It has been about eight years since I first stepped on stage and began talking about driving top-line business from the seat of human resources. Through attempts at title changes, uprising and disruption, the last several years have continued to drive more change in the thought process for CEOs. More leaders aim to change their business by growing the people in the business, versus growing at the expense of the people. However, more than one cautionary tale has emerged of CEOs jumping on this trend when they were not ready to release their own control over many of the human factors that guide business. Preparedness for this transfer of oversight is key, so here are some things to consider before you take the plunge to invest in someone — the chief people officer — who can drive the business in a different way.
Understand Your Culture
Whether your culture has been fostered through directed effort and careful architecture or through organic means, the general rules of the road of your organization will be critical to the success or failure of this role. Some companies define values to which employees hold one another accountable. Other companies establish values for the sake of their websites. Further, the latter often fails to walk the walk of these values, and employees fall short of challenging one another to meet those standards.
These cultures feel very different to employees. Authentic, transparent, autonomy-centric cultures tend to be more prepared for the hard work of optimizing every aspect of growth. Every organization has strengths, and all teams have opportunities to be better. In centrally controlled organizations with paternalistic hierarchy, the ability for real change to occur is limited. And ultimately, without autonomy, leadership cannot be part of that change.
If you believe your organization is ready, make sure you have a measure for the overall alignment of your value system from top to bottom. This will be important to understanding where to start pulling the levers to change behavior.
Align Through Purpose
Purpose-driven organizations are not new. Finding a people leader — who can not just understand your purpose, but has true passion for the cause — is critical to organizational alignment.
This is true for the whole of the leadership team. CFOs should be driven by metrics and obsessed by balance sheets, but also have a meaningful connection to the organizational purpose. For the role that is responsible to look for opportunities to align the whole of the organization around that purpose, the personal connection to the purpose is crucial.
For The Founders
The emotional attachment of founding and growing a vision is intense and consuming. You constantly question if you are still the right person for the job (and if you don't, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Ego is the Enemy right away). For those of us who second-guess and dig deep to grow with our business, we find ourselves reacting in irrational ways to change from time to time. The vision of what we saw from the beginning starts to get cloudy, and after four pivots, you wonder if you have just gone a circle.
The hard part is to really drive a culture of autonomy, decision making and innovation throughout the organization. The best ideas typically don't come from the top, and if people on the lower rungs are not empowered to act on their instincts, the whole team grinds to a halt. If you hire someone in the CPO role, get ready to take a step back. The role is not service; it is to challenge for the purpose of creating better outcomes. All of this starts with some work on self-esteem. Your greatest strength as a founder probably lies in the vision that launched the business — so grow that strength.
Not Your Mother's HR
The business of driving growth through people is not the same business of writing a handbook and running payroll. These functions may or may not be critical to the success of the company (and making sure people get paid certainly is). But these functions are for the spreadsheet-lovers, risk-mitigators and number-crunchers. People operations is metrics-driven, but these traditional functions should reside under the CFO. Why steal the joy of pivot tables away from those who have spent their whole careers perfecting them?
If you have a traditional HR team that wants to learn to drive business, you are one step closer. You will notice these individuals want to learn about the strategic plan, ask to or attend business operations meetings and have a slant toward using any opportunity to grow more talent. It is a mindset and takes its own brand of self-confidence. Without the validation of writing all of the rules, holding everyone hostage in harassment training or waiving the magic wand of blessing people as "high potential," the work is about connection and alignment. It takes a rebel, not a rule-maker.
Get Off The Fence
Companies that are noted for growing their internal talent have had this worldview for the several years or longer. Now is not the right time or place for every organization. If you think it may be for yours, take inventory, and take the leap:
• Know what drives and stalls your organization and if you are living your values.
• Refine why you do what you do, and start making decisions based on that why.
• If you are a founder, get uncomfortable, and recognize your own strengths.
• See whether your internal talent is passionate about aligning the people to the business, and then find them a mentor.
You could be growing faster while increasing customer engagement instead of sacrificing it. Your business could be innovating more rapidly and navigating obstacles more effectively. Maybe you are not ready for all of that growth. Maybe you're happy in the bubble of control — that's completely acceptable now, but soon you'll need to prepare for the future.
