Principles of Talentism: Part 10 - Businesses, not Departments
Let's abolish the idea of the insular "corporate department." Either what a group of people do
adds strategic value or it doesn't. If it doesn't but the work still needs to
be done, then it should be outsourced to someone whose whole job revolves
around solving customer / client problems in that domain. But even more, when a
function is strategic it has to be connected to market feedback. There has to be
someone making a buying decision about what your produce. This is critical for
HR to understand: HR is a strategic function but tends to believe that it is in
a "problem solving" business as opposed to the "value
delivery" business. You have to be able to “sell” your solution in order
to gauge the value of your approach to the people who will be affected by it.
I see this all the time. HR analyzes a situation and
determines that something is wrong. They then create a solution and go put it
into operation. Because HR is assessing both the value and effectiveness of
their solution, the only ones they really need to convince of their success is
themselves. In the meantime, the client is sitting there wondering exactly what
is going on. Either the client likes the solution, but was never forced to show
just how important it was to them (so they have little long-term commitment or
attachment to its success), or they are ticked that “the bureaucrats” have
shoved yet another solution down their throat to a problem they didn’t even
know they had. Neither situation is optimal (or even advisable).
People tend to value things that they pay for, and they
really value things that they pay for and believe they thought up themselves. “Businesses”
get this and leverage this tendency of human nature every day in millions of
sales situations. “Corporate Departments” aren’t accountable to customers and
therefore don’t think they have to “sell” anything. This is at the core of most
corporate dysfunction – when a function is accountable neither to shareholders
nor to internal customers who are accountable to shareholders then their
interests and the interests of the business often diverge (sometimes widely).
We’ll get into that more in a later post, since it’s an
idea that has been around since 1932. But a relatively quick fix for this
phenomenon is to focus on creating businesses that have to sell and be
responsive to a constituency, not departments that institute and evaluate their
own solutions.

hey jeff,
i love checkin' in and readin' ur blog from time to time ...
you been on vackay recently or ?
miss your posts !!
~jer www.o0.typepad.com
Posted by: Sourcing Guru | July 11, 2006 at 08:36 AM
This is one of my favorite posts. Its a well-articulated "heart of the issue" essay which, once voiced, is so obvious its a wonder the whole bureacracy doesn't just crumble.
The point is so straightforward and the need so obvious, yet I see little change. I wonder if corporate executives read anything outside their immediate domain...
Posted by: Critic | July 13, 2006 at 09:14 AM