Beyond HR Knowing The

Business—Be A Strategic
Positioner To Deliver Value To
Key Stakeholders
 Published on April 11, 2017

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Positioner To Deliver Value To Key Stakeholders

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Positioner To Deliver Value To Key Stakeholders

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Dave Ulrich
FollowFollowingUnfollowDave Ulrich
Speaker, Author, Professor, HR & Leadership Guru
Note: This article is drawn from the book Victory Through Organization by
Dave Ulrich, David Kryscynski, Michael Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank.

With our 22 regional partners, we have data from over 32,000 respondents in
1200 businesses. In this data, we identified nine competencies of HR
professionals that will enable them to get invited to participate in business
discussions. Being a credible activist demonstrates the personal effectiveness
to get invited “to the table”, but (see credible activist article), but it is even more
important what HR professionals say and do once involved in business
discussions.

To help HR professionals deliver value to the business, it is important to have

a stakeholder view of HR. Stakeholders are those who HR represents when
involved in business discussions. Traditionally, HR professionals are employee
advocates, but today they also create value by serving line managers to
deliver strategy by representing external customers, investors, and the
community.

Firms don’t exist to make managers and employees happy; they exist to make
customers and shareholders happy.

In our research, we wanted to know the competencies HR should demonstrate

to deliver value once invited to the business discussion. We measured the
extent to which the HR professionals are seen as delivering value to each of
six stakeholders, 4 outside the organization (customer, investor, community,
regulator) and 2 inside the organization (line manager and employee). As
reported in Table 1, we scale the results to 100% to show the relative
importance of each of the 9 HR competencies for each of these stakeholders.

Table 1 shows that the competencies for HR professionals should vary

depending on who they personally represent when engaged in business
discussions. These results show that once invited to the business discussion
(because of being a credible activist), an individual HR professional needs to
thoughtfully determine who they represent in those discussions. While all the
nine competence domains matter to varying extents, if they represent
employees or line managers (internal stakeholders), they must continue to be
Credible Activists. But, if they represent customer and investor interests, they
need to become Strategic Positioners. To represent regulators, they also need
skills as a Compliance Manager.

The competencies that are required to add value on the inside (to employees
and line managers) are fundamentally different from those that are required to
add value on the outside (to customers and investors). Firms don’t exist to
make managers and employees happy; they exist to make customers and
shareholders happy. If HR wants to contribute to purpose of the firm, the
Strategic Positioner (followed by Culture and Change Champion)
competences are mandatory.

Table 1: Independent Impact of Each HR Competency on the Value

Created for Stakeholders by the HR Participant (columns add to 100%)

(Want to know what your leadership competencies are? Learn more here.)

What do HR professionals need to know and do to be

Strategic Positioners?
The essence of being a Strategic Positioner is that HR professionals must be
able to move beyond “knowing the business” to being able to position the
business to win in its marketplace. We have identified four phases be being a
Strategic Positioner.

Phase 1: Master the language and flow of business

The language of business, which primarily emphasizes finance, but includes
any category of the business that is central to a company’s business success
(marketing, strategy, IT, etc.). Today, more than ever, HR work crosses
functional boundaries with marketing (building firm, leadership, and employee
brands), finance (using HR to manage financial returns as well as intangibles
for investors), and IT. Because HR work affects all people in an organization, it
cross boundaries for all functional areas. HR professionals should know the
language of the business.

Phase 2: Recognize and deliver strategy and sources of

competitive advantage
We found that knowing the business meant also understanding the
organizational strategy and competitive advantage. HR professionals needed
to know how the business makes money and the key differentiators of the
business. Strategic decision making, fast change, infrastructure design, and
culture management are key elements of this competency domain. To help
deliver strategy, Strategic Positioners need to help shape both the content of
strategy (where an organization competes and how it wins) and the process of
creating strategic unity (by involving key groups in the strategy creation
process). In addition, as Strategic Positioners HR professionals may help their
organization mitigate risk. At its basic level, risk deals with two processes: [1]
uncertainty and the ability to predict the future from the present; or the
probability something will happen and [2] variability or the range of difference
in an activity. By reducing uncertainty and variability through control
processes, risk is reduced and organizations more predictably accomplish
their goals. Enterprise risk assessment occurs when a governing committee
identifies the major potential risks, then filters these risks against the criteria of
uncertainty and variability to prioritize risks that management must pay
attention to. As Strategic Positioners, HR professionals should help their
companies compete and win.

Phase 3: Understand and co- create with external

stakeholders
HR professionals need to know their organization’s niche – external
stakeholders such as customers, competitors, suppliers, investors, regulators,
etc. HR needs know who they are, how to build relationships with them, and
utilize them to set criteria for effective people management. For example,
customer expectations should inform and become criteria for hiring and
promotion, performance management, training and development expectations,
and leadership behaviors (see book Leadership Brand). In addition, as
Strategic Positioners HR professionals can be very engaged with helping
investors have confidence in their leadership capital (see book Leadership
Capital Index).

Phase 4: Anticipate and react to external business trends

and context
Finally, to position their business to win, HR professionals need to know the
context within which their organization operates. They understand social,
technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends and
how they affect their respective industries and/or geographical regions. They
translate their knowledge of the external environment and trends into internal
action. To anticipate external trends, HR professionals need to spend time
studying general business context and specific industry trends. Strategic
Positioners anticipate a future by envisioning trends.
Conclusion: The State of the Strategic Positioner
Competency
As we travel and speak we are pleased to see more and more HR
professionals adopting the language and logic of the business. When we ask
HR audiences, “what does it take for HR to be effective”, we almost always
hear a version of “know the business.” Our Strategic Positioner evolves this
concept from business literacy to competitive advantage to serving
stakeholders to anticipating a future. We see, and the data confirms, Strategic
Positioner as one of the most critical competency domains and we believe it
will continue to be an essential opportunity for growth in the HR profession in
the coming years.