Their Quarterback is TOAST!

Ahhh, football season.  Honestly, my least favorite sports season (only 7 more weeks until hockey season starts – barring a lockout (topic for a very near future post)).  While I don’t enjoy football from an entertainment or competitive sports point of view, I do find it (sometimes) fascinating from a talent management perspective.  Most intriguing to me is all the hype and hoopla about quarterbacks – Manning (1 & 2), Tebow, Sanchez, Cutler, Griffin, Luck (well, at least I know the big named ones).  More specifically, whether a quarterback is going to take a team to a Super Bowl.  Why is this fascinating to me?  Because no quarterback works well alone.  And yet,  media and fantasy footballers (some, not all) go on about quarterbacks like they are the second coming.  Personally, I’m less interested in the quarterback, and more interested in the offensive line.  Not a glamorous bunch, usually not feted very much.  But if those guys don’t show up to a game, or if they generally just suck, then the quarterback is TOAST.

In my mind, organizations work the same way.  The quarterback is the key talent that drives the company’s competitive differentiation.  And the offensive line are all the business (staff) functions that keep things running smoothly so that the key talent can do what they do best: innovate new products, identify new customers, mollify stockholders, and schmooze the regulators.  In most organizations, the offensive line = finance, IT, procurement, and yes, even HR.  And a report recently released by the Hackett Group indicates that, in terms of drafting and growing strong offensive line players, the situation is crappy.

According to the report, “business services organizations — including finance, IT, procurement, and even HR itself — are seeing dangerous deficits in talent and skills, and are highly dissatisfied with the level of support they receive from HR on talent issues.”  Here’s the picture (email subscribers click through):

Further comments from the report:

“Underinvestment in talent has created deficits in important skills such as business acumen, strategic thinking and analysis, change management, and process improvement capabilities. Yet

companies seem to be almost completely ineffective at addressing this talent challenge, in large part because HR and business services leaders are not collaborating. This is a dangerous situation with the potential to cripple companies that don't address it quickly. While these business services functions are often considered cost-centers, they provide key services that enable companies to manage and optimize assets ranging from cash, capital and talent to technology and product/service inputs.””

Sadly, this is a situation I see a lot these days – the business functions are really, really hurting in many organizations.  And HR (think of them as the trainers, video staff, and specialty coaches on the sidelines) is not up to the task of identifying needed skills and growing a business offensive line that can truly enable the quarterback to work his/her (I live in a world where football is co-ed) magic (instead of scampering away from injury-inducing tackles).

The Hackett Report notes that one of the primary causes of the talent deficit in the business functions is that HR and staff functions are not collaborating to identify and find needed expertise, experience and exposure to really strengthen the offensive line, and that further, HR is not providing enough support to enable retention of offensive line players.  Given that HR itself is part of the offensive line, too, HR is pretty down on HR in this regard.

The Hackett Group is good about holding both business function leaders and HR accountable for the need to improve this situation – they need to communicate, collaborate, share information, and figure out how to share limited financial resources allocated to staff functions (instead of protecting those budgets like internal no trade clauses).  In addition to these important, if obvious, recommendations, I also would suggest that HR folks spend some time in the business functions and vice versa.  Nothing makes for stronger staff support than living – day-to-day – in the position that one is trying to enable.    Further, if business leaders are so dissatisfied with HR service levels on talent management, then my suggestion is for business staff folks to get in there and give HR a whirl.  I believe that walking in the other person’s shoes (cleats) will further enhance one’s perspective on what really is going on.  It’s more productive than pointing fingers.  Because even when quarterbacks point during the play audible, at least three (depending on the pointing technique) fingers are pointing right back at the QB.