Managing HR in the Releasing Energy World of Requisite Organization

Speaker A Let me touch a bit on kind of the steps we went through in our requisite transition. Certainly as I mentioned the early part, the assessment of kind of the current environment was largely supported by external consultants that brought with them the capability and the understanding of Requisite to be able to do a rapid diagnostic and triage on current organization. Their recommendations led to what was viewed to be an optimal structure requisite based. And it was from that point that the business leader myself as the head of HR and that leadership team took on the responsibility of implementing the Requisite principles to create a now requisitely aligned organization. So where we went with that is certainly the staffing of looking at a skeleton organization structure without overlap and compression and then mapping capability of individuals to that structure. The goal was not to downsize and was not to have wholesale change of resources but it was designed to make sure that we had the right people at the right level doing the right work. And there were individuals that we did assess based on past performance and future potential as not being able to step into the new role. So there was impact and change there. There was also in one situation, because of compression at level two and level three, we took out a two plus role and in the process made a one plus role, a true Stratum two people manager role that became very liberating or exciting for those individuals that were in the role. We also bumped up a two plus role into a true Stratum three role and that in turn also created a lot of clarity and a lot of challenge for the individuals involved. So the staffing side was a process that was not without its challenges. But the end result is we got the right people with the right capability doing work at the right levels. What did my world look like in a post requisite.org environment where I was now operating at a true level four level or Stratum? There was still the accountability for operational delivery, albeit that was delegated to my team. And while I was still ultimately accountable, I was not getting buried in doing the detail of that. Where I was focusing my time was on developing the talent within the organization. And that was if you take a step back and you look at the fundamental principles of requisite organization. And one colleague of mine who I would put in the camp of being an early adapter and an advocate described it as saying, requisite creates the operating principles and boundaries for which individuals have complete freedom to operate within that. And defining those boundaries are at each of the stratum levels. And so you would have a set of operating principles for Stratum two, for Stratum three and for the leadership team at stratum four. That was hugely liberating to understand that within these boundaries I've got full and complete discretion for me from an HR point of view. What I could then do is use those principles to say, okay, if we're going to develop the talent in these stratums, we can use those principles to understand who is operating either above expectation on expectation or below expectation within any one of those stratums. And then more importantly, looking at developing up and coming talent of who's got the capability of moving into those stratums. So one of the biggest areas that Requisite allowed me to provide what I think is significant value to the organization is putting in place the intellectual framework as well as the operational assessment capability for talent management and advancing and developing talent within that Requisite structure. From a compensation point of view, we were not in a position to really implement all aspects of Requisite compensation strategy largely because we were a division operating within a larger financial framework and that was set for US. Talent management, certainly in terms of assessing current capability. And those individuals that were capable of moving up was a big part of the role. The last one, which I think is quite significant in terms of providing tangible results out of a Requisite structure, was around getting clarity around two significant roles. One was the Stratum Two people manager role and what that entailed in terms of being accountable for the output of the group that they were responsible for. And we coined a phrase of releasing the energy where the People manager's main functional accountability was to be able to release the energy of that team that they were responsible for. And whether that was at Stratum Two or Stratum Three or Stratum Four, it applied all within that same framework. The people manager was responsible for getting the best out of that team. That was a huge breakthrough in terms of people understanding their accountability in terms of managing talent. The other significant area was around at the Stratum Three. The directors, our terminology would have been directors. Different organizations will have different terms, but we were individual contributor, manager, director, Executive. At the Stratum Four, the focus of the director was to translate longer term strategy, so your two to five year strategy from Stratum Four into operational execution, where the Stratum Two was the operational execution one year and less. So it was that buffer between one and two years. The Director role main contribution in the organization was taking that longer term strategy and saying how do we make that operate at the shorter term? And that again was a hugely liberating and insightful piece of work to have the Stratum well, have the Stratum Three s understand that. But actually it's all three levels. It's the Strandum Four understanding what they contribute to the three, and it's the three understanding what they contribute to the two. So the three levels work in symphony, if you wish. So that was a great learning. How do you link Requisite.org into David Ulrich's talk on strategic HR and I think there is a very clear linkage between the two. We're all being asked to be more strategic. Thought leaders make greater contribution at that strategic level. I think Requisite Organization provides the wherewithal to actually be able to turn that into reality. It allows through the principles of Requisite Organization to focus on senior leadership, team, ensuring sponsorship, understanding and alignment with the principles by creating the organization structure with clear delineation of accountability vertically within the organization. By stratum and in and out of scope functional accountabilities horizontally in the organization, you create a framework which you can now operate in. What you're operating in is in terms of absolute role clarity, absolute trust on that, the person that is accountable for delivering what's in their scope, that they will deliver it, and the shared responsibility of collateral and cross boundary relationships. So that if it's not within your accountability, it is in someone else's accountability. And lastly, this is all about people. And if it's about people, it's about talent and it's about capability. Requisite Organization provides the objective measures to be able to assess capability in current role or in future roles. So when you talk about Ulrich's strategy, requisite Organization provides the wherewithal to be able to actually execute that strategy.