Human Resources and Corporate Politics

As I shared in a previous post, I spoke to a group of HR/OD professionals recently about how to both embrace and take advantage of politics to do the good work we are all called to do.  The main point I was trying to make to that group was that whether we like it or not, politics exist and that if we understand how they work, we can get more good work done.  

The part of the story I didn't tell in my presentation is that as HR professionals, we have a double-edged responsibility related to corporate politics.  First, we need to become politically skilled in order to navigate politically to get the big important work done.  But, at the same time, we have to work to take intentional steps to crush and destroy politics where ever we can.  

I think that this double responsibility hangs up a lot of HR pros.  Most who I encounter seem to feel that they have to pick sides: either become political and give up on trying to minimize politics systemically OR self-righteously refuse to play any political "games" as a show of their commitment to making the organization less political.  

The reality is that leaders in human resources have to do both.  If you can't "play the game," you aren't in the game.  If you aren't in the game, you can't change how the game is played.  

So, the lesson is that HR pros have to invest themselves in learning to be politically skilled so that they can gain the influence needed to attack politics from the inside.  And, the more you know about how the politics work, the better equipped you will be to destroy them.  

Hip and Sage Consultant Conference - Debrief

Yesterday, I had the privilege to be a part of the agenda for a funky little conference in Omaha called the Hip and Sage Consultant Conference.  It was hosted by the Omaha Chapter of the ODN and was largely attended by people who carry a title with Organizational Development in it and other external OD consultants.  I was able to attend about half of the conference and I enjoyed my experience.  Here are some of my observations from the day.

1.  The Hip and Sage part of the name comes from the title of a book called Hip and Sage that was written by Lisa Haneberg.  The conference was wholly designed around Lisa and her content.  She gave the opening keynote presentation to set the tone for the day.  Then, she gave her Hip and Sage keynote over lunch.  Finally, she did a closing exercise for the conference attendees to help them bring together their learnings and leave with something actionable.  This was a cool concept.  Granted, this wasn't a large conference, but I really liked this format.  Lisa is clearly someone who's got a lot to say (having written over a dozen books I think) and she had compelling content.  I'm sure she enjoyed having more than an hour to shape our minds, and I certainly think that attendees enjoyed having more time with her.  Certainly, this approach would only work if the person you build your conference around doesn't suck (because that could mean a guaranty bomb), but if you vet your speaker well enough, it's a great idea.

2.  As for Lisa herself, I'd recommend picking up her book(s).  Her content seems to be a mix of professional guidance for HR/OD/Training professionals packaged in solid personal development messages.  Check her out if you haven't already.

3.  Leaving the conference yesterday, I'm more confused than ever about what OD really is.  From what I observed, it seems like most OD people are working on projects in the areas of talent management, learning programs/systems, succession planning, and some change management.  I also heard about things like compensation design and org design.  That all sounds like work I'd consider to be core to strategic human resources, but I found that OD practitioners for the most part consider themselves non-HR.  This was a little disheartening to me because I don't think that HR or OD folks can afford to bicker over who does what within an organization.  Regardless of what we like to tell ourselves, the rest of the organization puts us all in the same bucket--the people who do people stuff.  OD and HR (and training) needs to work as one.  If anyone should know how to collaborate and work together, it's us.

4.  My session was on the topic of power and politics in organizations.  Here were my underlying points:

• Power and politics are not four letter words.  As HR and OD professionals, we need to stop demonizing these dynamics and instead study and embrace them.  By doing this, we can use these forces for good.
• Politics, by definition, is an unwritten process for how group decisions are made that largely revolves around considerations of authority and power.  Politics, in and of itself, is not good or bad.  If we change our perspective to see our organizations more like a game of chess where politics is the rules of the game, we can be much more intelligent and strategic about how we navigate and get things done.
• Power comes from many places beyond the formal authority of title or position.  Social capital, resilience, and focus are examples of other types of power than can help you to be effective.  Power is also not something that has to be bestowed upon you, you can build your own power by doing some intentional things.  
• Finally, the sales profession holds the secrets for how to successfully navigate the waters of power and politics to exert influence within your organization.  If you want to take your HR game to the next level, study sales.  Read books on sales.  Go to sales seminars.  This training will propel you further faster than any HR seminar you will attend.  I guarantee it.  

I was really pleased by how many people in my session seemed to really "get it."  I hope that they take these concepts and can leverage them to be more successful.  

5.  I was energized by the energy that the people in this room have for the work they are doing.  This was a group of the torch bearers for the good work of development.  They seem resolved and encouraged to do great work to help people grow and in turn help their organizations grow.  

6.  There are a lot of talented and smart folks in Nebraska.  This is an exciting place to live and work because of so many people doing so many cool things within their work and community.  

Thanks again to the folks at ODN for inviting me to be a part of your event.  Great job to Todd Conkright and team for putting on a really cool and valuable event.  

Profundity

I feel as though I owe you an apology.  It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted here to my blog.  And for some reason, I feel guilty about it, even though there are about 8,000 other HR blogs there for the reading.  

While I've felt as though I should write SOMETHING during the past few weeks, the ideas just weren't there.  And it has been bothering me.  I've been wondering why I haven't had more to write about recently.  Perhaps it was that my short family vacations distracted my attention.  Or maybe it's that my work has been consuming of my creative energies.  

I don't think either was really the case.  Instead. I fell into a trap that I think holds a lot of us back in our careers and lives.  When I thought more about it, it wasn't that I hadn't had ideas, because I had.  It wasn't even that I haven't had time to write (although time has been tight lately).  The problem was that I didn't feel that anything I had to say was, by my own measure, profound enough to warrant a blog post.  And apparently I had decided that if I didn't have something profound to say, don't say anything at all.

I suspect that I'm not alone in struggling with this instinct.  I've seen it at work several times.  After a meeting, someone will stop by my office and share a thought or question about what was discussed in the meeting that I know would have been important to the outcome of the discussion.  I'll ask them why they didn't bring it up in the meeting and they will reply that they didn't think it was that important.  Or, they'll rationalize that if it was really that important, someone else would have also had the same idea and brought it up.  In other words, they had decided that their question or comment wasn't profound enough to warrant saying it out loud.

This instinct is one that we should resist.  For one, the measure of how profound a question, comment, or blog post is will be determined by others, not by you.  Generally, I'm surprised by which blog posts are popular and which are not.  It turns out that it doesn't really matter how profound I think the post is.  What matters is whether or not others find it to be interesting, useful or insightful.  

So, the moral of this story is that we need to have the courage to share our questions and ideas with others.  Even when a question doesn't seem terribly profound, trust your instincts that it's probably an important question and that others probably have the same question.    

The lesson for me is to write about what I'm thinking about, even when I think it may not be terribly profound.    You never know when I might be on to something.  And, you can always stop reading when it's not terribly profound.