Tag Archives: competence framework

Just run that HR hypothesis by me one more time would you?

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When HR tries to measure itself it always ends in tears and not just the ones running down the cheeks of the HR department: every executive who has had to endure yet another HR presentation, supposedly demonstrating its incredible value proposition, will know only too well what it feels like.  It would not be so bad if HR had learned from its previous mistakes.  Measurement is a golden rule for any organisation but the measures must be meaningful to the business and they have to follow the #1 Golden Rule, often ignored by HR departments, of sticking to a well-conceived hypothesis.

Is HR theory and practice founded on sound hypotheses?  The list of activities regarded as the unquestionable and indispensable orthodoxy of HR, the ‘givens’, includes -

  • Competence frameworks
  • 360° feedback (but including 180°, 540° and 473.5°) – OK, that last one was a joke
  • Leadership development
  • Engagement
  • Talent management
  • Diversity

All of these have been around for a while now so maybe it is about time someone checked out whether they are under-pinned by any sound hypothesis.  Let us take a fresh look, using the logic of EB-HR, to see if any of them really hold water?

The Competence Hypothesis

Every EB-HR hypothesis has to start with an intelligent question about an identified problem: this is called root cause, or cause and effect, analysis.  Presumably those who install competence frameworks believe they have a problem with the effects of management incompetence?  Yet cause and effect analysis demands that the ‘effect’ be measured, so they can only say they have a problem with incompetence if they have already measured it.  That conclusion, in turn, requires them to produce a very specific definition of competence and logically leads into that dreadful labyrinth comprised of the myriad of competencies supposedly exhibited by a multitude of managers in an infinite array of combinations or clusters. Now, even if they were able to unravel this Gordion knot of their own making, there is the equally important question of whether there is any close causal connection between these competencies and performance?  This will require an analysis of the competencies of high performing managers, showing how being competent in certain areas (e.g. negotiation, organisation, delegation etc.) causes their performance to reach a level superior to their competence-challenged colleagues.  Of course, to do this they would need a definition of performance based on a balanced set of performance indicators that could be compared between two distinct groups of managers over time (performing and non-performing) and we all know how problematic performance measurement is don’t we?  This is because performance itself is subject to the vagaries of organisational planning and market dynamics, which never stay constant long enough for meaningful comparisons to be made. These environmental complications then ultimately defeat any attempt to run a controlled experiment where answers to the original questions can be found.  Nevertheless, if the HR team soldiers on and somehow identifies a group that need some competence improvement they then incur the next practical problem of how to design individual, competence development programmes.  Plus, they would simultaneously have to run a control group of managers, who would be left to their own devices, while the target groups (incompetent and competent) were monitored. Phew!!

If this hypothesis strikes you as simple, and easy to explain to any serving manager, then good luck with your competence framework.  But remember – if your competitors are doing exactly the same then neither of you gain a competitive advantage after all this effort.

A simpler hypothesis, that addresses all of the complexities more directly and efficiently, is to regard each manager as a unique individual with their own unique combination of abilities and talents that you will never have the time or energy to fully fathom, explicate, delineate or codify.  So instead, why not just ensure each manager is regularly asking themselves a set of simple evidence-based questions:

  1. ‘What evidence do I have of our performance level today?’
  2. ‘What measure would I choose to indicate an improvement?’
  3. ‘What do I require to help us achieve that improvement?’

Please note – if the answer to question 3. is something as broad as – ‘restructure the whole department’, ‘re-design the system‘, ‘re-think the process‘ or ‘change our marketing strategy’ – then this suggestion needs to be treated with respect, systematically analysed for validity and resolved.

This hypothesis is based on 3 assumptions -

  1. We are always willing and able to improve.
  2. Everyone is allowed to voice their conclusions from asking these questions, without fear, through a systematic process for organisational problem resolution
  3. If we keep improving we will read that as evidence that we are becoming more competent.

This evidence-based hypothesis leads me to recommend that you consider ditching your existing competence framework.  Would anybody like to submit a better hypothesis for competence or any of the other ‘givens’ on the HR list?

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Organisational Maturity 2 – HR is toddling around at Stage 2

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If you are interested in improving your HR maturity level visit IHRM -  The Institute of HR Maturity

In Part 1 of this 3-Part assessment of organisational maturity we considered to what extent organisations are designed to learn.  This can only ever happen as part of a wider HR strategy that aims to create a competitive advantage from managing human capital as effectively as possible.

Such a lofty ambition can only ever be achieved in an organisation that is grown up enough to take a realistic view of its situation: understanding and making the most of its strengths whilst acknowledging its failings and limited capabilities.  Maturity is not a rose-tinted view of the world but an acceptance of the truth.  The HR Maturity Scale reveals the HR function to be a toddler that has not quite dispensed with its comfort blanket and needs to hang onto something for support while it stumbles around at Stage 2.

HR people at Stage 2 like to call themselves ‘professional’ even though this is only about one third of the way along this continuum.  They use lots of professional support mechanisms (CIPD, job evaluation, psychometrics, competence frameworks) but they have not yet reached a Stage where their advice is really valued (Stage 3) because their systems have not grown sufficient teeth for them to add much value (e.g. competence frameworks that do not remove the incompetent).  Much of this immaturity is down to their deep-seated, lack of confidence in their own methods and capabilities.  However, organisational maturity does not come from any specific function changing, it is about the whole organisation growing up and developing together.

From an Executive perspective it starts with a full and open acknowledgement that they have no clear understanding of what managing human capital actually means (shown on the Scale as the Human Capital Barrier). There is no common language in the boardroom to discuss the value of people and no way of auditing the organisation’s human capital management.  Unless and until these issues are addressed the organisation is incapable of getting the best value out of its people.

Similarly, any employee (Generation Y or any other generation for that matter) who thinks the world owes them a living; or the organisation exists to further their career; or that somehow they are indispensable; needs to realise that however talented or important they might be the value of the organisation, long term, will be dependent on how they work together – systemically- holistically.

Of course, this all assumes that the organisation has an ambition to be as good as it can be and realises that the only forward is a more strategic approach to managing people – all of them.  As we will see in Part 3 though (‘Off the Scale’) to make such an assumption would be very simplistic, not to say immature.

You can find out more about the HR Maturity Scale and where you are along it by watching the explanatory video here, reading a short descriptive extract from HR Strategy or visiting the Consummate Professional Series for online tuition.

If you need help in assessing your organisation’s HR Maturity contact info@paulkearns.co.uk

 

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Up a creek without a paddle? HR Directors who never trained as business partners.

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A new phenomenon has appeared, quite unexpectedly, on the HR horizon. These are the HR Directors who jumped on the bandwagon of appointing ‘HR business partners’ (BP’s) without ever actually having held down that role themselves.  I know this for a fact because some of them have employed me to teach their HR managers, advisers and analysts to become ‘HR BP’s’, having never been trained themselves and therefore not realising that this should signify a conscious and deliberate break from their own, conventional, HR thinking.  If we are looking for analogous situations to express how serious this is then the equivalent in the medical profession would be someone trying to become a consultant having missed out the step of registrar or, in the army, a general being appointed who had never been into battle (certainly true for many HR Directors who never had industrial relations problems before).

In practice it produces a serious disconnect between bright HR professionals, who can see that the whole rationale behind HR business partnering is to produce business evidence that their people management practices add value, and their bosses, who are perpetuating non-evidence based policies (e.g. diversity).  The BP’s also start to regard traditional HR, quite rightly, as a diluted and much lower form of ‘management’ and suddenly realise why its very existence has always been so precarious (particularly in the present climate).  Worse still, once they have earned their spurs as a true BP they are bound to challenge everything they have been taught before.  They have little time for their previous day job because in their eyes they now have much bigger priorities and opportunities to address than giving, say, legal advice for a situation that should never have arisen in the first place (e.g. bullying or sexual harassment?).

They then inevitably want to question, and eventually dismantle, the crumbling edifice that is the typical HR framework of (see EBM has to be a new paradigm): -

Job evaluation and grading – plenty of evidence to show it is often a rigid and expensive way of managing rewards that does not produce the highest performance levels possible

Engagement surveys – they realise the theory behind the employee-customer profit chain is suspect and the links between engagement and performance are never as simple as it suggests

Competence frameworks – because, apart from the specious theory that produced this industry – in practice, quite frankly, anyone with any common sense always knew they were going to become a bureaucratic nightmare without any evidence of added value

Performance management – until they are confident that the measures being used actually measure value

Leadership development –  however attractive it might sound there is no common definition of what effective leadership means and therefore no evidence can be produced to say that effective ‘leadership’ has ever been achieved

Of course, none of this accords with their non-business-partner, HR Directors’ expectations who, over recent years, blithely followed Ulrich’s lead (correlative, as opposed to evidence-based), which spawned a commonly-held view that there had to be a shift in focus from HR transactions to strategy and that this required steady-state, continuous developments in HR’s role.  What they failed to realise was that properly trained, evidence-based, HR BP’s are taught that this shift actually represents a discontinuous, seismic shift in the paradigm on which strategic HR is predicated.  Consequently such HR Directors, who have recently been experiencing the decidedly uncomfortable feeling of the ground moving under their feet (especially those in the public sector being asked to make 25% cuts), are having to make a conscious decision as to which side of this widening chasm they will jump to for survival?

For personal development linked to this topic visit the Consummate Professional Series


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