The following is an excerpt from Lisa Prior’s chapter in Emerging Trends and Issues in Management Consulting.

Corporate responsibility. Corporate goodwill. Global citizenship. These three interrelated business topics will increasingly shape the role of human resources (HR) and organizational development (OD) consulting in the decades to come. Are today’s organizations prepared to internalize these values and issues as part of their strategic focus and in their day-to-day operations? Is human resources prepared to step into a leadership role that would help organizations respond to these issues? What changes must we, as a profession, make to take an active and strategic place at the business table? And, most importantly, how do we implement these strategic issues to build a responsible company from the inside out?

The first decade of the 21st century is witnessing a revolution as corporate responsibility is becoming central to the role of business and vital to its success. External stakeholders’ demands for transparent, responsible corporate behavior are closely intertwined with the new realities of goodwill and globalization. As responsible companies are increasingly differentiating themselves from their competition to meet these demands, they are attracting and retaining the best business partners and employees.

The implications of this change are significant for HR and OD professionals, who are charged with the management and development of one of the corporation’s most vital assets — its people.

The demand for a broader HR role in redefining the connections between business and society requires a new mindset and new set of competencies for the HR profession. The corporate responsibility movement, the increasing importance of company goodwill, and the impact of globalization have increasingly required companies to include stakeholders that are outside of the traditional borders of the corporation.

A new paradigm shift is taking place, one that requires organizations to identify strategies that leverage “inside” competencies and assets to the benefit of needs and concerns of key stakeholder groups “outside” of the organization. This chapter explores the meaning of corporate responsibility and corporate goodwill, how these concepts contribute to financial success inside the organization, and the changing relationship between inside business practices and the larger society. We offer three steps to facilitate attempts to build the responsible company from the inside out:

• Identifying the key strategic and operational intersections between the organization and the outside world;
• Integrating corporate responsibility into HR practices; and
• Embracing a new set of competencies for HR professionals.

To continue reading Lisa’s work, along with other writing on management consulting, see Emerging Trends and Issues in Management Consulting.

Change is messy, and today’s economy is forcing many organizations to rethink their business strategies and markets. Budgets are getting tighter. Competition is growing. Emotions are running higher. Some days it feels like spaghetti against the wall.

Now is the time for Human Resources professionals to bring clarity and connection between talent development strategies and the bottom line. How can you see opportunity in the chaos? How can you conceptualize an approach ? How can you communicate in simple, plain language that engages leaders from the C-suite to the line?

How do you pull it all together so it doesn’t feel like spaghetti against the wall?

This two-part article offers HR professionals practical tools for two tasks:

1. Conceptualizing a talent development approach; and
2. Helping the line see the relevance and connection to business goals and outcomes.

Part I, below, focuses on the first task, how to conceptualize a talent development approach.

Talent Development: What’s Your Concept?

The Problem.

You’re struggling to improve the ways in which you communicate with and engage line managers in talent development, and you’re not alone. Recent data confirms that while the HR profession has improved its strategic impact on organizations, HR professionals are struggling to communicate the connection between HR activities and the things that the business leaders really pays attention to: business drivers, goals, and performance.

Click here if you’re interested in data that tells the story.

The Solution.

Being a strategic partner means that HR professionals must be proficient in conceptualizing and communicating strategies that advance business drivers and goals. At a high-level, four steps will help:

1. Know the key business drivers that your company’s talent development strategy needs to advance. Business drivers are the key areas of focus that drive company performance: they represent the company’s perspective on what should be measured and managed. Examples of business drivers include company culture, ability to innovate; customer service; quality; ability to harness technology; and brand and reputation.
   • What are your firm’s business drivers?
   • What’s needed, from a human capital perspective, to advance these drivers?
   • Which metrics and measurements matter? How will they be tracked?
2. Identify key roles and competencies. Key roles include responsibilities Competencies are the skills, knowledge and behaviors that are causally related to business success.
   • What strategically important roles are needed to advance business drivers?
   • What skills, knowledge and behaviors are causally related to success in these roles?
   • How will we encourage employee development and learning to maximize the potential of these roles?
3. Create a talent development concept. Start with the big picture in mind.
   • How does talent development connect with other HR processes, such as performance management?
   • What’s the best way to represent this connection?
4. Create visual tools. Let’s face it: a lot gets thrown at line managers. Line managers, who are responsible for executing, think strategically about talent development.

In the world of the Producer/Manager/Leader, the lines are blurred between roles and activities.  Early in your career, you were primarily a Producer, and your role was clear: produce a deliverable, a deal, or discovery. Your primary goal was to give focused attention to the task at hand. As others recognized your success and growing expertise, you were promoted to Manager, directing the efforts of people on projects or programs or operations. You juggled the demands of your Producer role, which never seemed to fully diminish, by delegating to team members and direct reports.

Now you are a Leader. You’re called upon to chart a vision and direction for your group while aligning with corporate goals.  You’re held accountable for financial results, market penetration, product pipelines, quality and compliance improvements, and break-through innovations that help your organization hold onto (or break into) market leadership. You’re asked to build culture, create context, motivate and energize a workforce that’s often under-resourced and struggling to maintain its own work-life balance. And you’re still asked to Produce and Manage.

How can you do it all and still succeed?

These three simple activities will help you begin to master this new leadership paradigm:

1.     Recognize that you’ve been working under the Producer/Manager/Leader paradigm. The shift from the linear, straight-flowing leadership pipeline paradigm to the Producer/Manager/Leader paradigm has advanced like the tide. Changing technologies make innovations, efficiencies, and communications faster and more urgent: it takes skill to navigate priorities. The way to succeed is to let go of the idea that you play just one role, and that you’d be more effective if only you could delegate more effectively. Your lifeline is your ability to shift mindset and hold onto the idea that your job is now to simultaneously produce, manage and lead .

2.     Learn how to triage your Producer/Manager/Leader roles. Before you write your weekly or monthly task list or action plan, take five minutes out of Monday morning (or Friday afternoon or weekend) and do an analysis of where you are spending your time. Which role are you emphasizing, Producing, Managing or Leading? Is that the best way to spend your time given the priorities and goals facing you and your group? Here’s a quick triage activity:

1. Write a list of the major tasks, meetings, and activities facing you in the upcoming weeks. If possible, put them into groups.
2. Identify each task, meeting or group of activities as Producing, Managing or Leading. Example questions to ask yourself include,
   1. Am I the one to do this job? (If “yes,” then this is a Producer  task)
   2. Does this require my close management and planning? (If “yes” then this is a Manager task)
   3. Is this a big picture issue requiring communicating vision, ensuring focus or motivating people? (If “yes,” then this is a Leader task)
3. Reflect on your results.
   1. What is your real profile? (E.g. Where are you spending the majority of your time? Where is the tension between roles?)
   2. What  is your ideal profile? (E.g. Is this the most effective way to spend your time in the upcoming weeks?
   3. What can you change or do differently

3.     Become expert at shifting between roles. The right answer to where you should spend your time depends on various factors: the competitive landscape; the urgency of your goals; the size and capabilities of your team; and your own interests and career aspirations. (This last one may surprise you, but let’s not underestimate the power of our own “me” issues: the truth is that we each naturally gravitate to one of the P/M/L roles whether we are conscious of this dynamic or not. It’s always better to make conscious, informed decisions.)

1. If you need to emphasize your Producer role: What mechanisms do you have in place for managing and leading? Where will your team go for trouble-shooting and direction if you are tied up creating your own deliverable, analysis or discovery? And by the way, are you really sure that you’re the only one to do this task?
2. If you need to emphasize your Manager role: What’s not getting done that only you can truly do? Where could you lose the forest for the trees while you’re busy managing people and details of a project or program or operation?
3. If you need to emphasize your Leader role: Are you at risk of being all “talk” and no “walk”? What will be needed to operationalize your vision or direction, and to make it tangible and believable?

Successful Producer/Manager/Leaders have learned to develop other key skills, including

• Becoming expert in reading culture and managing change.
• Using coaching as a tool for increasing effectiveness and shifting between roles.
• Learning how to Produce/Manage/Lead in two universes, leveraging today’s Web 2.0 technologies to work across organizational boundaries and workforce generations.

Look for more on these topics and more on this website. We’d love to talk with you about our Producer/Manager/Leader leadership assessments, programs, and experiences.  Give us a call at 617-795-1878 or email lisa@priorconsulting.com.