How can HR people build business acumen? This theme keeps emerging from research, including our own on HR’s reputation. HR people want to be better at it.
There’s the strategic understanding how the organisation works and data on how it’s doing. Some of that is on spreadsheets and company reports – but it’s only part of the story.
During my HR career I spent a mind-opening day with a sales rep. To watch him was to understand what our business was really about. That conversation was where product, brand, price and trust all came together, marshalled by his skill and behaviours.
The sales numbers came to life for me that day, and I was able to feed my new understanding into meetings with stakeholders. It helped me to challenge what we were doing in HR, build a stronger partnership with sales leaders and align my team.
What understanding would help you to get your message across to your most important stakeholders? How can you use their language? When are the critical conversations when you could do this?
This model brings those threads together, and I dig deeper into this in my book ‘Empowering HR’. It’s available on Amazon, and endorsed by Dave Ulrich.
What would help you to better understand YOUR organisation?
