Hacking HR to Build an Adaptability Advantage

Brief Overview – the notion is for functions in organisations to look at work from a completely different perspective.

Example – temporarily move all the work responsibilities from the 'supplier function' to the 'customer function' and vice versa but don't move any of the people.

The hack would be kicked-off by functional leaders with a joint briefing session for everyone involved.

The 'customer' and the 'supplier' teams would perform each others work for suitable a fixed period of time (e.g. for a working day or through a complete process cycle) with a view to increasing levels of understanding, looking for improvement opportunities and developing new skills.

At the end of the fixed period the two teams hold a lessons learned session and agree on areas for improvement and an action plan which they will jointly implement. This could include process step changes, documentation improvements, elimination of activities, new tools, reports and resource requirements.

Example – as an extension of this idea, people could transfer functions for longer or permanently to support any changes.

Example – a further extension might be to regularly swap work from one function to another.

Barriers To Adaptability Being Overcome – Rigid Structures, Insufficient Experimentation

Related HR Processes – Organisational Development, Talent Deployment

Related adaptability principles – Experimentation & Learning, Creativity, Peer Collaboration.

KeithG