Chief HR Officer Board October 2016 In-Person Meeting
Our Chief Human Resource Officer Board met recently at Flex in Milpitas, CA. The top takeaways from the Meeting:
· CHRO’s need to respond quickly – and leverage teams to respond - to accelerating changes in labor, product, technology, and capital markets. Or as one participant offered, “Snooze you lose.”
· HR can drive innovation through the talent supply chain. Organizations can achieve early wins by tapping into the on demand freelance market (See P&G below). But don’t underestimate the effort. “It requires full out, engaged intent.”
· Capturing value in the customer supply chain. Product supply chains are changing rapidly through technology and globalization. Leading companies (Flex) are capturing value on the front end through product innovation centers and building communications and planning systems to enable productivity and faster decision-making.
· Listening with intent to separate the signal from the noise. Time and again, strategies and tactics get back to tuning into and acting upon the needs of customers and critical stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. The tools and systems to do this are getting exponentially better.
Other Highlights of CHRO Board Meeting
The i4cp CHRO Board met Oct 17-18 at Flex in Milpitas, CA to discuss innovation and organizational responses to accelerating market change. Board members from Flex, TIAA, Petco, Gates Foundation, Land O’Lakes, tronc, Inc., Choice Hotels, Seattle U, Black Hills Energy, along with a guest from P&G, i4cp staff, and Chairs from i4cp’s Total Rewards and Chief Diversity Officer Boards met to review and debate various change strategies that drive business value.
Josh Mitchell shared P&G’s lessons learned in talent supply innovation – specifically their “On Demand Talent” project to tap value from nontraditional labor markets. Housed in an independent Next Generation Services group with $100,000 in seed funding, leaders were charged with creating an exponential organization – with 10X technologies and approaches. Test results proved very positive – better quality, faster resourcing, faster delivery of final product. Key learning: success requires an “ intentional, program management engagement strategy.” Notes, Mitchell, “ We are quickly changing the way we think about accessing talent and capabilities - the longer term play is truly about driving talent innovation.” The initiative is now tracking $500,000 of projects – over 100 of them. “We’re continuing to drive this intentionally – controlled grow and learn with a goal of taking this enterprise-wide.” See P&G On Demand Talent
Paul Baldassari, CHRO at Flex, showed how Flex approached innovation as a “go to market partner with scale and reach” – a strategic shift into what Flex calls the Intelligence Age™. Baldassari sees great opportunity for Flex in rapidly changing global markets and the Intelligence of Things™ - bringing 50 billion connected devices to market. The Board toured through the Flex Innovation Center - an Ecosystem built for innovation from “sketch to sale.” The design center offers clients a place to nurture ideas around technology, product design and manufacturing capability in products ranging from smart clothes (“wearables”) to cancer cures. The tour included a Communications Center that tracks business impacts of events around the world. Flex also is exploring ways to innovate with people and technology – in career growth and development, driving technology enabled productivity (through Smart phones), and predictive workforce planning, analytics and forecasting. See Flex Company Overview and Flex People & Resources.
Following a review of Board Governance and new regulations impacting Boards led by Mark Englizian (i4cp, Total Rewards Board Chair) and Attorney David S. Banks, the Board turned to the topic of Shareholder activism and how to respond. Activism is on the rise with a broader group of activist managers, especially mainstream institutional investors, said Banks. While activists may focus on a broad range of topics, increasingly, the issue is about Board governance and the composition of Boards (especially around tenure and diversity). Often the activist effort is focused on winning seats and replacing directors. CHRO Board members need to be attuned to certain target issues and listen for them in advance. The Board discussed the need for a proactive approach; recognizing warning signs, preparing their own Boards, and establishing an agile response team. A simple, yet ‘best’ strategy they agreed to is to listen to, prepare for, and respond to the activist concerns to improve performance. See Regulatory Issues & Board Governance.
CDO Board Chair Joe Santana facilitated discussion on how to respond to social and political events – and the broader needs of Board members to drive a diversity and inclusion agenda. Highlights included discussion of new i4cp D&I research which found that 72% of over 200 respondents said they have D&I as a corporate value, but only 21% indicate they respond publicly and/or internally to social/political issues of significance. Notes Santana, “this is a dicey challenge but it is also a big opportunity.” The Board discussed obstacles – from fear of the wrong response and a perception that addressing these events may be outside the organization’s existing charter. But workers today have a different and changing expectation of work, and the Board agreed that opening a discussion internally and in communities is a good first start. The CDO Board is continuing to explore active response strategies in the area of Advising CHRO’s and their Boards. See How is Your Company Addressing Social Issues.
Jay Jamrog, i4cp, ended the session with a discussion of culture – and how to change it. On reviewing the elements of culture, “It can get complicated fast.” Can you change, influence or redirect your culture? Drucker says work with what you’ve got. The Board discussed culture change through leveraging key connectors in social networks as Gates Foundation has done. Jay shared i4cp research on behavioral indicators for four areas: How to change strategy, how to focus culture on the customer, how to drive cultural agility, and how leaders can drive change. (For more information see i4cp’s Organizational Health Index.) See Corporate Culture.
Amy Armitage and Kevin Martin detailed current and upcoming research including new reports, The Talent Development Strategy Playbook (published) and upcoming reports on Talent Risk Management, Creating an Agile HR Organization, and Workforce Collaboration (with Rob Cross – University of Virginia). The Board discussed future research related to the Board of Directors and C-Suite’s view of the Evolving Role of HR.
Next virtual Board meeting: December 8th, 11am – 12:30pm ET. Will focus on Talent Risk, our new Collaboration research with Rob Cross, and future research interests of the Board.
Finally, don’t forget that our next in-person Board meeting will be held the day before the i4cp 2017 conference on March 20th, 8am – 5pm PT in Scottsdale, AZ.
If you have any questions or comments on any of this material, please let me know.
Take care.
Kurt
Sign your team up for the i4cp 2017 Conference: Next Practices Now (March 20 - 23) today.
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