Chief HR Officer Board March 2018 In-Person Meeting

We had a packed room and a very engaged group at our Board meeting in Scottsdale.  Thanks to all for your active participation and insight sharing that made this latest Board meeting a success. 

As promised, here is a quick summary of the topics we covered:

1. Developing Bench Strength – We held an open discussion with Kevin Martin and discussed the linkage and importance of culture, brand, agility and alignment. Board members Charlie Piscitello, Bob Hargadon, and Lesa Litteral volunteered to work with i4cp to develop a hypothesis related to Talent Brand.
2. CEO Succession - Pat Wright presented his latest research on CEO succession (Wright - CEO Succession).
3. Business transformation – Liz McAuliffe discussed the significant realignment of the HR team at T-Mobile in support of the business reinvention and the relentless focus on the customer across the organization (McAuliffe - HR for the Un-Carrier).
4. Agile Leader Checklist – Kevin Martin reviewed i4cp’s latest research on Agile Leaders (Martin - Agile Leader Checklist).
5. Superbosses - Sydney Finkelstein talked about his research that resulted in his book “Superbosses”. He defined a Superboss as a leader that ‘generates and regenerates top talent’, sees others potential before the individual sees it themselves, and generally makes people better. Examples of superbosses include Bill Walsh of the NFL, Lorne Michaels, producer of Saturday Night Live; Larry Ellison, cofounder and former CEO of Oracle; Alice Waters, owner of the Chez Panisse restaurant; and fashion designer Ralph Lauren. We had a lively discussion about one of the characteristics that differentiate Superbosses - that they hire “unusual” talent, tap new talent pools and motivate by performance AND inspiration. If you are interested in his book, here is the link:  Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent
6. Talent and knowledge exchange across an organization’s ecosystem – In the effort to enable a borderless and seamless fluidity of talent and knowledge, Kevin Martin challenged the board to think in terms of Ecosystem rather than enterprise.  Examples from Karen Ward at BCBS in dealing with significant market ambiguity and Kiersten Robinson at Ford on changing culture at a 115 year old company. We also covered the i4cp Next Practice research review of “The Three A’s of Organizational Agility” presented by Kevin Martin, including work Loren Heeringa is doing at Land O’ Lakes (Martin - Organizational Agility). To finish this section Garry Randall presented a unique program he has instituted at Disney Consumer Products Interactive called “dcpi Gigs” (Randall - The Walt Disney Company). 

Please note:

• Our next Board call is May 24 (11am – 12:30pm ET)
• We will email you a soft copy of i4cp’s new research report The Three A’s of Agility: Reinvention Through Disruption. We encourage you to read and share this with your HRLT and with your firm’s executive leadership team. 

Once again, thanks to all who were able to participate in the Board meeting. 

All the best! 

Kurt Fischer