Hi HR Folks,

I thought this article would interest all those who want to become Strategic HR partners in their business.

A Historical Perspective
Historically, many organizations and their CEO's have viewed hiring, training, and employee orientation as the HR contribution to the corporate culture. While there is no question that orientation and training can make significant contributions in developing employee skills, values and fundamental assumptions about the world, those things that make up an organization's culture are less easily created, harder to change, and often impervious to quick fixes. HR professionals often end up in a hierarchical organizational structure with an authoritarian management style and are expected to contribute to high value/low cost products and services without an opportunity to create the organizational vision and strategic framework to make it happen. In the last few years, HR Professionals have started to break out of the stereotype of the "personnel manager" and are now being recognized as keys to organizational success.

The Training Question
Having taught in a number of HR Programs, I have seen the focus of training centered around the HR Professional understanding the legal issues intertwined with HR Management and the liability to the organization when these laws are broken. Graduates are trained to understand the operation of massive manual and automated systems that track employee statistics and generate data to feed administrative and operational requirements. HR has often been viewed as a support function and not a strategic function. This view generates practitioners who lack the strategic skills to tie HR systems to strategic structures that generate the cultural requirements for success in the organization. Often times this has been the case because their particular MBA program did not view strategic training as significant. Many of the problems these managers end up solving occur because the organization has not recognized that HR is key in creating long-lasting changes that affect the fundamental values of an organization. The intense efforts required to create a culture or transform an existing culture, are generally measured in months and years and begin with strategic vision. Only in recent years, has HR been seen as an equal partner both in the boardroom and also at strategic planning sessions. This partnership has been critical in establishing startup organizations and in transforming existing cultures.

What is Culture?
I once asked a CEO client of a large international organization to tell me what he thought organizational culture meant and he gave me the following answer: "It is a shared meaning by members of the organization, based on what has happened before and what they predict will happen in the future." Stephen P. Thomas defines it as: "A common perception held by the organization's members; a system of shared meaning." Thomas goes on to discuss recent research that suggests there are ten primary characteristics that, in aggregate, capture the essence of an organization's culture. These are; member identity-the degree to which employees identify with the organization, group emphass-the degree to which work activities are organized around groups, people focus-the degree to which management decisions take into account the effect of outcomes on people, unit integration-the degree to which units are encouraged to operate in a coordinated manner, control-the degree to which rules and regulations are used to control employee behavior, risk tolerance-the degree to which employees are encouraged to be risk seeking, reward criteria- the degree to which rewards are allocated based on performance, conflict tolerance-the degree to which employees are encouraged to air conflicts and criticisms, means-ends orientation-the degree to which management focuses on outcomes rather than on processes used, and open-system focus-the degree to which the organization monitors and responds to changes in the external environment. It is clear that many of the characteristics that determine culture are viewed as being on the "plate" of today's HR Professional. Maintaining, changing or creating a culture will be highly dependent
on the status of reruitment and retention processes, performance evaluation criteria, reward practices, management systems, innovation systems, training and career development activities, promotion procedures, organizational structures and labor relations practices.

A Strategic Framework
The strategic framework of an organization provides legitimacy for organizational activities, creates ownership and loyalty, and motivates creative ideas and innovative products and services. The ability of an organization to successfully link all of its business facets to its strategic framework is often the most difficult and challenging task it faces. A great example of an organization that linked its strategic framework to its daily activities far earlier than its competition was the 3M Corporation. 3M had a strategic framework that established HR strategies tied to its mission, vision and values. The company's strategic plan required a minimum of 50% of its profits to come from products no older than 5 years. 3M recognized that a strategic commitment to innovative products would pay off if it were tied to creating a culture that allowed its employees to be innovative and creative. When an employee at 3M made a mistake or had an idea that didn't work, he or she discussed it at a team meeting and the entire team celebrated the learning experience. Over time, a culture evolved where risk and innovation were viewed as necessary and complementary. 3M managed to link strategies to management and employee actions. It successfully linked corporate success to the development of new products and a lesser dependence on mature products. It linked its HR systems to its strategic framework by creating a set of HR strategies that provided; innovative compensation and reward systems, creative organizational structures, training and development plans tied to strategic outcomes, and targeted employee skills.

Creating the Culture to Support Mission, Vision, and Values
The culture that evolves in a particular organization is a complex outcome of external pressures, internal potentials, responses to critical events, and a number of chance factors that are hard to predict. As with any other business activity, the predictability of a cultural outcome can be enhanced by the planning and participation of the HR Professional in the creation or the transformation of the strategic framework. Mission, vision, and values dictate what impact the organization will have on the world over time, how the organization will create that impact, and what organizational values will guide the internal and external interrelationships of the employees. Creating the HR strategies to develop an organizational culture that supports the mission, vision, and values is both a science and an art. Because cultures evolve naturally, the task of minimizing the variables by generating complementary systems is critical.

The HR Strategic Plan
Identifying the specific HR strategies in a strategic plan requires some real visioning in respect to the characteristics necessary to help the culture evolve so that it is nurturing the mission, achieving he outcomes in the vision, and using the values of the organization. These strategies drive to issues of employee selection, top management's actions, and employee socialization to name a few. The clear goal of any selection process is to identify and hire individuals who have the knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the jobs within the organization. Employee recruitment and retention have and will continue to be one of the most strategic of all corporate functions. Developing the strategies that govern management actions is another story. This typically has the largest impact on the organization's culture and establishes the norms that filter down to impact all of the cultural characteristics. Insuring that management's actions support the cultural and strategic model being developed is critical. It requires a strategic commitment on the part of management and a clear HR leadership strategy to make it happen. Employee socialzation or the manner in which new employees adapt to the culture is another key part of the HR strategic plan. Clearly, a priority of the HR strategic plan is the communication of the norms and values that comprise the culture. This is a critical process that helps new employees develop a sense of their place in the culture and a dedication to the organization.

As we review the other key characteristics of culture, it is clear that reward systems, organizational structure, decision making processes, level of empowerment, training and development and the labor relations environment are all issues worthy of strategic inclusion. Today, we see a clear transformation of HR from an operational level of consideration to a strategic necessity for organizational success.

The Author Kenneth Lynn | Kenneth M. Lynn, BA, MBA, Ph.D., has held senior positions in government and business and taught at the graduate level for over 25
years. Mr. Lynn has lead change initiatives and cultural transformations in organizations from 60 to over 100,000 employees. Through his Seattle area consulting practice, Mr. Lynn delivers services that range from strategic planning, change management and cultural transformation to interim CEO services and organizational development. The company, Communication Educators, specializes in
developing team-based strategies that introduce values and practices that employees embrace as new cultures evolve.