From Partners to Players: Extending the HR Playing …

1 From Partners to Players: Extending the HR Playing Field 293 FROM Partners TO PLAYERS: EXTENDINGTHE HR Playing FIELDH uman Resource Management, Winter 2001, Vol. 40, No. 4, Pp. 293 307 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ulrich and Dick BeattyHR professionals must always be becoming or constantly changing and adapting. For the lastdecade, many have argued the business partner role as a complement to traditional HR admin-istrative work. We argue in this paper that HR professionals should move beyond Partners tobecome players. HR professionals as players are in the game, on the field, making a differ-ence through their HR work. In this article, we suggest that to become players, HR profession-als must learn to coach, architect, build, facilitate, lead, and provide a conscience to businessleaders.

2 Specific knowledge and tools for each of these roles are described. 2001 John Wiley& Sons, HR partner concept has been popular forover a decade and is described in several works,most notably in Ulrich and Lake s Organiza-tional Capability (1990). This concept recog-nizes that for the HR field to move beyond itspolite (people focused) and police (regulationfocused) roles and add value to executing afirm s strategy, it needs to:1. Know the Become an expert in HR basics (thefunction s tool kit ).3. Learn how to use these tools to changethe organization s culture and strate-gic capabilities through effective andefficient development of its recently, Beatty and Schneier (1996)began to describe a shift in the role of the HRprofessional as moving from HR Partners toplayers as required for HR to meet a firm sstrategic shifting role of HR comes fromchanging business demands.

3 Organizationsmust establish new covenants with custom-ers (Heskett & Schlesinger, 1994), managedisruptive technologies (Christensen &Overdorf, 2000), create new forms of engage-ments with employees, and face scrutiny ofinvestors who determine a firm s market valueby assessing its intangibles, not just itspresent or past earnings. The sum of thesechanges requires evolution in the HR professionals will have to continue to dealwith concepts relating to talent and intellec-tual capital. They will have to ensure bothcompetent and committed employees for thefuture not the past. In addition, however, HRprofessionals will need to help organizationschange and change quickly, innovate, developHR professionalswill have tocontinue to dealwith conceptsrelating to talentand HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Winter 2001leadership depth, ensure accountability, learnand un-learn, leverage global knowledge, cre-ate strategic clarity, establish customer intimacy,etc.

4 These new deliverables of HR become ca-pabilities of the firm of the future and intan-gibles which instill investor meet these increased expectations, HRprofessionals must be more than Partners ; theymust be players. Players contribute. They areengaged. They add value. They are in thegame, not at the game. They deliver do things that make a propose six ways in which HR play-ers contribute to the organization: coach, ar-chitect, builder, facilitator, leader, andconscience. HR players who master theseroles add value and contribute to anorganization s ability to compete in a signifi-cantly expanded Playing field. To win on thisextended Playing field will significantly testtraditional HR professionals. We want to sug-gest specific concepts and actions for eachof these six roles so that future HR profes-sionals can meet the increasing demandsplaced on them (see Figure 1).

5 The HR Coach: Coaching to WinWhy Coaches MatterCoaches exist in all walks of life. Coaches likeJohn Wooden are masters at observing behav-ior, describing behavior, providing feedback,and rewarding behavioral change. HR coacheshave this opportunity both within their ownfunction and more importantly they can coachexecutives in changing their behavior. Coacheshelp people improve, see what works and whatdoesn t, and offer special counsel and adviceto enable executives to develop themselves andimprove organizational also focuses on attitudes, as wellas behaviors. Coaches serve as teachers, andthe best coaches help their pupils to becometeachers of what is necessary for the organi-zation to succeed. They know when to be criti-cal and when to be positive, and when to besupportive and nurturing.

6 Most important,they know both how to stimulate the appro-priate individual behavior and to encourageteam play; ultimately they know how to en-able the team to win. They may not always bepopular, but the best coaches deliver resultsand are held accountable for these one major role of the HR player as coachis to enable professional growth and to helpexecutives achieve their full potential in guid-ing the firms business success on the variousperformance know the game, and they knowhow to win. They understand not only howthe score is kept but also the capabilities, bothteam and individual, needed to score. Fullygrasping and understanding the organization sstakeholder scorecard is critical. It includesfamiliarization not only with the components,but with the details the activities to energizeand strategic capabilities to build within, thebusiness scorecard (Figure 2).

7 These compo-nents and details can also help to identifypresent and future sources of concern andthus help prioritize executive 1. The interdependent role of the HR Partners to Players: Extending the HR Playing Field 295In coaching executives, one can begin withan examination of the stakeholder relationshipsto understand the executives goals with eachstakeholder, how these relate to each other inthe firm s business model, and how to measureattainment of the goals (Figure 2). In coach-ing, HR players might ask an executive:What are your goals with this stakeholder?What is your current relationship with thisstakeholder?What is the relationship between thisstakeholder and another stakeholder( , customers and consumers)?What needs to be adapted to reach yourgoals?

8 What actions can you take that will en-sure that the goals are met?What are the metrics for the success witheach stakeholder?These questions, as a part of the coachingconversation, may help the business leaderfocus attention and energy, prioritize ac-tions, and, most importantly, confirm or crafta one firm, the senior business leader hasbeen coached once every six months for twoyears. Each visit begins with the stakeholdermap. He is asked how he has done recentlywith the stakeholders he was most concernedabout in the last visit ( , customers, inves-tors, etc.). He then creates plans to engagekey stakeholders in the future. The stakeholdermap has helped the business leader realize thathe cannot be all things to all stakeholders allthe time, but must consider priorities in thecontext of the relationship between stakehold-ers.

9 It has also helped with the realization thatattention to stakeholders evolves over time( , as union relations were approachingcontract time, more attention had to be allo-cated to this stakeholder and pulled back fromothers). As he matched stakeholder goals withhis calendar and time, he was able to help himkeep focused on the things that mattered mostto often requires courage and con-tracting. Many business leaders have not hadpersonal coaches who offer them candid ob-servations and as a result may be put off atfirst by intense coaching. When done well,however, coaching becomes an invaluablesource of insight. In one large firm strugglingwith all the demands of becomingdisintermediated through new economy e-Figure 2. A winning business HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Winter 2001business initiatives, the two business leaderswere often in conflict about the direction totake the firm.

10 The new head of HR asked fora meeting with them. He related that, in hisbrief time with the firm, a number of embed-ded problems stemmed from the conflict anddifference of opinion between the two of problems were not allowing the creationof a consistent set of business ideas as to howthe firm would win in its future marketplace,which needed to be communicated to theemployees and customers. At first, they dis-agreed, but as he shared specific cases, theycame to realize that their inability to create ashared point of view about how to positionthe firm in the new economy was causingchaos within the firm. He then proceeded tohelp them through difficult, but candid con-versations about their unique managementstyles, aspirations for the firm, and personalambitions.