So you love to play the saxophone, and were thrilled to go work for Sax4u, Inc., a global company that is all about the saxophone. Steve Jobs talked about doing something that you love, and there are few things in life that you love more than playing this amazing piece of brass. In fact, you have a shrine dedicated to Clarence Clemons from the E-Street Band in your man-cave. Oh, how you miss him! But I digress.
Following Mr. Jobs' advice has been good for your career. You have grown and advanced to a point at which you are the head of Human Resources at Sax4u. Your parents are so proud! In fact, you now report directly to the CEO and are a member of her most-senior-leadership-team. Every Monday morning you sit in the executive conference room, with Starbucks skinny latte piping hot and in hand, and commiserate with your fellow most-senior-leadership-team members, including the heads of: design, marketing, finance, sales, manufacturing & supply chain, distribution, and services.
The standing agenda for the Monday morning meeting is delivered predictably: What is the status of our innovation agenda and when will we see prototypes of the harmonica-sized saxophone we've envisioned? What does the market look like for saxophone sales in China? Are we adequately capitalized to deliver to that market? Is our idea for previously owned (not 2nd hand) saxophone sales via internet auction ready to be piloted? What did we learn from last week's new customer focus groups? And so forth.
As your second latte hits your bloodstream, you rouse yourself out of a typical Monday morning slump and ponder upon a private, non-rhetorical question: "Why am I here?" In other words, if you were to stop attending the most-senior-leadership-team meeting, would your reversal have a material impact on new product design, the efficacy of the marketing intelligence gathered or the resilience of the supply chain? As the HR person, do you impact the business positively and quantifiably?
Perhaps you are in the meeting as a service provider. You serve as the behavior police - assuring that no one, especially the CEO, says something that they shouldn't say? Or you are there to offer an update on HR programs that demand leadership attention because HR says that leaders must pay attention to them? Perhaps you are there just in case someone has a question about human resources program requirements, people things in general, or soft, uncomfortable things like organization culture; meaning, your presence really serves as an opportune time to catch up on your email.
If not in the meeting as a service provider, might you be there as a genuine enabler of business outcomes? Ah, this sounds much better, but how would you know if this describes the reason for your presence?
Here are my five reasons why HR leaders, a.k.a business enablers, attend the most-senior-leadership-team meeting. You attend because:
- You are the most curious from among the leadership team members. For one to enable the business, one must understand the business. You leverage each leadership team meeting as an opportunity to listen, take notes, and learn. You appreciate that business is dynamic and complex and that your learning will be continuous. You leverage your notes as your opportunity to formulate questions, which you ask in subsequent one-on-one meetings with your colleagues on the leadership team, so as to not disrupt meeting flow and progress.
- You are adept at courageously confronting leadership thinking. Since you are committed to offer the meeting your active, undivided attention, you listen better than anyone else in the room. You hear what people say in a way that others don't. Whether in your subsequent one-on-one meetings or real-time in the meeting, you constructively confront leaders and call upon them to explain their thinking. Their explanations serve to engage their own minds and those of the others in the room and elevate team functioning.
- You own the challenge of elevating leadership team performance. Knowing that each participant is there to represent her or his organization, and that successful meetings are often defined as meetings in which one surfaces unscathed, you alone are best placed to focus on team performance. You participate in the formulation of the agenda. You test for new meeting modalities and set-up. You solve for principles of operations and inquire about meeting conduct to commitment. You are a persistent champion of the reality that as the most-senior-leadership-team performs, so performs Sax4u.
- You are an incredible talent SME and if you are not today you work tirelessly to get there tomorrow. You know what it takes to engage the workforce, and know that an engaged workforce is essential to business performance. You advocate for people investments that make people proud to call Sax4u their company (customer capability). You focus on the ROI of investments in employee compensation, career development, people-to-people connections and local community giving and look to maximize that ROI as a driver of profitability. You quantify this ROI and make commitments to year over year improvement.
- You are a leader and own continuous elevation of your HR team's performance. You leverage all that you learn from your Monday morning most-senior-leadership-team meeting to inform, educate and challenge your team to assure that whether they are in a business partner role or working in compensation, recruiting, learning, HRIS or employee relations they are constantly mindful of the impact of their work on the attainment of business outcomes.
Paul E. DuCharme. September 2013
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