What I learned at SHRM2012 – Disruptive Innovation renews the Human in HR.
As HR Professionals we have the daunting role of managing the people process for our organizations. Sometimes that can be a larger than life role, with built in challenges and intrinsic responsibilities, despite that what I learned over the last four days is: we are human beings who feel, think and love just like everyone else. I know that seems like a no brainer but guess what it doesn’t. As HR folks we don’t celebrate our a accomplishments enough, we don’t embrace the fact that the world better know as “corporate” would not exist without what we do.
So my first take-away from SHRM12 is, we have to declare within our organizations that we are “human” we may wear a larger than life hat but at the end of the day if we really didn’t care about people – we wouldn’t be in HR!
My second keen observation from SHRM12 – we know how to follow just as much as we know how to lead. Talk about a group of totally organized followers! We lined up, we slowly walked, we joked, made small talk and we were willing to form the longest line that didn’t have money waiting at the other end – just to see the keynote speakers. The line for Dr. Condoleezza Rice was nothing short of humongous, literally we wrapped the convention center, we walked the length and breath of the upper floor, we walked in a complete circle only to end up where we started, just to go down the escalator. Guess what we didn’t complain, in fact we got more enthusiastic the closer we got to the chairs.
So yes, HR has defined the leadership role but we are equally gifted at following. On the human side, we have the orderly following down pat. But lets ask ourselves two questions, because we follow so well does that stop us from jumping out of the box and refusing to follow our misguided leaders off the cliff? Or does our ease of agreeing to follow prevent us from taking the leadership reigns and truly leading our organizations to success? As HR folks, can we lead, follow and retain our seat at the leadership table? For me these are great questions that we must ponder as we try to strategically define the role HR plays in the business success cycle. As Hank Jackson, said so clearly HR is charged with recruiting, training and retaining the next group of employees who will challenge the comfort zone with disruptive innovation – if not we risk becoming corporate relics like Borders and Blockbuster.
The last key observation, HR is tuned into learning, we get self improvement. We also understand that effectiveness starts with admitting that we don’t know enough and having the willingness to seek out opportunities to learn more. I learned this first hand when the HR professionals who attended my session “I’ve Fallen & I Won’t Get Up” waited patiently for more than 30 minutes, at the end of a long day, just to ask me more questions and to get ideas they could take back to their company to improve the workers compensation injury management process.
The one drawback that I know is inherent in every conference experience, when we get back to our organizations we don’t have the time to use our zeal as a catalyst to bring learning into the core structure of our organization.
Imagine this, what if we could take all of our SHRM12 learning and establish mini-training courses for our core leadership team who did not have the benefit of attending the workshops at SHRM? What if we used the SHRM conference as a catalyst to create an internal HR Training School within our organizations for Supervisors and Managers? We know are the key de-railers of everything we try to do! Novel idea? Pie in the sky? No to both questions – this is something we should definitely do. There is never time for internal organizational self improvement, there’s never going to be enough money allocated for proactive training, but HR has to sell the message “Learning” drives organizational success. The way to sell learning post-SHRM12? By going back to your organizations and saying this is what I learned at SHRM12 – this is what I want to pass down to our internal staff to improve the way we work. Frankly, that is the ROI of attending the conference and the justification to allocate funds so you can attend next year.
As one of my favorite authors, and key HR thought leader Marshall Goldsmith said, “What’s the point of attending if we don’t go back and make a difference?” . My other favorite author, Seth Godin says repeatedly, we have to create a tribe of believers that buy into our message, because the tribe is in need of leadership!
So with the SHRM Conference behind us and as we look forward to SHRM 2013, what can you do to ignite your organization using the knowledge you gained at SHRM12?
