The Human Capital Vision (Bradley W Hall,Ph.D)

The important question to answer here is: What does success look like?

In the mid-1990s, Taco Bell, then a PepsiCo company, was one of the hottest companies on earth. In the middle of its success, John Martin, Taco Bell’s CEO, assigned seven of his highest-potential middle managers to a two-year, full-time, multidisciplinary team to rein- vent Taco Bell’s business model. Martin’s vision was “250,000 points of access by the year 2000.” He defined a point of access as “wherever someone can buy a Taco Bell product.” Taco Bell’s new vision was clear, memorable, and measurable.

Given that Taco Bell had about 4,000 stores at the time, 250,000 seemed to be an unrealistic goal. However, the team energetically be- gan work and within a few short months had created a new process that increased store openings from 700 each year to more than 1,200. Martin thanked the team but told them that while that was very good news, the goal was still 250,000 points of access.

The team decided that it needed to think more creatively. At the time, cafeterias were the only place to eat in airports. “What if we put Taco Bells in airports?” the team members wondered. “Let’s call them SPODs” (special points of distribution). Soon, Taco Bell SPODs were popping up in airports, stadiums, and strip malls. SPODs quickly added more than 1,000 points of access each year. Again, Martin was grateful but unmoved. The vision was still 250,000.

The Human Capital Theory (Bradley W Hall,PHD)

The first question to answer is: How does HR create business value? 

Several years ago, while involved in a project with a large retail company’s HR department, I noticed that the labor law team was the largest corporate HR department. The company employed eight to ten times the number of labor lawyers per employee as its competitors, and four of its six corporate HR executives had been promoted from the legal department. Attorney telephone numbers were on the speed dial of every HR generalist, and daily decisions were routinely screened for legal exposure. HR generalists complained incessantly about the legal team obstructing their work, but the checking and approval process remained intact. What would you say was HR’s theory on how it added value to the business? 

A second company I supported had been a lead company in a regulated industry for many years. In this company, the focus of HR staff meetings was policy and policy enforcement. Before meetings and on breaks, HR generalists playfully sparred with one another on policy details. “. . . That’s right, but she only gets 30 days if she has more than two years of tenure at a company merged before 2001.” Peers looked on and cheered as one bested the other. How might you describe the human capital theory at this company? 

Today’s Approach to Human Capital Management (Bradley W Hall,Ph.D)

Today’s approach for improving workforce performance is failing. There are three reasons:
1. No one is accountable for year-over-year human capital performance.
2. Results require a system, not world-class programs.
3. Today’s HR model is misaligned to deliver business results.

Let’s look at each of these reasons.

No One Is Accountable

The head of manufacturing is accountable for year-over-year improvements in manufacturing productivity. The head of marketing is ac- countable for year-over-year changes in brand equity. The head of sales is responsible for revenue growth. But who is responsible for year-over- year improvements in the company’s most valuable asset—its people? Nobody. Line managers see HR as accountable, but HR sees itself ac- countable for programs that must be converted into business results by line managers. No one is in charge of human capital performance.

Career development issues

There is little question who is responsible for assess­ing training needs and planning strategies to meet these needs. Most organizations hold the supervisor responsible for seeing that subordinates are trained to do their jobs. However, assessing career goals and the education and skill development needed to achieve these goals is another matter. Who is responsible for employees’ career development is very often not clear.

In helping employees assess career goals and education and development needs, the supervisor has to decide how far his or her responsibility in career counseling extends and how far he or she is willing to go to provide help.

Most experts on career development believe the employee should have final responsibility for managing and developing his or her own career. The supervisor can help in many ways but should remain a helper–not a decision maker, but a facilitator of decisions. In this role, supervisors should follow good counseling practices:

• Ask questions

• Listen actively

• Provide information

• Help focus ideas

• Give feedback on strengths and weak­nesses as they are perceived

• Refer the employee to other sources of information (and perhaps a professional career counselor if

needed and if avail­able), and

• Assist the employee in developing action plans

A Learning Organization...

· Is not a label but a philosophy to embrace;

· Nurtures new and expansive patterns of thinking;

· Sees reality objectively;

· Has the capacity to multilaterally create and focus upon a shared picture of the future;

· Has the ability for a team to synergistically produce extraordinary results through coordinated action;

· Is a workplace safe for thinking;

LEADERSHIP IN A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

A Learning Organization can be defined as an organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990).

Learning organizations use shared leadership principles to maximize their resources and develop leadership capacity within individuals. The organization can be described as one that learns continuously and transforms itself. Current literature on leadership development characterizes the leader as a coach, facilitator and guide. Images of leadership have shifted from expert, director, and controller to catalyst, information sharer, and coordinator.

Leadership in learning organizations is based on cooperative and collaborative partnership approaches.

Individuals and their actions are the basis of a learning organization. The culture of the organization, including its history, vision and mission, and both official and informal policies and procedures, forms the

context for individual activities and their impacts.

Senge described five disciplines:

1.) Systems Thinking;

2.) Personal Mastery;

3.) Mental Models;

4.) Building Shared Vision; and

5.) Team Learning as the foundation of a learning organization.