“helping businesses obtain a greater degree of certainty” about
the future, which opened up new horizons for a company with
shrinking prospects.
IDENTIFY THE COMPANY VISION
“All founders of any enterprise have a vision; the question is
how clear are they with it?” said Adriana Girdler, chief efficiency
officer at CornerStone Dynamics, which helps leading corpora-tions
streamline internal processes to work smarter and improve
productivity.
Girdler encourages companies to define a vision that is clear and
detailed, but not so specific that it could limit growth potential in
the longer term.
“A lot of corporations have a one-line vision statement and you
can interpret it any way you want, but if you’re really going to grow,
you need to have more detail – and be inspiring, too,” she said. “It’s
something you should look at every day. You really have to un-derstand
who you are and what motivates you. Good times are
easy. It’s when times are tough that you have dilemmas and big
decision-making points; what are you going to use to guide you
through those tough times? It’s your vision.”
And, she says, HR has a key role in keeping that vision in focus.
“HR has the ability to say ‘We’re not going to hire people unless
they’re in line with our vision.’ HR is really in a key strategic place;
the HR department acts like a quality check to ensure the com-pany
is following the line of the vision, although ultimately, the
company president has the key responsibility, and if that’s not hap-pening,
there may be the need for some education.”
WHO AM I?
“Most companies don’t have the foggiest idea of who they are,” said
Chamandy. Frequently, the definition is “trapped in the head of a
charismatic leader” and risks being lost if there is no succession
plan to pass it along. It’s up to HR, he says, to make sure that in-tuitive
understanding of the organization’s core function is clearly
articulated to every person in the business.
“People tend to be trying to meet short-term goals, and they
lose this ability to move towards breakthroughs rather than in-cremental
development,” said Epstein. In order to be able to take
advantage of opportunities for change, he says, HR must “pro-vide
some slack that’s going to allow employees to work on things
that might be longer term. And when you’re shooting for break-throughs,
you’re going to have a much higher level of failure, so
you have to be ready to accept failure.”
Epstein names Google and 3M among companies that leave 10
or 15 per cent of the workweek “basically unassigned” in order to
encourage the kind of breakthroughs that are more often generat-ed
by start-ups.
“This is really at the heart of what HR needs to be doing to en-courage
innovation,” he said. “Make sure that the organization’s
systems, structures and rewards are aligned around what you re-ally
want.” ■
innovation
“HR IS REALLY IN A KEY STRATEGIC PLACE;
THE HR DEPARTMENT ACTS LIKE A QUALITY
CHECK TO ENSURE THE COMPANY IS
FOLLOWING THE LINE OF THE VISION.”
– ADRIANA GIRDLER, CHIEF EFFICIENCY OFFICER, CORNERSTONE DYNAMICS
40 ❚ OCTOBER 2014 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
