impact CA and suggests how planners may begin to assume their new role.

The Population Perspective: Review, Critique, and Relevance

While many theorists using frameworks within the population perspective accept some fundamental assumptions, they debate two issues. Debates about appropriate units of analysis and definitions of terms and debates about selected processes continue. This paper reviews accepted assumptions and continued debates and offers alternative resolutions to these debates. The paper concludes by realistically identifying how the population perspective may enhance understanding of organizations.

HR talent and the new HR competencies

Purpose – This article aims to describe partial results of the 2012 Global Human Resources Competency Study (HRCS), led by the RBL Group and the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.Design/methodology/approach – Over the past 25 years, this ongoing research project has provided the most global, comprehensive, and empirical identification of the competencies expected of HR professionals, and the impact of these competencies on both individual HR professional effectiveness and business performance.Findings – This article points out a number of the key findings of the research – including the six fundamental competency domains that HR professionals must demonstrate to impact business performance – and identifies implications of the study findings for HR talent planning, assessment and development.Originality/value – HRCS findings have influenced thousands of HR departments, from global giants to smaller organizations in every continent.

What is Leadership

There is little doubt that both leaders and leadership matters. Individual leaders shape strategy, execute decision, manage talent, develop future talent, and act with personal proficiency. Being a successful leader requires knowing what is expected and doing it. But, organizational leadership matters more. Leadership occurs when the organization builds a cadre of future leaders who have the capacity to shape an organizations culture and create patterns of success. In this chapter, we answer the question “what is leadership” by focusing on an outside/in view of leadership that draws on business values more than psychological principles. We identify four key principles and questions that shape the definition of effective leadership.1.Clarify why leadership matters: What are the outcomes of good leadership?2.Nail the basics: What must every leader know, do, and be?3.Create leadership brand: How do we develop leadership (not just leaders) from the outside/in?4.Ensure leadership sustainability: How do leaders make long-term change really happen? By mastering these four principles, leaders can build leadership that lasts over time.

The future targets or outcomes of HR work: individuals, organizations and leadership

Strategy is about winning. Almost every CEO book on strategy (Jack Welch from General Electric, Larry Bossidy from Honeywell, A.G. Lafley from P&G, and so forth) focuses on how to win over time. Likewise, strategy scholars provide theory and evidence about how organizations deliver sustained performance. With many existing nuances, the strategic formulas from both practice and scholarship are quite similar: anticipate the future, define success, position your organization to win, make informed and bold choices, set goals and execute consistently. Investors, customers, communities and employees benefit from applying these strategic formulas. One of the great challenges for sustainable strategies is to make sure that the informed choices become embedded in the organization, and are not isolated events uniquely tied to a particular leadership regime. So, what does it mean to have a successful organization and what is HR’s role in creating organizations that deliver on strategic aspirations? For years, organization implied structure focused on roles, rules, responsibilities and routines. Hierarchies became the dominant logic for organization transformation. Today, organizations may be defined less by their morphology and more by the capabilities they create. HR professionals are architects who help line managers, as owners, create organizations that deliver successful strategies. By focusing on building organizations that win, HR professionals emphasize more on the outcomes of their work than the activities of their work. In my work within organizations and with HR professionals, a successful organization may be characterized by three domains: individuals (talent), capabilities (culture) and leadership (see Figure 1). To deliver any strategy, individuals need to be more productive; organizations need to have the right capabilities; and leadership needs to be widely shared throughout the organization. These three dimensions of an organization may be seen as the outcomes of HR, and lead HR professionals to ask specific questions about any strategy:

Introduction: setting the scene for leadership in Asia

Leadership continues to be an on-going focus of scholarship, despite its contested definitions, meanings and nature. The Asian region has become an important area of inquiry with its rapid and enormous economic growth and potential, size, and population. Our work will accomplish multiple purposes. We will better understand how leadership processes and practices are both different and the same in countries within Asia. We will help managers learn how to become better leaders by recognizing and adopting successful practices. As a result, we hope to move beyond the overly dominant and ethnocentric Western leadership literature and explore Asian leadership on the basis of differing cultural foundations. Through innovative Asian leadership practices, we anticipate that Asia will not only export products and services, but in the near term will also export leadership processes and practices.

From shared services to professional services

Purpose – This paper aims to define the four basic organization design choices for HR, discuss the need to align the HR organization with the business organization, explore how to organize to turn HR knowledge into client productivity, and clarify the role of HR and how HR roles work together.Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on over 100 interviews and discussions with senior HR professionals in over 50 Global 500 organizations across all industry sectors.Findings – The next evolution in the organization of the HR department is the professional services model. HR can learn and adapt the professional services model to turn HR expertise and knowledge into client productivity and line manager value.Originality/value – This article provides HR professionals with practical advice on how to organize the HR department. It offers five useful steps to help HR shift from a shared services organizational model to a professional services model so that HR can turn knowledge into value.