Wednesday, September 05, 2012

September Musings-Coaching, Leadership, Digital Era

People who know me know that I often seek out change as a way to develop skills, keep an open mind, and to try to stay flexible. This means, as I know I have mentioned before, that keeping track of my ‘resilience’ capacity is important.

This year I have been considering where I am right now and what is the best option for me going forward. One thing I have finally concluded is that the HR world is one I have stepped quite far away from-not entirely as there are collaborative opportunities in staying connected with those working in the field.

I did recently post that I think it is time to change the parameters of HR significantly, both to fix the long simmering problems that don’t get resolved and to bring the people practices in organizations into alignment with the external changes occurring everywhere. My proposal is that HR retains the records maintenance, compliance, and compensation specialties and that a cross-functional team of strategic planning and deployment professionals take on the rest of what falls into the HR world now.

It is clear that more than a decade of “C” title executives have been unable to clearly define and develop a form of HR that truly meets the needs of most organizations and it is time to stop complaining and simply make sweeping changes. That does not mean that HR needs to hop to it and reach yet another not quite clear set of goals. It does mean that the “C” title executives need to get clear on specifically what is required from the people practices in their organizations and pull it together. First, though, they need to understand what the Digital Era means in terms of how business will operate, and that is a crucial point. A key factor in success in the Digital Era is the ability to collaborate effectively, to know when collaboration is the right choice and when it isn’t. And that means breaking down the silos in education and in organizations. Many people believe that the ‘flattened’ organizations of today have broken down the silos but they haven’t, not by a long shot.

I will be posting a series over the next six weeks that outlines my ideas about communication, collaboration, cooperation, cross-functional teamwork and effective methods to begin to systemically integrate improvements to all those important skills into the cultural fabric of an organization.

This September also sees me embarking on the certification process for Executive Coaching-something I have considered, deferred, rejected, reconsidered over and over again. After the recent encouragement of quite a few people I respect the opinions of I decided to go for it and am in the registration process today. Now, it makes sense, as it will be a very nice skill to add to my plans going forward with helping to develop leadership in the Digital Era.

So, what are you doing now? What is new? What are you thinking about? What seems important to you right now? Do you feel that your life is where you want it to be?

4 comments:

  1. My passion since the 70s has been using technology to create 'network organizations' - forming living, evolving 'webs of associations' that are fluid and self-managing... I think 'technology' has now somewhat developed to that vision.. it is also based on the capabilities and roles of developing ubiquitous, linking leadership (vs the traditional, hierarchical leadership), collaborative partnerships, open communication channels that cross traditional lines of territory, self-correcting system and where the strategic alignment becomes part of that leadership... enough for now.Patrick T

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  2. "Self-correcting system" is the way I see the entire escalation of the use of social tools; Observing the push/pull/resist/accept/adapt process of individuals on a personal level and in a corporate setting has shown, to date, a fairly recognizable process and one that should be reassuring to anyone who worries about being too connected or too tied to technology. In the end, humans being human, we adapt and adjust.

    Thank-you for sharing your perspective!

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  3. Some genuinely interesting points you have written. Assisted me a lot, just what I was looking for.

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  4. Thank-you for letting me know that you found this helpful!

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