Viewpoint

Firing up the Global Brain: HR, People, and Technology

A global organisation is like a giant brain, and like most brains typically functions at a fraction of it potential capacity. It is HR's primary responsibility to ensure that this brain - made up of individuals and groups - is always developing its capabilities, is working in close alignment with the organisation's overall strategic goals, and is producing outstanding results. How?

In 1999, I wrote a chapter for a book published by the Institute for Personnel Development (IPD) called The Global HR Manager: Creating the Seamless Organisation. The chapter 'The HR Manager as Global Business Partner' presented speculative arguments about the future strategic role of HR in a company's drive for global competitiveness. The main points of the chapter were:

• Every business function today - including HR - must answer two questions: "What value do you add?" and "How can you add more value?"
• There are two primary forces driving global competitiveness: human talent and technology.
• As in other performance revolutions throughout human history, the people/technology interface will drive progress. Today, we can think of business performance as being generated out of a complex system of interactions, many of which are increasingly facilitated by technology:
  
   
  
  
• HR's primary goal must be to generate higher performance outcomes through enabling and mobilising human intelligence through the global power, reach, and interactivity of technology.
• This will require HR to build strong, performance-focused partnerships with senior executives, global business managers, functional managers, and technologists.
• It will also require many HR practitioners to undergo a radical shift in mindset and skills - towards multidisciplinary business thinking, and high-tech as well as high-touch expertise.

Technology is to globalisation - to use another physical analogy - what the vocal chords, the mouth, and the tongue are to the voice. It is the enabling infrastructure. We can use this infrastructure well, or poorly, in trying to achieve our personal objectives. If we are voice professionals (actors, singers, newscasters) we had better understand how to use our vocal infrastructure for producing best results. It is the same with new technologies in the workplace - we must make sure they are used by our professionals in the most effective ways possible in supporting the delivery of performance outcomes in line with or better than those in our global business plans.

Doug Menuez, photographer (http://www.menuez.com/), has spent years documenting what he calls digital moments. In his photographs, he looks to explore the interface between people and technology. As talent effectiveness professionals, we need to understand these digital moments in our organisations. It is tempting to leave such work to the 'techies', but that is a huge mistake. Technicians tend to talk an obscure, technical language, and often make huge assumptions about what the rest of us know to get the technologies truly working for us. HR needs to be the force driving towards human-centered technologies.

Since 1999, when I wrote the IPD chapter, the world has seen huge upheavals. Gone are the wildly optimistic - and even naïve - days when the major global competitiveness issue facing many companies seemed to be "How fast can we get over there?" Terrorism, recession, geopolitical instability, financial crises, the risks of moving people around the globe, the outsourcing of professional services to lower cost countries, higher insurance and security costs, uncertainty in global supply networks, more competitive local players challenging global brands, etc., have all added to the complexity of the global business environment. Complexity has increased demand for greater connectivity to enable more intensive virtual collaboration across multiple borders.

Collaborative technologies are on the rise, but a major challenge is to ensure their successful use. I'm old enough to remember when overhead projectors were left gathering dust in training department closets because no one really knew how to use them. We've come a long way in the use of workplace technology, but it's an evolving landscape. To fulfill its own global strategic potential, and to be a full business partner, HR must position itself in the People-Technology interface.

Firing up the Global Brain: Begin with an inventory of Digital Moments in your organisation

• What collaborative technologies are being used?
• Who is using them and for what purpose?
• How are the technologies being used?
• What results are being achieved?
• Are there better ways for getting the most out the technologies?
• What other capabilities would users find most beneficial?

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