The Role of Internal Support Functions In Helping Their Organisations Succeed

In their book HR From the Outside Inside Out authors Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank and Mike Ulrich distill 25 years of studies on the competencies that HR professionals use to contribute to their own effectiveness and to business success, and the essence of their approach and their findings is described below

“Tell us about your business."That's how we like to start when we sit down to work with senior HR professionals. We find that it is a good litmus test for assessing the current state of HR in a company.Most replies start with discussing the latest challenges or innovations in HR practices (hiring people, training leaders, building incentive compensation, doing HR analytics, and so forth), relating to business leaders (having a voice at the table, getting buy-in), or managing the increased personal demands of the HR job (allocating time, staying upbeat in the face of overwhelming demands). That is, HR professionals almost invariably define business as "HR business" and are inclined to talk about their current initiatives in leadership training, recruiting, engagement or rewards — the areas where they focus their attention on the job. These efforts are important, but they are not the business. They are in support of the business.

 

The real business is external: the context and setting in which the business operates, the expectations of key stakeholders (customers, investors, communities, partners, employees), and the strategies that give a company a unique competitive advantage. If HR professionals are truly to contribute to business performance, then their mindset must center on the goals of the business. They must take that outside reality and bring it into everything they do, practicing their craft with an eye to the business as a whole and not just their own department.

 

Focusing on the business of the business enables HR professionals to add meaningful and sustainable value. When they ground their work with the business, HR professionals think and behave from the outside in.Since finance is the universal language of business, any discussions of business literacy must be grounded in finance. HR professionals should be able to interpret an income statement, balance sheet and financial analyst's report on their organization. Increasing business literacy, like learning a new language, includes many small steps.

FranklinCovey's experience of working with internal service providers (be they IT, Operations, Finance or HR professionals) reflects the findings above in that the 'solutions' these support services provide have no value to the business unless they address an issue that's important to the business or help deliver a result that the business considers worthwhile. As such it is in understanding these key business issues and results and then relating solutions to them where support functions have the real opportunity to help their organisations succeed. 

 

To achieve this, while the  finance literacy described by the authors can be important, FranklinCovey's focus when developing these teams tends to be on the skills they bring to mutually explore their clients' issues - combining strong commercial acumen with good communication skills in a 'structured conversation'. This approach allows then to consistently and repeatedly unlock where real value lies for their business colleagues and then build their reputation by helping to realise this value.