Hacking HR to Build an Adaptability Advantage

Change happens.  In today’s world, fueled by technology and demographics and driven by social and economic uncertainty, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity happen far more often.  The half life of idea has gotten increasingly shorter and organizations that took 50 years to create can be outdated in months.  To help organizations and people adapt to the onslaught of change, HR professionals need to be architects of three targets of organization change:  institutional, initiative, and individual.

Institutional  change refers to an organizations culture.  Traditionally, culture represents the norms, values, expectations and patterns of behavior within an organization.  To create adaptive organizations,  culture should be defined from the outside in, as the identity of firm in the mind of the key customers and other external stakeholders.  When a firm’s brand and community reputation become the drivers of an internal culture, institutional change is more likely to occur because the external identify drives the internal expectations.  HR professionals who architect institutional change define the desired (and evolving culture) through the eyes of external stakeholders, then build intellectual, behavioral, process, and leadership agendas to make this identity real to employees throughout the organization.

Initiative change refers to the implementation of any one of a dozen of initiatives an organization creates.  Initiatives are often alphabet soup (CSR, TQM, ERP, and so forth).  These initiatives often get mocked, yet they represent the processes that an organization must adapt to accomplish change.  Too often initiatives are initiative with great fanfare, but end with a whimper, not accomplishing what they intend.  Studies show that 25 to 30% of initiatives are implemented as intended.  HR professionals, as architects of change, can bring discipline to make these initiatives happen. Following logic of the checklist manifesto, HR professionals may identify the key factors for successful implementation of these initiatives, then bring discipline to the implementation of change success factors.  Most thought leaders of change have their change checklists, which essentially overlap around key change disciplines:

• Leading change:  having a clear sponsor and champion for the change initiative
• Creating a shared need:  building the business case for change
• Setting a direction or vision:  defining the outcome of the change
• Mobilizing commitment:  gaining buy in to the change from key stakeholders
• Defining decisions:  getting clarity about what decisions should be made to move the change ahead
• Institutionalizing resources:  allocating financial, people, and operational support for the change
• Monitoring progress:  measuring success and learning

As HR professionals apply these change disciplines to initiatives, they can help turn what is  known about change into what is actually done to deliver change.

Individual change refers to people sustaining change in their personal behavior.  Most people know what they should do to improve, but they often are not able to sustain that personal improvements (e.g. exercise, weight loss, relationships).  HR professionals can help individuals at all levels of a company sustain they change they know they should make by bringing sustainability disciplines to those personal desires.  In our book Leadership Sustainability, we identify seven disciplines that enable personal change:  simplicity, time, accountability, resources, tracking, meliorate, and emotion.  When HR professionals coach and help individuals apply these sustainability disciplines, personal change follows.

Adaptive organizations are not accidental or random.  When institutional, initiative, and individual changes can be intentional and operational, organizations can and will adapt.  HR professionals who architect the processes for these changes become valued allies of leaders who are the change owners.  Change happens, but it does not need to be overwhelming.  With insights and commitment, people and organizations can anticipate and adapt so that change excites and energizes rather than dem