or: How I Still Keep Worrying and Can’t Seem to Love Cognitive Dissonance
HR is all about “cognitive dissonance”. Cognitive dissonance is the massive headache you get when you are trying to hold two mutually exclusive thoughts at once. For me, cognitive dissonance is represented by my beliefs that “the HR function is strategic” and my experience that “the HR system creates Administrative Helper Therapy Victims.”
Administrative Helper Therapy Victims: it’s my new term to describe the mind-numbing system of HR that most of us get to experience regularly and which we all hate. Like all bad systems, HR takes good people and turns them into bumfuzzled dolts.
Most people ascribe bad behaviors (i.e. behaviors that we don’t like) to some evil intent on the part of the person who is bothering you. Spend any amount of time with that same person outside the conflict context, however, and you will usually find that the other person is likable and reasonable. I have run into a lot of people who bug me, but very few who I think are genuinely bad (as in “Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Amin” bad). Likewise, it is trite and irresponsible to run around saying that HR is filled with social workers. It’s just as likely that they could be great capitalists in another system, but HR has a way of turning them into a cross between Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
It’s an important point to bring up, because I have seen many HR people leave HR and become successful in some other field or endeavor. I once reported to a gentleman who ran a very typical HR shop (e.g. Administrative Helper Therapy Victims). He then went on to be the GM of a large manufacturing division of the same company and did quite well. What was different about this fine fellow? HR as a system is a soul-sucking exercise in CYA futility, and running a P&L business really let him shine. That’s the difference.
We can sit around and blame the CEO and blame the client and blame… well, just about everybody, but we are the system, and the system is making us into Administrative Helper Therapy Victims:
Administrative – There is strategic (which is like spending time reading to your kids), and there is tactical (which is like setting up bill pay systems so you have more time to read to the kids), and then there is administrative (which is like taking out the trash). HR really desperately wants to be in the business of reading to kids, or at least setting up bill pay systems so someone else can read more to the kids. But they keep getting asked to take out the trash. And for whatever reason, the HR person doesn’t stand up and say “Hey, let’s have the trash pile up for bit because I only have so much time and I need to read to the kids!” They just take out the trash. “Good” HR people grumble about not being appreciated, “bad” HR people are happy because they have something well defined, simple and necessary to do. But either way, there seems to be this deer-in-the-headlights fear of taking the risk of purposefully forgetting the trash to do something that really helps the employees.
Helper – A lot of people get into HR because they are “people people.” They like people, they like fixing people’s problems and they like playing white knight. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it adds value to the business. But a lot of HR people think that because their intentions are good, their results must be too. It’s “I still have checks so I must have money” logic. Checks and money are definitely connected, but just because you have one doesn’t mean you have the other. Just because your intentions are good doesn’t mean you aren’t screwing everything up. Having a passion for making people’s lives better doesn’t mean that you have an aptitude for translating spiritual fulfillment into economic success.
Therapy – Most modern systems of psychology start with a basic premise: the best way to fix what’s wrong is to invest a lot of time and attention in the problem. The logic is diabolically simple: you don’t get horizontal on the couch unless something is bothering you, and the therapist didn’t go to school for nothing, so let’s get to the heart of the matter and figure out just how bad your parents messed you up. There is a lot of research to indicate that all this does is reinforce a person's tendency to be a self-absorbed pity machine, but the therapist feels good because they are helping, and the client is getting what they paid for, so the system keeps rolling along. But business isn’t a group therapy session. The company doesn’t exist to make everyone feel better about themselves. It exists to create value from resources, and one of those resources is people. Yes, motivation and connection are important. There are many ways to motivate people. You can hold their hand and tell them that you care and give them a shoulder to cry on (and then blame someone else when you RIFF them), or you can make sure there is alignment between what stokes their inner fire and the job you need done. The current HR system is based on the assumption that we are just one psychoanalytical break-through from being the ideal employee: compliant, content and sedentary.
Victims – Most modern HR systems are built around a reliance on collective victimology. Something or someone is broken and someone or something else is to blame. If HR doesn’t get the budget it requests and manufacturing does then “finance just doesn’t get it!” If a manager starts complaining about an employee the employee needs to be “counseled up or out.” And vice-versa. When you operate from the “administrative helper therapy” point of view you really need as many victims around you as possible. Victims have two great attributes: they can’t solve problems for themselves and the more of them that exist, the better job security you have. Of course nobody starts out to develop a dependent client state. But if the system rewards you with promotions and pay increases for how well you clean up after the managerial elephant in the corporate parade, building dependency is the best way to succeed.
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