Eleven Evolutions in Human Capability that Accelerate the Business | Dave Ulrich

HR Effectiveness

As I mentioned in my 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy with Business Strategy, HR practitioners are often proud of the practices, programs, and processes we create and implement. But as Dave Ulrich has mentioned repeatedly over the years, HR is not about HR. HR is about the business and how HR creates value for organizational stakeholders. This recent article by Dave provides a four-component framework comprising 11 ways HR delivers value. The four main pathways are 1) Talent (individual competence, people, workforce, and employees), 2) Leadership (individual leaders at all levels as well as leadership capability throughout an organization), 3) Organization (organization capability, culture, workplace, teams, and systems), and 4) HR (the characteristics of the HR function, practice, and people). For each of the 11 areas within these four pathways, Dave includes a visual for how these areas continue to evolve. HR leaders can use these visuals as a diagnostic to determine its “current state” and actions for evolving the four areas and 11 practices. As a bonus, here is a recent 42-minute Future of HR Podcast where host JP Elliott has an excellent discussion with Dave on various aspects of HR, including “HR is not about HR.”