Head Tale

HR doesn’t set the culture, the leaders do.

So look at the top leaders – how do they act?  How do they treat people?  How do they support people?  How do they enable people to do their best work?  Are they well-liked by staff?  Do staff even know who they are?  (If they don’t, do they introduce themselves or just say “hello” when they come to your location?). Do they admit when they make mistakes?  Do they apologise?  Do they treat the people below them the same as they treat people at their level?

To put it another way, ask yourself – who does the HR/People & Culture Manager report to?   That person has infinitely more power to set the culture of an organization than the HR manager.

I have my own example of this – I was working at RPL’s HR Unit (now rebranded as People & Culture – which is totally not the inspiration for this post in the first place!) years ago with the HR Manager and a senior Manager on a project to focus on “core competencies”.  The senior managers who was leading the project said to the assembled librarians we were presenting our work to “We’ve brought you here because you represent 80% of our workers in this organization.”

And when he said that, I remember thinking – why isn’t 100% of staff represented?  And why is the only person in that room who had more power than any of the people representing the 80% not acknowledging they have more power to set culture than any of the 80% in the room?

@strategytips

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? original sound – Julian Cole | Strategy Trainer – Julian Cole | Strategy Trainer