Word count: 1600

======================================== Summary: Human resources, despite function's complex activities, should have a fundamentally simple mission, yet it is a mission that is being neglected by many HR professionals. I call that mission Leadership Imperative — helping organization recruit, retain, and develop good leaders. Here is a three-step action plan to get HR function off sidelines and into thick of game. ======================================

A Whack Up ‘long Side The Head Of Human Resources: The Leadership Imperative by Brent Filson

When we perceive simple center in seemingly complex, we can change our world in powerful new ways.

Albert Einstein perceived simple E=MC2 in complexities of physical reality and changed history of 20th century.

Big Daddy Lipscomb, Baltimore Colts 300 pound all-pro tackle in 1960s perceived simple center of what was perceived to be complex game of football. "I just wade into players," he said, "until I come to one with ball. Him I keep!" — and changed way game was played. Likewise, human resources, despite its complex activities, should have a fundamentally simple mission, yet it is a mission that is being neglected by many HR professionals. I call that mission Leadership Imperative — helping organization recruit, retain, and develop good leaders.

Clearly, without good leaders, few organizations can thrive over long run. What characterizes a good leader? A good leader consistently gets results — in ethical and motivational ways. Because they interact with all business functions and usually provide education and training for those functions, human resource professionals should be focused primarily on recruiting, retaining, and developing leaders that get results. Any other focus is a footnote.

Yet working with human resource leaders in a variety of companies for past two decades, I find that many of them are stumbling. Caught up in tempests of downsizing, compliance demands, acquisitions, mergers, and reorganizations, they are engaged in activities that have little to do with their central mission. Ignoring or at least giving short shrift to Leadership Imperative, they are too often viewed, especially by line leaders, as carrying out sideline endeavors.

Many HR leaders have nobody to blame for this situation but themselves. By neglecting Imperative, they themselves have chosen to be sideline participants.

Here is a three-step action plan to get HR function off sidelines and into thick of game.

Recognize. Link. Execute.

Before I elaborate each step, let me define leadership as it ought to be. For your misunderstanding leadership will thwart you in applying Imperative.

The word "leadership" comes from old Norse word-root meaning "to make go." Indeed, leadership is about making things go — making people go, making organizations go. But misunderstanding comes in when leaders fail to understand who actually makes what go. Leaders often believe that they themselves must make things go, that if people must go from point A to point B, let's say, that they must order them to go. But order leadership founders today in fast-changing, highly competitive markets.

In this environment, a new kind of leadership must be cultivated — leadership that aims not to order others to go from point A to point B — but instead that aims to motivate them to want take leadership in going from A to B.

That "getting others to lead others" is what leadership today should be about. And it is what we should inculcate in our clients. We must challenge them to lead, lead for results with this principle in mind, and accept nothing else from them but this leadership.

Furthermore, leadership today must be universal. To compete successfully in highly competitive, fast changing markets, organizations must be made up of employees who are all leaders in some way. All of us have leadership challenges thrust upon us many times daily. In very moment that we are trying to persuade somebody to take action, we are a leader — even if that person we are trying to persuade is our boss. Persuasion is leadership. Furthermore, most effective way to succeed in any endeavor is to take a leadership position in that endeavor.

The Imperative applies to all employees. Whatever activities you are being challenged to carry out, make Imperative a lens through which you view those activities. Have your clients recognize that your work on behalf of their leadership will pay large dividends toward advancing their careers.

Recognize: Recognize that recruiting, retaining, and developing good leaders ranks with earnings growth (or with nonprofit organizations: mission) in terms of being an organizational necessity. So most of your activities must be in some way tied to Imperative.

Like deep green of rainforest canopy, when leadership provides its members with resources they need to grow, organizational canopy is teaming with life. In this second of a series of articles exploring spectrum of leadership influence, I address question: how does deep green leadership energize others?

The Story Part 1: The Conundrum One Thursday afternoon as a scheduled meeting was breaking up, Lynn, CEO, realized he had time to stop by field office in town. He had hoped he could as this office was one of lower performing ones in region. He sent his driver ahead with his luggage saying he would have office manager drive him to airport after his visit.

When he arrived at plush offices, he was taken by emptiness of space, quiet and relatively low energy level. The support staff seemed to be making themselves busy and members of outside sales team who were in office, were busily doing paperwork between conversations with office mates. When questions were posed about how things could be run more effectively, Lynn was struck by pervasive sense of powerlessness. Productive work was hard to identify against backdrop of make-work activity.

Lynn regretted having become disconnected from organization. He remembered a few months back when he visited a high performance office. It had seemed as though an "invisible hand" was guiding action, efficiently and effectively.

He remembered feeling that things were going well then, that actions seemed directed and everyone was excited and happy. They came in early and stayed late. The pace of action was quick and efficient. Now, in contrast, people seemed to be making work, active but without clear link to organization's objectives. They were doing what they thought was right, but weren't sure. Morale, it seems, had sagged. As he left office and headed for airport, he made a mental note: "Our leadership plan needs work," he thought.

Analysis and Perspective In his leadership role, Lynn was appropriately, if informally, monitoring a leading indicator of performance. When he noted apparent confusion regarding efficient resource allocation and a pervasive sense of powerlessness he was observing an indicator of sagging leadership effectiveness. He appropriately hypothesized that this decline was related to a reduced "velocity" of leadership across organization, amount of time spent on leadership activities was declining. Because a pervasive sense of powerlessness and confusion about resource distribution are indicative of a decline in a specific type of leadership influence, called deep green leadershipSM, he realized that he needed to initiate programs to reenergize this type of leadership in organization.

Lynn knew that three steps were required: first gather information about current situation, diagnose issues and formulate hypotheses; second, initiate specific leadership activities designed to shore-up deeply held sense of fairness in resource distribution across firm and sense of potency or power that results; and third, institutionalize change by integrating these initiatives into organization's culture.

Lynn realized this would not be easy. His leadership teams must find ways to influence members' deeply held beliefs about their relationship with organization and their sense of organization's fairness. The benefits of success are great, however, because a sense of fairness enables trust and clarity of action. Both focus action on collective benefits rather than on individual comforts.

Case Study Examples Many organizations face periods where change in environment or to organization's structure disrupts flow of resources through system. The organization's members begin to wonder what these changes mean to them and whether they will be treated fairly. During these periods, organization's members do not feel in control of their own situation and of their organization's success. They spend time and energy trying to understand what situation means to them and attempting to position themselves to benefit or simply to protect their interests. Sometimes they even consider leaving. To prepare for possible inequity, some members use organization's resources to feather their nests and accumulate power in order to feel in control. Upon reflection, Lynn realized that he himself had used his driver to satisfy his personal needs even as those of organization were not best served. When sense of unfairness or lack of control occurs broadly across organization, leadership intervention is required.

The success of Intel in microprocessor business is legendary, but it didn't have to be that way. The Intel story might have been quite different if some of its managers had not been skilled at gaining access to firm resources, that is, at deep green leadership.

From moment he joined Intel, technologist Les Kohn believed firm should enter reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor market pioneered by competitors Sun Microsystems and Motorola. However, strategically, Intel had decided not to enter market and had not allocated resources to product.

Kohn knew he needed to garner firm resources if his dream was to be realized. He also knew that a skunk works project would not have sufficient scale and scope to build team he needed. Therefore, he decided to "sell" project to top-management as a co-processor to be sold along with Intel's core products, rather than as a stand-alone processor that would have competed with Intel's core product line.