HR needs some fusion—and, unfortunately, we’re not talking about trying a new fusion restaurant and indulging in a mix of new cuisines.
The people profession needs a shake up in how organizations manage people in tandem with managing technology, according to Kent McMillan, managing director of organization strategy at consulting firm Accenture in the UK and co-author of Rethinking Operating Models: Designing People and Technology Powered Organizations.
McMillan spoke with HR Brew about how organizations can adapt in the people-and-machine world.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What will HR pros learn from your book?
They are no longer just stewards of talent, but really are lead designers of the operating model, and culture, and organization…It’s really about championing that fusion between strategy, operating model, and technology…They’re going to have to be able to work across, not only with a business strategy…but how do we work with our technology friends, particularly as more and more of the work is done through technology, and there’s the new culture required to manage a people-and-machine type of world.
[HR] needs to be able to see the organization not as a one-off redesign event every three years, driven by either a crisis, or a new leader, or a new moment in time, but rather think about the organization as something that they need to continuously track to really architect new ways of working, driving new team models, and also knowing that machines are changing as far as humans now.
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Can you give us any examples of companies that have done this well?
We’ve done it ourselves when it comes to thinking about ‘How do we have a pipeline of work initiatives that are continuously changing the organization?’...We built a continuous change engine…which is really thinking about which initiatives are running in parallel. How do we continuously monitor those?...Rather than we do something that fixes and transforms something. We created this more as a never-ending change process.
We talked a little bit in the book about the features of a reinvent organization, and certainly the analysis of that shows that those companies that do achieve that are seeing two-times results when it comes to revenue growth, when it comes to customer satisfaction, so it’s a pretty material difference for people who are taking that continuous reengagement approach.
How can HR pros start reinventing their strategies?
If you take the more strategic approach to your operation model and thinking about ‘How do I create an operating model that is more adaptive?’...It’s not a static structure that stays still, but actually can respond to customer demands, can respond to the commercial realities that are going around at any time.