The Latest Thinking HAPPY ENTREPRENEUR, HAPPY COMPANY A recent survey of 3,000 high-impact entrepreneurs in 34 countries suggests that those in China, India, Kenya, New Zealand and the United States have the most positive overall opinions of the policies in place to promote their growth. The five countries surveyed with the most nega tive overall perceptions are Greece, Venezuela, Ukraine, Andorra and Poland. Source: Monitor Group
one disputes that talent management, workforce productivity, leadership development and a highperformance culture are crucial to corporate performance, few agree about how, or even whether, personnel departments influence those factors. As a practical matter, some are suggesting that it’s time to back off the demand for strategy with a capital “S” and seek a more straightforward, results-oriented model. “The way to become a business partner is to quit agonizing over being a business partner and trying to force unnecessary activity on the rest of the enterprise,” said Dan Bowling, former global head of human resources at Coca-Cola Enterprises. “Focus instead on what is important.” One alternative model that has gained some traction envisions human resources not as a single department trying to morph itself in multiple directions, but rather as competencies embedded companywide, sometimes as discrete job functions, but more often as distributed responsibilities in which every employee has a human resources component to their job. This model, in short, casts human resources as
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an almost intrinsic binding force in an increasingly specialized, far-flung and self-managed world. Paul Buller, professor of management at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., sees it this way: “H.R. needs to become an internal consultant and change agent to facilitate vertical and horizontal integration, so that everyone in the organization sees how what they are doing is connected to the big picture — a ‘line of sight’ that allows for continual adaptation. This would provide a unique source of competitive advantage that would be hard to imitate.” Some predict that were human resources to become a more widely integrated competency, it would engender an osmotic permeability between H.R. and line management. Eventually, the distinction between the two would vanish. Laurie Ruet timann, a recruiter, trainer and founder of HRM Today, a social network for human resources professionals, put it succinctly: “H.R. [will be] fixed when it ceases to be H.R. and starts to be a core and critical management responsibility. [H.R.] shouldn’t serve the business. We should be the business.”
Growth Now:
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he nature of economic growth has changed. From the mid1990s to 2007, developing economies — especially those in Asia — experienced a period of growth unmatched in scale, optimism or speed. This era can be characterized as one of “easy growth.” During this time, it became easier and cheaper to gain access to capital than in any other period in history, globalization created unprecedented admittance to new markets and consumers, and household consumer borrowing drove spending around the world. A gen eration of corporate leaders was shaped by this period, when growth was there for the taking; all they had to do was show up. And now, suddenly, that era is over (see Figures 1 and 2), and we have entered the era of “smart growth,” in which growth is slow but change is fast. In his recent report, Smart Growth: Is Asia Ready?, Korn/Ferry leadership and talent consulting managing director Indronil Roy explained how this period of complexity and uncertainty — in markets, finance and currency — will require leaders to think and act differently to unearth growth where none is evident. Leaders’ shrewdness about growth will make a difference in corporate performance. How long will smart-growth conditions persist? A resounding number of CEOs believe these conditions will last for the rest of the decade, if not longer, for myriad reasons. The global financial crisis led to a stricter regulatory regime that is (sometimes justifiably) constraining risk
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