HR Between Doers And Thinkers

From the old days, people are familiar with the field of investments, trade, engineering, science and education, they are used to perceive those who work in these fields like brokers and dealers, engineers, scientist and teachers as thinkers, problem solvers, creative and developers, on the other hand workers, staff, and employees perceived as doers where they only need to do what they are told and deliver it as it wanted, these concepts and perceptions stayed long enough to be facts and logic to people, in fact it has been taught for generations in this way, these are the heritage that made most of leaders of organization to perceive HR as cost unit, technical function and operations only in other words doers, while the other fields and specialization as expert matters and thinkers.

Time pass and the world start changing and shifting towards globalization and global completion in the market and trades, the demand for knowledge, skills and the right behavior increased by multinational organization to gain the core competency, competitive advantage and sustainability of their business. Recently with the shift from industrial era to knowledge and technology era people start to realize the challenges came along with managing people in terms of conflict, culture, talent, competencies, training and development, employee engagement, performance management and other aspects of human which affect organization performance and competitiveness in the market, thus the realization of human as important assets of the organization increased and HR become more of attention to organization than before.

Organizations realized that in the knowledge and technology era people are the key to succeed, in fact they realized that people were always from the old days the key to succeed but they cannot say it at that time because the environment focusing on materialistic and human used to be seen as part of the production material line rather than important assets and key to success, this shift of thinking transform HR from the perception of doers, cost unit and operation to be human resources, then human capital, these terms shifted not just the perceptions but even the practices that made HR today as a specialized field like other fields were it have expert matters and even the teaching of HR shifted from operation to more strategic and tactics practices like Dave Ulrich model.

Although this is the case in global organizations that face this reality in early stages of the knowledge and technology era still large number of organizations in local and regions are perceive HR as cost unit and operation, they focus on making profit in money and shares term rather than planning to sustain competitiveness, core competency and grow to global market, other organizations still relay on sales people to make them survive the competition and make the profit money, while others relay on financial reports and statistics to make decisions regarding organization vision and mission to craft the strategy, the gap is still there although HR is being now introduce as strategic partner but the old culture and perceptions still strong in many organization culture and leaders mindset, thus the work on pushing HR to take the rightful place in organization is not done and need more convincing for leaders that HR people are thinkers, problem solvers and strategic partner in decision making, this may take a while and lots of effort but it will get there since human today is the essence of organization competitiveness and sustainability.  

Strategic HR Logos, Pathos And Ethos

Leaders of organization they use these elements to convey their messages about organization vision, mission, goals and strategy to help them get the buy in from middle managers, employess and external stakeholders, then the middle managers can easily work with employess to achieve it using different style and methods of management.

The three elements stand for as follow:

Logos: 

Means to convince an audience by use of logic or reason.To use logos would be to cite facts and statistics, historical and literal analogies, and citing certain authorities on a subject.Logos is the Greek word for “word".

Pathos:

Means to persuade an audience by appealing to their emotions.

Leaders use pathos to invoke sympathy from an audience; to make the audience feel what  the leader wants them to feel in order to prompt action. Pathos is the Greek word for both “suffering” and “experience.” The words empathy and pathetic  are derived from pathos.

Ethos:

Means to convince an audience of the author’s credibility or character.

Leaders would use ethos to show to their audience that they are a credible source and  worth listening to. Ethos is the Greek word for “character.” The word “ethic” is derived from ethos.

From the explanation of the three elements we can see how they mix togather and work in favor of leaders who really know how to mix it in the right manner and obtain the buy in. Combining mind (logos), heart (pathos) and soul (ethos) in a message is so powerful to resist or divert away, successful leaders in the world use it wisely which differentiate them from other leaders.

In contrast strategic HR is all about using these three elements in the organization to support the successful achievement of objectives, strategy, goals that will realize organization mission and vission, strategic HR as Dave Ulrich state in his books must convert from achieving and providing outcomes to specific measured deliverables for units, departments and functions in the organization through the services they provide.

Traditionally HR was seeing by organization top management as only pathos that they only want help employees and provide comfort to them on the expense of organization interests, while employees seeing HR as only logos that they only care about attendance records, wage and salaries calculation and cut off, employees productivity and tool for top management to cut cost and downsizing, while HR they see themselves as ethos making sure everything is going by the organization and top management book, rules and regulations, labor law, policies and procedures, this how it was before that is why the HR today is trying to show this is not the situation anymore, HR has become out of it and introduce the strategic HR concept drived from Dave Ulrich model of four HR strategic roles administrative expert, employee champion, strategic partner and change agent by using the combining elements of logos, pathos and ethos in the process.

HR Is not All About The Function

Human resources always refer in people mind the function done by employess with head section and HR manager processing employess leaves, recruitment, payroll and pension, employee benefits and so on, althou these functions are essential in HR but its not what HR all about and there are more to be done not just by HR professionals but managers, supervisors and team leaders as well.

Dave Ulrich talked about strategic HR in several books he wrote, in fact not just showed that HR has strategic role in the organization but even more how HR role is part of all employess on all levels, every CEO, manager, supervisor and team leader must have HR role, as long you deal, lead and affect human being then you must have HR role.

HR strategic role and admin functions are the tools and methods enablers for the organization and top management to practice HR with their employees but not just any HR practices the professional and right practice that fit the organizational culture, environment, industry and capabilities, when it comes to employees performance, training needs, coaching, career development and motivation these are all responsibilities of managers and supervisors, HR in addition to its admin functions is enabler, consultant and provider for top management to perform their HR role with employees.

Imagin a company has strategic HR, HRIS technology system, HR ISO and professional HR employees but the top management not practicing or even try to use all these tools, the result will be disaster on the company since each manager, supervisor and team leader will act base on his appraoch and mindset that mostly will lead employees to frustration, stress and other negative feelings and emotions that will affect their performance and creativity.

That is why having strategic HR role is not enough, HR must create, educate, train, develop and sustain HR cluture, pracrices, methodologies and tools in the organization and push for updating it and adopt the right HR mindset.

What Does It Mean To Be A Manager?

The manager in any organization, regardless of the job title is not about the power and authority of his position and title but it is about his personality and the manner of his performance in managing work and employess.

There are several types of managers, four of which are:

First: the authoritarian official with a difficult character nervous temperamental likes to be dominant and dominant on all decisions and work does not listen to notice and opinion of anyone but the hypocrites and owners of the lining is corrupt because they have their style in this matter with officials impose orders and accept excuses no matter what and can not make any effort .

Second: the two-sided official who deals with two different personalities according to his personal interests and he is cruel with the employees but he is a custodian to the senior management and he is interested in the employees and takes care of them and deals with the employee with a prestigious social status or has an interest behind him and permanent volatility in his personality and decisions for his personal interest only.

Third: The official who has no decision is the one who does not wait behind him to take any decision or practical step because he needs to refer to the senior management to take the prior consent is not sure himself does not perform his work only if taking a direct permission of those who are slower than the work does not Reliable in solving problems or time crises.

Fourth: Distinguished official is characterized by a leadership personality with a passer and a rational mind in making decisions and positions support employees and develop their abilities and help them in developing decisions are firmly listening to others and supports advice and advice learn from mistakes and correct them and cooperate with the distinguished and not afraid of accountability in his decisions and steps.

The four types of managers are not isolated from each other, you will be surprised if you learn that the successful managers in the world mostly have more than one style they follow depend on the situation, people and challenges faced, strategic HR plays an important role in this matter, the type of managing style can be easily determine if strategic HR in place since employees are known in advance what are their competencies, talents, level of performance, roles in the organization and their contribution in achieving organization strategy, objectives and vision.

Managers and leaders both are managing people in the first place and this what differentiate a successful company from its competitors and gain the profit and market share, once managers and leaders understand the types of styles they need for their people they will succeed in the market, this is one of strategic HR role in the organization to build, develop, sustain and promote the right managing and leading culture, styles and tools for top management to successfuly lead the organization.

Five Elements For Learning Organization

The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice for learning organization is a book by Peter Senge that focuses on problem solving using the systematic collective thinking method to transform companies into learning organization.

Peter Senge American scholar, teacher and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT Sloan School of Managemen is known as the author of The Fifth Discipline (1990) and founder of five disciplines for learning organizations. He also developed with Chris Argyris the Inference Ladder, a powerful decision-making tool.

The Five Elements of the Learning Organization:

1- Personal Mastery: It is an area of ​​continuous clarification and deepening of our personal vision, focusing our energies, developing our patience, and seeing the reality objectively.

2- Mental Models: are deep-seated hypotheses, generalizations, or even images of perceptions that affect how we understand the world and how we take action.

3- Building Shared Vision: Vision must be created through interaction with employees in the organization.

4- Team Learning: dialogue, and the ability of team members to suspend assumptions and engage in real thinking and create a learning environment instead of competition.

5- Systems Thinking: shifting the focus from individual problems, to the control of the entire system.

Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix have become learning organizations able to keep up with and understand the changes in the external environment and to make the change required before it is too late and based on successful continuous learning and development.

Applying learning organization need strategic human resources that have specialists who lead the process of becoming a well-educated organization. Strategic HR is the central computer that obtain, analyze and process information about the internal and external organization environment, resources, talents, competencies, challenges and other strategic important field to provide decision makers with added value information to achieve organization strategy, objectives and vision, by leveraging on knowledge and continues learning.

Between Aggressive Competition And Cooperation Environment

Most organizations practice a culture of competition among employees in order to motivate them to give the best of their bid, creativity, innovation and effort to increase productivity and performance, achieve goals and increase profits.

If we consider the environment of this culture, we find that the employee as if in a battlefield with the rest of his colleagues worried, watching out, on adge and alert frim other so they do not discover his plans, programs, tools and methods to enable him to perform his best work. This environment made the communication at the minimum of work courtesy, basic greetings and congratulations on events and the relations are almost semi-rigid because of fear of leaking the secret of work and effort to competitors and lose the award of senior management, which is seen from the rest of the staff as a worker and practitioner of the psychological warfare games, it is a very negative relationship.

In contrast to the work environment that encourages cooperation culture, sharing, communication, information exchange and teamwork based on professional relationships that are full of emotional intelligence, interrelation with each other, work integration that contribute to the performance of the organization, achievement of profits, creativity and innovation and everyone learns from the other. Many may criticize that the lack of competition does not encourage the award of prizes that will motivate employees to work their best in this environment, however, the honest competition is at the level of the person's job. Everyone works, offers, gives, participates, and competes at the same time to develop the organization, with positive relations between the employees. The senior management is the leader of this culture and strategic HR responsible for the preservation, development and dissemination of this culture in the organization.

Positive relationships between employees and senior management are one of the most important and powerful capabilities that any organization can compete with in the market and it will enable achieving profits, increase performance and quality at a higher level than competitors. It encourages loyalty, creativity, innovation and quality of performance as well.

Organization Profit, Economic Crisis And Strategic HR

With the current economic and financial crisis that hit the region and affected organizations, the obsession with achieving the profitability rates of these organizations is very high to the point of concern and tries in various ways and means to make profits ..... The question arises here does strategic human resources capable and have a role to help organizations to making profits?

If we look at the Porters approach to competitiveness, we find that they fall under three elements:

Cost Leadership.

🔻 Increase profits by reducing costs.

🔻 Increase market share by charging lower prices, with reasonable profit.

2. Individuality:

Offering unique products or services that are different from your competitors' products and more attractive to customers.

3. Focus:

Focus on specific niche markets, and by understanding the dynamics of that market and the unique needs of customers within it.

If we look at the three elements that make competitive advantage for organization to make profit and get out of the economic crisis depends on the human element in the organization that are able to activate these three elements of competitiveness.

The strategic human resources help to formulate a strategy that enables organization with its current conditions and capabilities to work on any of the three elements or togather and know the gap and work to fill it through the recruitment of talent or training of employees and involve the employees and officials in the strategy within the daily work and help departments and support to achieve the strategy and plans programs to fill the gaps, study and measure the status and performance of employees and organization and adapt them to the appropriate organizational culture to push everyone to work together and achieve strategy and provide measurements and facts that ultimately lead to decisions in Senior management to achieve profits.

Therefore, there is a significant correlation between profits, metrics, objectives, corporate strategy, employee performance, organization's current status, gaps, and strategic human resources.