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CEOs are in love with speed! They are constantly ranting about the need for speed in new market entry, time-to-market, cycle-time reduction, and the resulting competitive advantage that speed can provide. Speed is so important in todays hypercompetitive business world that if you were forced to come up with a single word that best describes the current climate, speed would have to appear among the top descriptors. The business world is transforming at breakneck speed. Entire industries like print publishing, digital imaging, and entertainment are undergoing radical evolutions, displacing established leaders, and launching new ones. Even once-successful companies like MySpace are burning out just three years into their mature life, demonstrating that if you cant keep up, you will be marginalized. All around you new products are emerging that demonstrate the profound impact innovation can have in just a year. Mobile video has gone from a pipe dream to a reality, and smartphones just a year old lack the hardware to take full advantage; chips from Intel that are introduced in January are commodities by December. Telephones that used to be viable for years in the 1950s today are obsolete with two years. A phone capturing a premium upgrade price in January could not be sold a year later. The increasing speed of change should not be a surprise; society has for centuries focused on accelerating nearly everything. That fact has long driven the efforts of business functions that directly touch the design, manufacture, sales, and distribution of products, but functions like HR havent always responded in kind. HR can play a role in increasing speed throughout the organization and its time talent managers step up and acknowledge that.
Processes built for speed all business processes must be continually assessed for speed. Those that fall behind must be redesigned and new processes must include the essential design components for speed. Processes must be integrated interrelated processes that are dependent on each other must be either coordinated or completely integrated. This integration is necessary to ensure smooth and fast handoffs between functions and to ensure that roadblocks and barriers to speed are quickly identified and eliminated. Technology is essential it is almost impossible to be global, low-cost, highly innovative, and fast without the extensive use of technology. Process and program leaders must constantly search for software and hardware that can enable fast speed and high quality.
Fast employees are needed some individuals act, react, think, and learn faster than others. Leaders need to staff and train for speed because unfortunately, a single slow employee like Homer Simpson in a team can reduce speed faster than a Formula One disc brake. Fast managers are needed not all managers and leaders are adept at making fast and accurate decisions. In addition fast managers understand the process of increasing speed and as a result they are familiar with the most effective tools and approaches for increasing speed in their processes and their employees. You must identify barriers to speed because even the best-designed processes (just like PCs) can slow down over time, there must be processes and tools available to managers to identify current barriers to speed and to find the best tools and technologies for increasing speed beyond current levels. You must cut approvals requiring excessive approvals not only hampers speed but it also frustrates innovators. Where approvals cannot be eliminated, dramatically reduce the time required for them. You must measure speed you can improve something that you dont measure. As a result, there must be metrics for measuring the speed of each step in a process. Incidentally quality must also be measured because customers have learned to expect both speed and quality. Provide benchmark numbers there must be comparison numbers both from within and outside your firm, so that you can accurately assess and maintain your speed lead in your industry. Distribute reports ranked reports demonstrating the differentials in speed between different departments, managers, and processes must be widely distributed to spur competition and best practice sharing.
Hire fast employees change hiring standards to recruit only candidates with the proven capability of moving fast. The hiring and assessment process must be improved to better assess whether candidates can make fast but accurate decisions and if they learn fast and embrace change. Increase hiring speed vacancies in key positions can dramatically slow down fastmoving processes and projects. As a result, HR needs to develop faster hiring processes in order to fill high-impact vacancies fast with high-quality people.
Train employees to be fast some employees are slow simply because theyve never been trained on how to act fast. The training and development function must develop courses and materials to help employees and managers think and act faster. For example, most employees do their tasks in a linear way (i.e. one step is completed before the next step is executed). By teaching them how to take simultaneous or parallel actions, employees can do more high quality work in less time. Develop fast leaders clearly managers and leaders need to be selected based on their capability of moving fast. Once selected, there must be programs to further develop these leaders so that they can gather information more quickly, make fast decisions, and help their employees learn how to move faster. Expand performance management rather than merely focusing on weak performers, this function needs to also accurately assess speed and identify employees, managers, and people processes that reduce organizational speed. Offer compensation and incentives pay for performance and innovation must be supplemented with incentives for doing things first. In addition, there should be rewards for sharing fast approaches and tools that can be used by others to increase their speed. Improve the speed of best-practice sharing by coordinating and speeding up the sharing of current best practices within the organization, HR can improve productivity and speed with only a small investment.
Final Thoughts
You cant be a hero in a fast culture unless you are recognized as being among the leaders in moving fast. Unfortunately, few (even within HR) would argue that HR processes are currently among the fastest tools in the shed. Part of our reluctance to move fast and to avoid risks is based on our traditional focus on compliance and legal issues. The time has come for HR to shift focus away from compliance and towards directly impacting productivity, innovation, and speed. If you want to move beyond being a mere business partner and instead make a real strategic contribution to the firm, why not accept the role as the manager of your firms speed culture? Accepting that role means an improved status, increases
resources, and a measurable business impact on the function. Dont wait for someone to assign you to that role. Instead, seize the opportunity and of course, move fast.
tags: talentmanagement