Engaging people and developing the organization are the fundamental tasks of all HR and OD managers. The HR man deals with the manpower and the OD one tackles the development of the organization.
Are their roles people oriented and very strategic?
Certainly no. The fact of matter is that both HR and OD managers’ roles are administrative, procedural, unneeded and confusing.
Why?
Most HR teams have become guardians of policies and procedures. Most HR professionals including managers, senior managers and heads operate as admin fleet to apply and comply with the procedures. KPPs, Keepers of Policies and Procedures.
They have nothing to do with people. Complying, abiding and obeying the polices and procedures are their craft.
OD activities are completely dependent on the overarching strategic direction of the company, its core values, vision and strategy. I had a chat with an OD manager who told me that her role is to accomplish her company vision. Here is the disaster.
What if the business vision is poor and confusing which is the case for 90 % of most businesses?
What if the business is visionless and purposeless?
What if the business leaders are leaderless?
That was the case for the OD manager company. Her company lacks a great deal of leadership. She showed me their vision statement which is just a long paragraph embedding strategy, mission and objectives. It is not only poorly drafted, but very dull.
Everything rises and falls on leadership, John Maxwell.
Leadership should be first understood, not blindly pursued.
To the leaders not to the HR and OD managers.
So goes the leaders, so goes the whole organization. If your organization is managerially oriented, your HR and OD mangers are wonderful data entry clerks. Well done.
If the organization is leaderly or on its way to be, then the leaders have to refocus leadership in all the critical functions of their business then train HR, OD and other senior managers on leadership not the silly management and corporate trainings, wrongly called leadership development programs.
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