The HR Mystery
by Jean-Louis Gassée
Today, following a conversation with a Zen Teacher, we look at the perennial frustration with what many call a necessary evil: Human Resources (HR). Sadly, I offer no sharp and easy solution.
This past week, I’ve been thinking about Intel’s hard road to recovery. Last quarter’s number show declines in Client Computing (aka PC chips) and Datacenter, Intels two most important categories.
In attempted contrast to the bad news, the week ended with optimistic pronouncements during the two-day Intel Innovation,a developer conference that’s similar to those hosted by Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others. As the formula dictates, the event was filled with product introductions, star guests, and “Just You Wait!” teasers. The latter included a claim, by CEO Pat Gelsinger, that the company wants Apple to buy chips from Intel again in the future. Gelsinger also declared that Moore’s Law is alive and well, contradicting the declaration by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that the “…method of using brute force transistors and the advances of Moore’s law has largely ran its course.” A rich topic for a future Monday Note.
My musings were rerouted by a Friday morning meeting with Les Kaye, the 91 year-old abbott of Kannon Do, a Soto Zen community in Mountain View that I’ve attended for the better part of a decade. (Older members have told me that Steve Jobs used to visit a previous location — Palo Alto, I think.)
Known simply as the “Teacher”, Kaye wrote in his successful 1997 book titled Zen at Work that Zen isn’t a mere exercise that can be separated from “real life”. As Misha Merrill puts it in her introduction:
“…Zen is to be found and practiced in our everyday work and activities. Making coffee, brushing our teeth, driving the freeway…”
I hadn’t seen Les for a few years. He’s a little more than a decade my senior and, after catching up on the usual topics (health, families, his succession at Kannon Do) the conversation came back to his past: Three decades at IBM and more than three decades in Zen practice. I asked the benevolent Teacher if he had ideas on what caused Big Blue — once known simply as “The Company” — to lose its leadership position, to become the also-ran organization that we know today.
The Teacher’s answer wasn’t so benevolent, delivered in a strong tone: Human Resources was the culprit. I had to make sure I heard right: Yes, HR caused IBM’s failure, not the company’s mishandling of the big changes that were brought by the minicomputer and then (after initially “getting it”) the personal computer. Asking for examples, I heard stories that sounded exactly like what I hear today when Valley friends tell me tales of woe at work. HR meddles, slows things down, can’t hire, can’t fire, makes life complicated instead of taking a load off the shoulders they’re supposed to support.
Years after my own managerial and entrepreneurial adventures, this still resonates. And I was was struck by the vehemence in the Teacher’s voice when recounting his decades-old struggles.
Rolling back the tape, we can see a mixture of unease and euphemisms. “Human Resources” used to be called “Personnel”, a department that performed a valuable, if mostly paperwork, function — payroll, benefits, employee grievances…
Personnel later acquired a more ambitious and well-meaning label: Human Resources. “People are the enterprise’s most vital resource” became the new motto. (More vital than cash? Asks the repented entrepreneur.) Rightly ennobled, HR lost its Personnel green eyeshades and braces, gained power and a place at the Executive Staff table.
Further on down the road to euphemistic perdition, some right-thinking companies have rechristened the department as, simply, “People”, leading to bizarre sounding titles such as VP of People (versus VP of Machines?). For this Monday Note, I’ll stick with the HR moniker.
As a support organization, HR’s function is irreproachable. Managers who are under constant pressure to deliver are relieved of time-consuming operations such as recruitment, training, organizing performance reviews, ensuring consistency in grading and compensation… Who could be against any of that?
Unfortunately, in many companies HR goes beyond its support function, it interferes and complicates simple processes, slowing everything down and causing frustration. And, too often, HR can’t resist playing politics. I don’t know of any organization where people rave that they love HR, they’re so wonderful, so helpful.
The problem is Human Nature. Give someone power and they’ll use it, expand it. And it’s not just HR itself that’s to blame. One hears of managers who have allowed themselves to be seduced into abdication, to HR, of basic leadership responsibilities such as hiring, firing, and performance review verdicts. The gentle surrendering of emotionally difficult decisions to a group that’s devoid of actual responsibility encourages cynicism in the ranks. As HR happily flexes its imprudently granted muscle, company “leaders” lose the respect of their charges and we end up with a general frustration with both HR and management — a frustration still felt by Les Kaye and yours truly remembering HR in the eighties and nineties.
You may be tempted to declare the whole thing hopeless, decide to game the system rather than fight to change it, and get badly burned as a result. As with all functions that are guided by human nature, HR is a mystery, even to itself. There’s no “key”, no “secret”. If there were a secret, there would be hope: After enough time, effort, and unsuccessful attempts to pick the lock, you’re rewarded with a satisfying click, to the door opening. No such thing with a mystery, there is no magical incantation. No name change from HR to People will solve the inevitable abuse-of-power problem.
Although HR issues are long in my past, I still take the issue personally. You may call me a naif, but I feel there are partial possibilities that don’t mimic the sure-fire but obdurately ignored Weight Loss solution: Simply eat less and exercise more for the rest of your life.
I’m referring to leadership, to people who are a) aware of human nature’s inevitable inclinations, b) willing to deal with those impulses, and c) willing to train themselves and their teams. It’s a tall order, one that tends to only yield imperfect answers. But if we take the time to look around, we’ll see organizations with varying degrees of spiritual health, a few places where leaders are respected, where managers are encouraged to take HR matters in their own hands. That’s the somewhat optimistic theory, the only possibility of hope.
I confess that I occasionally suggest gaming the system when the stories I hear lead me to think the organization is hopeless, led by execs who skillfully (they think) give lip service to the importance of their “most important assets” while performing the required Wall Street Shareholder Value dance. Cynicism begets cynicism, especially when walking out isn’t possible.
[Next week, we'll think of Steve Jobs who left us October 11th 2011]
— JLG@mondaynote.com
