The Secret Strategy HR Executives Need to Use to Become C-Suite Leaders

I am in Oman this week, part of a RBL faculty delivering the HR Academy to a group of HR leaders from the Oman Oil group of companies. I love the group that we are working with, they are smart, engaged and really excited to learn. They are all part of organisations that are partly owned by the government and as such have larger than just economic goals, which gives them the opportunity to not only impact business but society as well.

Inadvertently one of the debates during these HR sessions (and every other HR conference I have attended over the last 20 years) comes back to “my CEO doesn’t think HR is important and I am not invited to leadership team discussions. How can I get past this HR bias?”

My answer is always the same. If you can’t prove that you add value to the business why should you be invited? If you get stuck in the importance of the HR processes, tools or systems then you have lost the plot and nobody will invite you to the top table.

HR Executives Need to THINK BIG – no, BIGGER

The trick lies in your ability to think of the organisation on a macro level because that’s what leaders do. And anyone looking to invite you on board as a leader will look to see if you understand the big picture.

Here are the kinds of results you should be able to talk about for your industry to show your top executives that you are indeed a strategic big thinker:

In our organisation we should focus on doing “xyz”, SO THAT:

• We can reduce the forecasted brain drain when the economies of our neighbours start picking up again
• We can build the capabilities that are required to compete against low price focused and agile Asian competitors
• We can build a leadership pipeline to expand our business into frontier markets
• We counter the trend of lower and lower enrolment numbers of students in engineering disciplines which are critical to our long term survival
• We not only engage the current employees but are also an attractive workplace for Millennials coming in the workplace over the next decade
• Employees are able to respond quickly and autonomously to sales and / or customer service opportunities

The key in the above results-driven questions is not coming up with the “xyz” – or what you should focus on, nor is it what you intend to achieve. I am pretty sure that we all know the answers to the questions.

The key is in what Dave Ulrich calls ‘HR from the Outside In’. The ability to intimately understand the following 4 BIG ideas:

1.    The context in which your business operates
2.    The trends that will shape your business in years to come
3.    The drivers of growth for your business, and
4.    What differentiates your business from other competitors

And then it is the ability to translate what is happening into HR solutions that drive the business forward and protect it from potential challenges or utilize potential opportunities.

Dave Ulrich summarises this into two simple words; SO THAT!

[box] If you as HR executive are able to explain to your business leader that you want to do this SO THAT it will generate this result for the business, no business leader will ignore you or your potential as a leader.[/box]

So stop with whatever you are doing now and answer the following question: I am doing this now SO THAT…..

If you can’t answer the question, ask your line manager to answer it for you. If the answer doesn’t satisfy your desire to add value to the business, complete the task (we don’t want to get you fired) and then suggest an activity to your boss that you know will help the organisation move forward. But don’t forget it is your responsibility to explain the link between what you are doing and the value to the company.

I challenge you to complete this sentence in the comments below: “I am doing this now SO THAT …”

Photo Credit: phalaenopsisaphrodite523