Are you suffering from the outsider complex, a chronic complaint of HR and other staff functions, such as IT, Finance or Marketing? Perhaps you are technically proficient, but relegated to a second-tier status in your business. You aim to be a business partner, but operate on the fringes of the business, marching in lock-step with those in power. So, what’s the magical ingredient that makes someone a trusted insider? And what can you do to transform your role?
Insiders think and work differently from the rest of the organization. Insiders initiate, and insiders follow-through without being ordered. Insiders extend their role beyond widely accepted boundaries. Insiders ask themselves some very basic questions: what can I do, or what can my function do, to make a significant impact on business performance?
On the 5-year anniversary of his controversial article,“Why We Hate HR,” Bill Taylor kicked off another provocative discussion. This time he takes a positive view, Why We Shouldn’t Hate HR, because HR is essential to the success of a business. Strategy is culture and culture is strategy in a great company, he argues. The next time you are frustrated with HR, start asking the bigger questions:
“Why would great people want to be part of your organization…? Do you know a great person when you see one? Are you great at teaching people how your organization works and wins? Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes?”
Earlier in my career, I was on the leadership team of the corporate development division at Kraft General Foods. The EVP, head of corporate development and all of the corporate growth departments wanted each team member to come up with a new business or product idea. My colleagues were largely corporate officers, extremely accomplished men - heads of research, finance, marketing, product development, manufacturing, and M&A. We had two weeks to develop our individual proposals.
As a senior HR generalist at the time, I surmised that I was not expected to come up with an idea. Creative product or business development was not the work of anyone in human resources. Still, I was uncomfortable opting out. I wanted to contribute instead of sitting back and watching everyone else. It could be that I would get new insights into the business and how to grow it by working on this challenge. Too many HR executives give orders without experiencing what it takes for the business to deliver.
The Big Aha
Two weeks later, it was time to make our presentations. This was a big, anticipated meeting. When it was my turn, the EVP looked at me and said with compassion, “Roz, you know I wasn’t expecting you to do this.” His comment made me very nervous. Should I take a pass? This was not my role.
Instead, I said that I had an idea that I wanted to share. (In my opinion, it was an exciting, healthy alternative to the high carbohydrate lunches that most kids were taking to school every day. The business was actually launched nationally several years later.) The idea is not the reason that I’m telling this story. It’s the results I saw, which were totally unexpected.
That meeting was a defining experience in my career. I was credible and had contributed as well as anyone else around the table. More important, the head of research pulled me aside to congratulate me. He said that my idea was the only new one proposed.
My product proposal was a game changer for my relationship with the team. It forced me to think like a marketer in a company where marketing was king, to discuss my business idea with several of my colleagues outside of HR, to put myself out there as part of the team.
The experience confirmed that when we work beyond the limits of what is typical for our role, when we have actionable discussions and an intelligent point of view, people notice and old barriers to inclusion melt away.
Ask yourself: Do I diminish my importance because I am choosing to pursue a narrow scope of responsibilities? Am I so busy transacting that I am not anticipating what the business needs and how I can help to change things in a more important way? As an insider, you will see the informal organization and how it accomplishes its work. You know the influencers, the connectors, the experts, the political landmines. Your work is more than a program deliverable, a report, or a system. It’s part and parcel of the business.
8 Ways to Become a Trusted Insider
Building on Bill Taylor’s view, there are at least eight ways to become a trusted insider that every functional or business person should consider:
1. Get involved in the business and understand it down to the level of the business jargon. The goal is to know what’s going on, so you can anticipate problems and begin to initiate solutions when you spot a potential mishap. Insiders know who to contact to get involved or who has the power to get others involved.
2. Give the organization something that it wants. Consider ways to build the leadership, to add capabilities that don’t currently exist, to create more effective ways to manage risk, to develop metrics that will make the company or business distinctive. Explore how you or your team can use technology to drive results and set the organization on fire.
3. Figure out how and where you can innovate: streamline, simplify, and get rid of old ways of doing things. Never accept an assertion if something doesn’t make sense.
Have you ever spotted a business strategy built around an assumption that wasn’t true? I have. Take for example: we will increase revenues by 10% by increasing advertising by 10%. I wasn’t convinced that the correlation was right. Unfortunately, the results were terrible, and the president was fired.
4. Create a culture that totally supports the business strategy. Tear away bureaucracies and silos. And if you are the culture agent of your company, don’t stop at people-related or organizational items. Figure out what it takes to produce continuing growth and innovation and talk to people in areas that can work with you to make things happen.
5. Look outward. Appreciate the consumer marketplace as well as the talent market if you happen to be in HR. Notice what businesses are doing inside and outside of your industry. That will certainly spark ideas, solutions or programs that are new to the business team.
6. Produce projects that add value to the business or are helpful to the organization, NOT you. Make whatever you create easier for others to use by streamlining process and simplifying your content. Minimize the jargon.
7. Evaluate how you are relating to others. Ask yourself: How am I relating to people outside the company? How do others see me: Am I the one who needs attention, the one who has to be at the center of the conversation? Am I willing to learn about what others are doing?
8. Try to have something to say, and make sure it is useful. The person who is totally silent is either not listening or has nothing important to say, and will usually be seen as the outsider. If that’s hard for you to say something that adds value, it is time to start reassessing what you are working on, and how you can be more engaged in activities that are truly important to the business.
