The way I like to describe HR's strategic opportunity is by looking at changes in strategic management over the last fifty years. Over this time, there's been a marked shift in our perspectives from an external basis for competitive success to a much more internally oriented one.
We now understand that strategic, sustainable success comes from organisational capabilities - the value provided by our people and culture - and not just what we do with our products and services (competitive positioning) or core competencies (internal resource based strategy.)
In the private sector, it's our people and culture / organisational capabilities which now provide the greatest opportunity to outperform our competition. In the public and voluntary sectors its these same capabilities which provide the basis to build and transform an organisations' services and to really achieve its mission.
Note that the arrow diagram that I'm going on to explain fits best in the private sector, but does sort of work in the public and third sectors too - and in fact this is increasingly the case and these sectors continue to take on a more private sector way of thinking and operating (which isn't always a good thing.)
By the way, I have previously lectured on executive MBA courses on strategic business management, and this analysis is the result of reading a few hundred strategic management books. Also, as I'll go on to show, I'm not the only person making the argument I'm presenting here - though I do think I'm the person who presents it best!
However, my purpose in explaining it here is so that you can explain it too - i.e take this argument to your CEO and other business leaders and argue the case for your business to put people management and hence HR at the centre of what you do. It's still not an easy argument to win but I truly do believe that this perspective needs to be there if you're going to gain full benefit from the various approaches I'll be outlining here for you.
We now understand that strategic, sustainable success comes from organisational capabilities - the value provided by our people and culture - and not just what we do with our products and services (competitive positioning) or core competencies (internal resource based strategy.)
In the private sector, it's our people and culture / organisational capabilities which now provide the greatest opportunity to outperform our competition. In the public and voluntary sectors its these same capabilities which provide the basis to build and transform an organisations' services and to really achieve its mission.
Note that the arrow diagram that I'm going on to explain fits best in the private sector, but does sort of work in the public and third sectors too - and in fact this is increasingly the case and these sectors continue to take on a more private sector way of thinking and operating (which isn't always a good thing.)
By the way, I have previously lectured on executive MBA courses on strategic business management, and this analysis is the result of reading a few hundred strategic management books. Also, as I'll go on to show, I'm not the only person making the argument I'm presenting here - though I do think I'm the person who presents it best!
However, my purpose in explaining it here is so that you can explain it too - i.e take this argument to your CEO and other business leaders and argue the case for your business to put people management and hence HR at the centre of what you do. It's still not an easy argument to win but I truly do believe that this perspective needs to be there if you're going to gain full benefit from the various approaches I'll be outlining here for you.
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