What are Ten Common Gaps to Employee Success?

CEOs are very busy, focused, and hard driving. They have their vision and know where they want to go. So, why don’t employees follow the CEO’s lead?

Simple. In business and organizations, there can only be one boss, one vision, one direction, and one business model. But most employees don’t follow because, unless someone teaches them what to do, what to accomplish, how to team together, and how to align their own personal success to succeeding in the company…they often do what they think is right in their own eyes. Don’t blame employees for a lack of leadership direction resulting in organizational sub-par performance, dysfunction, and collateral damage.

Now that we got the “blame the leadership” off our chest, let’s face reality. Ultimately, the responsibility for our surviving and thriving is up to us. We are accountable and responsible for our actions.

Every day is an opportunity to learn within and outside the company. What are you learning? If you are holding your breath for training funds, don’t bother unless you like a deep blue or scarlet color on your face. It is up to you to take the initiative, even if it is on your own time and dime. After all, it is your career on the line. If you are not keeping up, others around you might get the promotion – or even your job.

Most CEOs hire a leadership team and staff to focus on the gap between the external strategic “business” and the internal details of doing what it takes for “the business” to be successful. In other words, CEOs assume their team is filling in the gaps of what the they can not get to, don’t want to do, or look for specialists to do.

Unfortunately, the result is that gaps can occur resulting in broken links in internal business performance matching what is needed to support the external business.

What are those common broken links? Here are ten questions for employees to ask.

1.  Are you working in a company that matches your passion and where you want to work? If not, have you started the process to identify who you are, what you want to do, and where you want to do it? Are such jobs in your current company? If you have to change companies or careers, do you have a game plan?
2. Are you a Value Worker or Entitlement Worker? Entitlement workers are found everywhere. You may survive but Value Workers have a higher potential for promotions and new jobs.
3. Do you know the business and how to contribute to the business? How can you add value to your company’s business grow if you don’t understand “the business?” How can you learn the business and give management what they want?
4. Are you sure you are in the right seat focusing on doing what you do best and enjoy most? If not, do you know how to discover your behavioral role in order to match what you were born to do with job opportunities?
5. Are you personally motivated to align your career success to the company’s business success? If not, then the synergy potential for company realignment can release transformational energy – but you may not be part of the realignment.
6. Do you know how to market yourself so that others can know who you are and how you can help them?
7. Are you worth knowing? Are you a company asset or liability? Are you trustworthy, loyal, hardworking, and a team player?
8. Are you teaming across silos in alignment with your business objectives? Or, are you a roadblock to team members and company success?
9. Do you know how to ask for help from managers, mentors, and sponsors? Are you currently seeking help?
10. Do you know how to develop trusted relationships, align with company objectives, and exceed company expectations? If not, your untapped teaming potential could become a gold mine for company success – and your career success.

Are these broken links or gaps easy to fix? Usually not by busy CEOs and staff fighting off alligators. However, these are the gaps and links that we have developed with thought leadership and practical tools to help companies release their internal success potential.

How do you score on the ten employee gaps?

 

What are Five Common Gaps to CEO Success?

CEOs have a lot on their plate. Top performing CEOs are focused on the core of “the business” which is really product development/management, marketing, and sales. If there is no product, there is no reason to go to market. If the market is not aware of their product or if the company has a bad reputation, there is no business. If there are no sales, there is no company. This results in the primary CEO focus being outside the daily activities of the company. That means little CEO time and attention is left for internal daily activities.

Most CEOs hire a leadership team and staff to focus on the gap between the external strategic “business” and the internal details of doing what it takes for “the business” to be successful. In other words, CEOs assume their team is filling in the gaps of what the they can not get to, don’t want to do, or look for specialists to do.

Unfortunately, the result is that gaps can occur resulting in broken links in internal business performance matching what is needed to support the external business.

What are those common broken links? Here are five questions to ask about your company.

1. Are you viewing your people as costs or investments? How you treat them and what you get out of them will be depend on how you view them.
2. Do your people “know your business?” How can they help your business grow if they don’t understand “your business?”
3. Are you sure you have the right people in the right seats focusing on your success? If they are the wrong people or in the wrong seats or focusing only on themselves, then changing that picture can dramatically improve your business success potential.
4. Are your people personally motivated by aligning their career success to your business success? If not, then the synergy potential for realignment can release transformational energy.
5. Are your people teaming across silos in alignment with your business objectives? If not, your untapped teaming potential could be a gold mine for company success.

Are these broken links or gaps easy to fix? Usually not by busy CEOs and staff fighting off alligators. However, these are the gaps and links that we have developed thought leadership with practical tools to help companies release their internal success potential.

What are our three distinct initiatives? Here is what we call them and how they apply to the common gaps:

1. Are you viewing your people as costs or investments?
   Human Investment Leadership™
2. Do your people “know your business?”
   Human Investment Leadership™
3. Are you sure you have the right people in the right seats focusing on your success?
   Teampreneurship™
4. Are your people personally motivated by aligning their career success to your business success?
   Jobpreneurship™
5. Are your people teaming across silos in alignment with your business objectives?
   Jobpreneurship™

When a company combines all three solutions, we call it Integrated Solutions™.

Next week we will discuss the same topics from an employee perspective. Then we will begin explaining in more detail how each solution can help companies reach their success potential.

How Can the Human Investment Organization Get Noticed?

There are some core paradigms that are important.

1. HR, just like other functions, is often viewed as having passive and compliant tactical doers unless proven otherwise.
2. HI (Human Investment) should seek to move from doers to influencers to trusted advisors – but never decision makers. The temptation is to be a watchdog over policy and procedures and assume that they are responsible for making the decisions but that is not their role. The C-Level owns the vision, strategy, and culture direction. Ultimately all HI policy and procedures should be driven by sound business judgment, industry best practices, government regulations, legal compliance,– and be approved by the senior executive team with delegations of authority. The P&L owner and functional chief own the daily decisions over their people. HI exists to serve the company by adding value to each management group in alignment with their goals and objectives – which should be in alignment with corporate direction.
3. HI needs to develop as an accountable organization with performance metrics, just as any other function. Every initiative will cost in resource, time, and money. The ROI needs to be measured either quantitatively, as defined by finance or qualitatively, as defined and measured by the P&L owners.
4. HI results need to be packaged and marketed for internal review, just as any other strategic function. A lack of measurable results and ROI metrics will create a distrust and dismissal of HI as a member of the strategy team.
5. World-class competitive organizations recognize that their performance needs to be measured against an apples-to-apples global standard, not an internal standard. Use external benchmarking to help evaluate measured performance.

So, how can HI begin to demonstrate value? Let’s take some examples:

1. Benchmark performance based upon an independent outsource bid. Most benchmarking is like statistics, you can pick the numbers to use to show how well you are doing. By going through a true outplacement bid process, with finance and procurement participation, you will see real numbers, metrics, and best practices that you can now either adopt to meet or exceed internally or be willing to outsource. A true HI function is focused upon being strategically willing to do what it takes to add the most value and results to the success of the company. Finance and procurement will add political support that your conclusions are trustworthy.
2. HR is often characterized as “not invented here” or “I don’t want to add more work or make any changes.” HI organizations constantly look for how to do more with less. Look for innovative ideas, best practices, and revolutionary ideas that will often mean fewer people offering greater results than before.
3. Competitively use third parties to leverage their knowledge and organizational resources to help you make dramatic improvements.
4. Create a marketing plan to communicate your new brand, value, and results to the executive team and executives of interest.
5. Create a relationship development sales strategy to find out what key executives want and how you can give them what they want. That includes an honest evaluation of what you can do with current investments, how you can reorganize existing investments, and what you can do with approved additional investments. Then you must deliver by exceeding expectations and with other functions agreeing that you delivered.
6. Create an enthusiastic, collaborative culture within the HI function as a model to other functions. Expand the culture to other functions.
7. Constantly challenge the HI function to deliver more value each year as measured by benchmarks and internal clients.

Now HI can be measured and accountable for their contribution to company alignment and strategy. Earned success will help you become a trusted advisor with a seat at the executive table.

Next week we will begin to show how Integrated Success™ can create strategic improvements whether implemented by HR, HI, or any department head.

How Can the HI Function Model Cross-Functional Teaming?

In my opinion, Human Investment (HI), combined with HR responsibility, has one of the hardest roles in the company – if done correctly. HI has internally all the requirements of running their own business within a business. Here are some examples:

1. Strategically determining what the customer (CEO and executive team) wants and needs for company success. (vision, strategy, and translation into implementation)
2. Development of products and services required to support company success. (product development)
3. Marketing of these products and services company wide from top to bottom. (marketing)
4. Selling their value and why others should want to “buy” into their solutions. (sales and delivery)
5. Creating regulatory and legal compliance for company wide employee treatment (legal)
6. Recruiting, Vendor selection (procurement)
7. Compensation studies, survey results, and financial fit to company budgets and plans (finance)
8. Payroll (administration and finance)
9. Technology improvements or automation (IT)
10. Employee Issues – development, counseling, dispute resolution… (HR)

These are merely a few examples. But notice that no one can do all of these activities well. Every activity is best achieved through cross-functional teams.

1. Strategy: Interfacing with the executive team informally to develop relationships and see what they want and need. Then review with them your thoughts and plans for how you think you can help. Agree on what can be done with priorities and resource constraints.
2. Product Development: Team cross-functionally with executives of interest, their designees, and P&L owners to develop solutions that gets companywide support.
3. Marketing: Develop the marketing branding, message, and communication plan to rollout solutions to every employee.
4. Selling: Develop relationships companywide for top-level support. Recommend the selling message as why new solutions are necessary for everyone’s success, even if that success is defined by declining benefits necessary to keep the company going and people employed.
5. Legal: Be the coordinator and advisor internally supported by internal or external legal counsel. Involve legal counsel as prudent to help each executive of interest with the balance of minimizing the risk and the cost of how decisions are implemented.
6. Procurement: Create a cross-functional team to follow procurement best practices with finance review of total cost and total value. The process focuses on better buying specifications (job descriptions or what the company requirements are), requests for proposals (resumes or vendor), evaluation process (resume reviews, interview process, and vendor evaluation process), score card summary process, recommendation to executives of interest (decision makers), final negotiation, legal compliance, and implementation (on-boarding or vendor implementation).
7. Finance: Request help from finance to participate in vendor cost analysis, compensation studies and modeling, and with any project that could impact the P&L or balance sheet.
8. Administration: Work with whichever function owns administration across the company. This is often performed in shared service centers, outsourced, or within the CAO or CFO organization.
9. Technology Improvements: Provide the user interface, requirements, and coordinate specifications across affected functions. Establish a cross-functional team to ensure input and results are optimal for all parties. Team with IT who is usually responsible for technical implementation, maintenance, updates, and integration within the company IT infrastructure. Provide implementation user training to all affected parties. Utilize a third party consultant or trainer as needed.
10. Employee Issues: Dysfunctional employees are usually the productivity and expense black hole that drives significant risk or cost to the company. Line managers and executives usually need assistance, direction, and support to assist with employee development, motivation, employee personal issues, and employee complaints. Here the HR representative is seen as the influencer or advisor who protects the company’s interest and legal exposure, helps with positive resolutions, works as a team member with the supervisor, and helps to instill a business culture in sync with both C-Level approval and within regulatory and legal guidelines. Internal or external legal counsel is used as needed to review existing practices and to minimize negative financial and public relations impacts.

You can see that any HI organization needs to team with others to be effective. This produces better results, helps build political buy-in, gains support from other functions, and helps integrate HI into the business model of the company.

Next week, we will discuss how the Human Investment Organization can get noticed.

How can HR Begin to Compete for Status?

Companies look to HR for helping with people issues and organizational teaming yet HR is often no better than other functions in working cross-functionally for company success.

The reasons are typical to any group. There are turf, credit, ownership, pride, and perception issues. However, to the CEO these are all impediments to company success. The average CFO, CTO, and head of HR is in the job from 18-24 months. So human nature is to try to survive by building walls, creating the perception that you are irreplaceable, and adding complexity to justify the need to keep you. The irony is that these steps are the opposite of how to survive and thrive in tomorrow’s global economy. Those who add the most value, become trusted advisors, team with others for joint success, and seek to help others succeed are the profile that CEOs are hoping for – and keep changing staff to find.

If HR wants to create value, it must begin within it’s own team. If HR wants status, it must earn it by modeling Integrated Success™ internally. Otherwise, HR will continue to be considered a tactical cost center while senior management debates over who has to accept the function under their umbrella – the CFO, the CAO, the COO, or the CEO.

However, like most innovations, demonstrating success creates notice and the opportunity to expand influence, trust, and value. These are the keys for HR political success and the first steps to becoming a HI organization.

So, what are the initial steps for success? Here is a suggested roadmap:

1. Be sure you have the right players on board. Are they self focused or company success focused? Are they behaviorally a fit for the positions you have and need to fill? Are they team players? If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, then every other effort will be diminished and potentially sabotaged.
2. Be sure that your hiring process filters out those who fail to answer the questions above with a “yes.” We have an assessment partner who can help.
3. Design what roles you really need to have. Everyone behaviorally fits in a comfort zone that can be matched with positions where they will be happiest, have lower turnover, and be most productive. This is the “should be” model. Our partners can help.
4. Train your staff on tactical skills to do their job. Design additional training to help them develop career success. Our partners can help.
5. Mentor your staff through the Jobpreneurship™ model, which is a highly recognized model that includes Career Success and Mentoring guides. This model places the responsibility upon the individual to do the work. Individuals not interested in pursuing have the same opportunity as others but get the results of their effort – or lack of effort.
6. Manage individuals according to their distinct behavioral fit. Our partner has ten distinct behavioral models that each requires a different management style. For managers, this information can be eye opening.
7. Ensure you have performance metrics, clear written expectations, and reporting processes that result in helping everyone add value to their own career, the team, and the company. For those not interested in performing, develop steps to help them consider their options, offer assistance as needed, and carefully separate as needed.

An amazing result will occur. Knowing the business that you are serving, designing a match between the positions and the behavioral roles that you need to serve that business, staffing the right people with the right behavioral profiles to match the business and roles, helping those individuals learn additional skills and behaviors to enhance personal career success through training and mentoring right, managing according to distinct behavioral profiles matched to objective metrics and performance criteria and feedback, and helping non-performers get on track or out the door will create higher team performance, higher employee satisfaction, and notice by higher level executives.

We call this process Teampreneurship™ as shown below:

 

 

Human Resources has the unique opportunity of implementing this model internally as a demonstration how others can follow their lead toward ultimate companywide success. The process will not happen overnight but HR can control their own destiny and prove their value by first demonstrating success and then helping others win as well.

Non-HR managers should also consider implementing the model within their own organization. After all, the decision maker line manager is ultimately personally responsible for the results of their Human Investment portfolio.

 

What is the Human Investment Model?

Once you understand your company’s business, go-to-market model, and strategy then you are ready to determine how you can add strategic value to exceed the CEO’s expectations and wants. So, what does the CEO want?

While the answer will differ with each CEO, here are a few typical answers:

1. Every employee, team, and organization aligned to exceeding the company’s goals.
2. Every employee to be the right fit for the company, in the right seat, and adding value to the company.
3. Every employee to be a team player, successful, and growing.

Or to phrase it a different way, how can the company communicate their strategy to every employee, make sure every team is aligned with that strategy, and be sure every employee is adding value to their team as each team contributes to company success? Or to put it another way, how can the individual be on the right bus, in the right seat, going in the right direction, and adding value to their team in alignment with the company strategy and goals?

  

Notice that every other typical HR function is redefined as these questions are answered.

1. Recruiting – Only hiring coherent team players for the right role as defined by the new strategy. Our assessment partner can help.
2. Health Care and Related Benefits – Designed for the new model of employee within the business plan of the company. Frequently offering additional choices that are paid by those employees who want them.
3. Compensation – Rethought depending upon the new structure, automation, and outsourcing strategies versus the global marketplace.
4. EEOC Regulatory and Legal Compliance – Annual review, often by outside counsel, of all proposed changes and processes in light of compliance and best practices.
5. Employee Issues – Will never go away but can be reduced by Human Investment suggestions we will discuss later.
6. Training  – Redefining training requirements that fit the HI model and the Integrated Success™ model that uniquely fits your company
7. Employee Development – Open and encouraged for everyone – on their dime. Targeted for high potentials based upon matching their career success motivation to company success. This is discussed further under Jobpreneurship™.
8. Outplacement – Focusing on helping those going out the door learn Jobpreneurship™ for getting their next job and for creating greater career success in the next job.
9. Payroll – Automated using new technologies and communication capabilities
10. Employee Communications – A redesign that includes company messaging, employee interest, and team successes.

So, how do we recommend you start? Experience suggests that, unless it is consultant led by CEO direction, each person can start from where they are today.

If an employee, start to learn how you can add more value to what you do. Consider starting with Jobpreneurship™ 201 which will show you how to develop greater career success and how to help mentors to help you.

If the head of a department, you can contact us for suggestions.

If you are the head of HR, you can decide whether to pursue strategic improvements or to begin with small tactical improvements that can make a noticeable difference. We encourage you to contact one of our partners to see what may be right for you.

Next week we will begin discussing how HR or company leadership can begin moving to HI to achieve greater company success.

How Do You Start a Human Investment Function?

The first step, by either the C-Suite, HR executive, or Line executive, is to separate the strategic focus from the tactical focus.

It does not matter whether you are discussing product development, marketing, sales, Finance, IT, or any department. The challenge is always creating time to focus on the strategic by automating, layering, outsourcing, or segregating the tactical. Otherwise, the “Tyranny of the Urgent” (author unknown) along with limited staffing will typically limit the ability to think and act strategically.

In traditional HR, the lines are even more challenging. Why? Here are typical tactical projects that HR has to deal with every day:

1. Recruiting
2. Health Care and Related Benefits
3. Compensation
4. EEOC Regulatory and Legal Compliance
5. Employee Issues
6. Training
7. Employee Development
8. Outplacement
9. Payroll
10. Employee Communications

Why are these really tactical? Because every item can be outsourced to a third party. Whether they should be outsourced or insourced is a different set of business questions. The reality is that businesses are increasingly outsourcing HR roles. So, what is strategic? In other words, what would get the interest of C-Level management?

Every CEO is looking for help from those who:

1. Understand their business – their go-to-market model and how each team fits into making the company the highest value and most competitive in the marketplace.
2. Contribute to creating innovation, best practices, and teaming that tie into their strategy.
3. Take ownership (accountability and responsibility) for their function to integrate and contribute to the company’s strategic success – profitable company market share growth.

Everything else is detail – and tactical.

So, do you understand each P&L of the business? Do you know how each P&L fits into the company’s success and priorities?

Do you understand your function’s role in contributing to each P&L success? Are you focused on how you can creatively add value and contribute the C-Suite definition of success?

Are you willing to do what it takes to make your function a strategic value add – even if it means shrinking your organization, outsourcing services, and sourcing outside help as needed? Are you willing to redesign your organization to automate or eliminate roles in order to reallocate resources that contribute to the company’s success?

The CEO has to be willing to retool, redesign, rethink, redirect, and restructure to meet the rapidly changing global marketplace. If you wish to be on his or her strategic team, you have to understand the current business and the CEO’s vision of tomorrow’s business strategy. You then have to be willing to also retool, redesign, rethink, redirect, and restructure your function in alignment with the CEO’s direction. The real opportunity is when you can enter into this level of discussion and make the changes that add even more value than the CEO expected.

That is why we created the Human Investment model. The first step in starting a Human Investment organization is to understand the difference between strategic and tactical. The second step is to develop the strategic Human Investment model that fits your unique company and then design each tactical team to support that model. Next week, we will suggest a model template to help you.

For non-HR functions, you can utilize our model even if others choose not to participate.

 

How To Explain the Human Investment Model

The Human Investment model is similar to your own personal investment plan.

In a simplified explanation, you decide:

• What is the description of where you would be willing to invest your money? For HI, what is the role, experience, behavioral profile, education, etc. that you believe you need to fill a position that the company will pay (invest) their money into?
• What is the return you expect on the investment of your money? For HI, what is the work and value that you expect to get from the investment of company money (salaries and benefits) into the hired employee?
• What are the reasons why you might decide to add to your investment? For HI, what are the reasons why you might invest in training, coaching, promotions, bonuses, equity, etc. with an employee? Once the profile has been benchmarked and is effective, how many others with the same profile should be added to the team?
• At what point will you decide it is time to terminate your investment? For HI, what are the conditions when you should terminate your investment (salary) with the employee? Should you wait for a turnaround? Should you inquire about actions being taken that might help the investment be worth keeping? Are the conditions such that you should immediately take your losses and sell (terminate)?

If you are the individual employee, what is your value? Are you a fit for the company? How can you increase your value? What is the business model of the company? How can you add value and alignment to where the company executive team is going?

If you, as an individual, are not willing to add value, then why should the company continue investing in your salary and benefits?

If you, as an individual, are not willing to team with others in alignment with the company, then why should the company keep you?

Any investment is either a fit for the investor or not. Any investment that is not producing a return on the investment should be replaced by another investment that does.

Isn’t that how you manage your personal investments?

Isn’t that how a good company should manage their human investments?

If so, then HI managers and line managers, are to be investment portfolio manager teams. They work to ensure the investor’s portfolio has the right mix of profitable investments – and change the mix or investments in alignment with the direction of the investor, who is the CEO and his or her team. Here the HI manager is an advisor to the line manager who has the ultimate decision authority. The HI executive, who reports to the CEO, provides the measurements of how well the line managers are doing with their human investments.

If the HI managers and line managers are doing a poor job of investment portfolio management, then they are not adding value or creating an incremental return for the investor. Inferior investment portfolio managers should be replaced by superior portfolio managers. In the investment world, portfolio managers are measure against external portfolio managers. HI and line manager employment should be dependent upon the results of their portfolio.

To put it another way, a major difference from the financial investment world is that the role of HI is to assist employee managers to obtain optimum performance and to help executive teams measure the performance of the teams under them. Each employee manager is ultimately responsible for the performance, value, and alignment of their subordinate investments. Each manager ultimately reports to their manager with cumulative results, or lack of results, impacting the performance of the executive and their value review.

That is why we start with Leadership, then move to the organizational groups (investment teams), and then help employees (individual investments) grow or find a better fit in a different company (someone else’s portfolio). Our Leadership model is called Human Investment Leadership™.

In a global economy, the use of the HI model may make the difference between the company surviving and thriving.

How To Get CEO Sponsorship of the Human Investment Model

Since the Human Investment Model can transform a company, a HR professional or a management subordinate might believe that they can simply explain it and the CEO (or decision maker) will buy into the concept. Don’t hold your breath.

Most CEOs become CEOs because they think they know better than their subordinates, especially functions they consider as tactical. It does not matter whether they are right or wrong. It is their business. Being at the top means they are the decision maker. You might be perceived as presumptuous, offensive, and naïve. There are better ways of helping the CEO to understand and sponsor Human Investment.

The first way is to find a trusted business advisor, management consultant, or executive coach who the CEO uses today. These people are viewed more as peers, friends, and “outside opinion makers” by most CEOs. It is more effective to help them understand the model, buy into it, and share the model with the CEO as coming from them. Will you get the credit? Probably not, but you may get the results you want. You might also get the advisor to suggest to the CEO that you might be someone who can help him or her implement the HI model.

Why are advisors so important? CEOs are often lonely people. Rarely are they able to fully open up to their direct reports much less with the entire company. Whether being influenced by peer CEOs or outsiders whom they trust, it is the advice of others that helps them maker wiser decisions that impact everyone in his or her company. These advisors and peer CEOs have been tested to be worthy of their trust over time and with other issues. At a minimum, most CEOs will thoughtfully listen to their outside advisors.

The second way is to find a trusted direct report from inside the company. These people are often by the side of the CEO and frequently give input and suggestions. Any suggestion that represents a new idea or a change in business practice contains the risk of failure, distraction, or cost. Therefore, the best approach is to build a consensus among the CEO’s trusted reports who jointly suggest either strategically or tactically pursuing the Human Investment model. When this happens, the leadership team is agreeing on the team sharing the risk of failure and agreeing on accepting responsibility for helping the initiative succeed.

The third way is to tactically test the model within your own department. Since the cost of implementing Human Investment solutions is so affordable, most managers have the delegation of expenditure authority to initiate a limited tactical test to see if the pillars of the model can actually make a difference. Proven demonstrations of success become powerful selling points for program expansion because the risk of the unknown has been eliminated and value to the company can be shown.

Next week we will discuss a simple way to explain the Human Investment Model to others.

Why Pursue the Human Investment Model?

Companies have to increasingly compete in a highly competitive global marketplace. Those companies who cannot compete risk going out of business.

Divisions, Organizations, Departments, and Teams who are not adding value to the company’s competitive success are being automated, consolidated, eliminated, moved to lower cost locations, or outsourced. That includes accounting, IT, payroll, recruiting, and anywhere that “does the job” but is not providing best in class services with the lowest total cost and highest total value. These trends should be used to wake up staff on their need to jump on board the jet before it takes off.

Previously, internal support organizations could afford to let product development, marketing, and sales worry about funding everyone’s salary and bonus. Today, every source of cost savings, every person’s contribution and value, and every dime must be considered. If someone does not carry their weight, global competition requires you to remove them or outsource them. If someone is adding incremental value aligned with company success, then they will be the ones gaining notice and future opportunities.

Human Investment is how every department can make a fully aligned, running on all cylinders, mean, green racing machine. However, it will take a radical cultural shift that reaches to every nook and cranny in the company.

Companywide Strategic Human Investment must start at the CEO level with his or her full support. In large companies, that “CEO” can also be a subsidiary GM or a divisional president. If they are not supporting HI, then assume HR staff will begin to see all kinds of consultants, service companies, and outsourcing companies knocking on their door to “fix the problem” unless they are the one starting the process.

How companies pursue HI will typically vary by company size. For start-ups and small companies, the CEO needs to consider being the HI leader. For medium sized companies, the CEO or a direct report (C-Level) should be the HI leader over tactical HR staff and integrate daily HI strategies into individual assignments. For larger companies, the addition of a strategic HI leader at the C-Level will create a major competitive advantage and enhance company value. The strategic HI leader would typically have traditional HR functions and staff reporting to him or her.

It is important to note that we are talking about a new leadership role that is currently missing in most companies. This role is the lynchpin to leveraging the value of the total organization for company success.

Next week we will discuss how an existing HR function can get CEO sponsorship of the Human Investment model that they can help implement.

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