Steps in the Career of a Vice-President in the Area of Human Resources

Speaker A Charlote bygrave like to take a couple of minutes to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm currently an independent consultant in the Toronto area. I work with a number of clients in the area of organization design and management. And before stepping out on my own, I was a human resource professional in a variety of industries. And one of the most interesting was of course the pharmaceutical industry. I met Elliot and the whole Requisite organization approach sometime in the early ninety s. The pharmaceutical firm that I was with, or the pharmaceutical industry at that time, was going through unprecedented change. Customers were becoming more demanding, for example, competition was stiffer, et cetera. And I can remember the senior management of the company talking about the changes they wanted to see taking place in the organization. And as I sat back and I listened, I thought, boy, here's an opportunity for HR to do something powerful and strategic. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew that that opportunity was there. And so I kind of went on a bit of a search. I was looking for some approaches and some solutions and serendipitously I bumped into know I attended a one day seminar that he was conducting in Toronto and I'd actually heard about it from a colleague. She sent me a fax and at the bottom of the fax it said worthwhile way for a senior HR person to spend the day. And boy was she right, because so much that he had to say, even in that one day overview of the Requisite approach, just really resonated with me. It's almost as if he had been a fly on the wall in many of the meetings I had attended and he had somehow gotten inside of my head and knew what issues I was struggling with and the type of solutions that I was looking for. So I wanted to learn more. The one day didn't tell me enough. And that summer I spent a lot of time reading his books. Not the easiest reads, but I read the books, attended some workshops and conferences, and learned enough about the system and the approach that I was prepared to talk to my manager, the president of the company, about this approach and how I thought it might be able to help us. And Don and I had not too many conversations before he quickly let's, let's look into this a little further. I was really drawn to as I learned more and more about the theory and the concepts. As I said, it resonated with me. I was really drawn to it. It seemed logical, it was comprehensive, it made sense to me, it gave me a perspective on the organization that perhaps I really struggled to gain previously and can sense that I did. But here it was kind of all in front of me an approach that allowed you to look at your organization in three dimensions or four dimensions it was like a hologram and you could see the organization or I could see the organization differently from certain dimensions and where those dimensions intersected because it was a complete theory. It talked about not only structure and human capability and managerial leadership practices, but everything was there. As I worked through the workshops, I literally started to apply the theory to some of the issues that I had experienced in various organizations. And again, it was the logic of it. It was the fact that it was coherent and comprehensive and that's what really drew my attention or drew me to. I think that the reason that I was so drawn to the theory is it wasn't just about logic in the business world. Here was an approach that was based on some very sound human values. It was an approach intended to build trust in an organization to reduce the paranoia that can exist. And I think for that reason I was able to work with different aspects of the theory comfortably. There wasn't any particular part of it that I looked at and thought doesn't jive with my experience or doesn't resonate well with me. I had some concerns in terms of actually implementing it. How well? Because here we're talking a brand new theory and lots of new language and definitions and that might be a bit of a barrier in implementing with others. I didn't find it that it stifled in any way my understanding or my acceptance of the theory. The core values, I mean, I think other systems have core values, but they're different from the core values of this system. This system talks about trust, okay? Building trust in an organization, very simply, just about everything you do needs to be put through this little filter called the trust filter. And you ask yourself if what you're doing is going to build trust in the organization or is it going to destroy trust? So this system is really built on that critical value of creating trust inducing organization. Trust of course, requires a lot of clarity and it requires a lot of transparency. And this system provides that people, for example, with performance appraisal, with compensation, you can become real clear on what the organization's values are in that area and how you're going to be treated or impacted by these programs. So values is, I think, a big piece of it and where the organization's values are consonant with not just the values that we espouse, but the values in action are consonant with this approach. It's a lot easier to see it be accepted and implemented. I left Roche about ten years ago, probably about the age of 55, and since that time I have been managing my own practice as an independent consultant when I'm working with presidents and senior teams. Most of those teams are prepared to implement most of the Ro approach. Compensation is a little more difficult and requires a bit of a different approach in addition to working with the senior team in implementing Requisite organization, I also spend a lot of my time working with HR senior HR people. Those initiatives tend to be educational. Spend a lot of time looking at Requisite organization and how it might apply to their organizations.