EVP & Chief Human Resources Officer at SRS Distribution

Alignment of the HR strategy to the business strategy is not a new concept. It is an understood imperative, table stakes, for most HR departments. So why do most of the biggest transformational initiatives fail because of the company’s human resources? 

It comes down to the inability to accurately forecast and plan for the cultural alignment that must occur in the organization to achieve the business strategy. Across industries and continents and regardless of the company's size and/or complexity, the importance of cultural alignment to enable successful execution is universal.

Culture is a company's employees' values, behaviors, underlying beliefs, and attitudes. When you're winning, it is easy to celebrate all the positive things in the culture that led to success, but when you're trying to transform or when your business is struggling, the shadow side of the culture often shows up.

That's where HR departments have to get savvy to help leadership teams navigate through these tumultuous times. We have to be culture keepers for the sacred elements that create the organizational competitive advantage while identifying those underlying beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that must be repositioned or adapted to maximize firm value for the next generation. This is where we, as HR practitioners, can earn the much-loved “change agent” moniker.

HR practitioners can help future-proof a company by ensuring the organizational context is fully understood by those tasked with leading the transformation and by helping to establish “gates” that any effort must successfully pass through for it to be worthy of taking the time and energy of the organization. In this era of resource rationalization, organizations must ruthlessly prioritize the top business priorities to protect resources and capital and not dilute the impact for the most critical few. Over time, I’ve discovered these gates are an invaluable precursor before launching any initiative or deploying a formal change management model.  

WHY: 

1. Why are we doing this?

• Is there a burning platform for business continuity or success?  

• Is it critical to the growth strategy?  

• Does it help scale the business in a critical way?

• Is it a matter of compliance or required governance?

How a company answers this question informs the correct approach, including the “What’s in it For Me?” messaging and stakeholder analysis.

1. Opportunity Cost: What’s the impact of not making the change on the company's short-term and long-term success?

"HR practitioners can help future-proof a company by ensuring the organizational context is fully understood by those tasked with leading the transformation and by helping to establish “gates” that any effort must successfully pass through for it to be worthy of taking the time and energy of the organization."

This gate helps prioritize and assign value to inform the timing of the effort.

2. Stakeholder Impact: What is the magnitude of the impact?

Understanding who is impacted and to what degree in the context of what other changes also impact those same roles/individuals is critical to whether the effort can reasonably move forward. If several efforts impact the same stakeholders simultaneously, that must be illuminated, planned for, and monitored. Use extra caution when those most heavily impacted are working closest to your customer due to brand reputation concerns and potential disruption to the customer experience.

3. Maximum Acceptable Disruption:  Is the anticipated level of disruption to the business clearly understood and acceptable?  

When preparing to execute a business strategy, size up what could go wrong and the impact on the business to appropriately assess this gate. Most transformation comes with significant technical, process, and/or people risks, so it is important to understand worst-case scenarios to ensure appropriate planning and resources are in place upfront to mitigate those risks.

4. Leadership Conviction: Do the senior leaders responsible for implementing (or meaningfully impacted by) the change has the appropriate level of conviction about its importance to support it and deflect noise/pushback proactively? Sometimes, commitment alone isn’t enough. They must believe the effort will yield positive results if it requires meaningful behavioral change.

Different approaches are required for corporate center-led organizations that make all big decisions centrally versus entrepreneurial cultures that push autonomy and decision-making to the lowest level possible. 

Recognizing where your organization is on the spectrum between the two ends is critical so you understand where the effort will be met with resistance, where you may need to amplify middle management voices to identify the unforeseen perils of the effort, and where to spend the most time and energy with your change model.   

While every transformation effort is nuanced, HR practitioners can greatly improve the success rates of any business-critical effort by understanding the underlying organizational context and intentionally helping to align the culture by assessing the “Why?”, opportunity cost, impact, maximum acceptable disruption, and leadership conviction.