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[Music] hi there I'm Joe pardevila from Advantage Forbes books The Specialist pipeline book is written for both specialist managers of Specialists and the human resource function who's often the driving implementation of the specialist pipeline concept within their organization in this interview I've invited Ken jonasen author of The Specialist pipeline book and CEO of leadership pipeline Institute to put some more words on how this book can support the HR function in their work Kent Jonas and welcome back to the show thank you thank you okay let's get into Human Resources who get you know for some reason get a bad rap these days you know I feel like human resources they they've become such an important part of a company especially since the pandemic and you've seen them rise for many many years HR was it was a butt of many jokes you know on the TV show The Office the H the HR officer was the foil company but because the pandemic we've seen how important HR is to the culture and a company correct that's for sure and and uh and I mean also they do a lot to to Rebrand themselves uh I don't know if if they change the world much but now it's people experience officer and so on so you know you can change this human resource into many different things yeah but I think there are different rules that different roles in human resources and and some of them just uh play a role where it's normally not good things that they deal with not due to them but due to whatever is in the company yeah but yeah sometimes that dominates the conversation about human resource I think it's not fair in my opinion anyway no absolutely and obviously with you know four mentioned pandemic you saw how they were able to rise to the occasion and were able to help the transition for people to work from home and continue the culture of the company so let's talk about how that ties into the book how does a Human Resources officer what can they take away from reading the specialist pipeline book yeah I think what what it really gives them uh to a large extent first of all yeah the fundamental understanding of how can I how can I start structuring especially this pipeline the same way that they have done with the people manager pipeline for the past 10 or 20 years so that that's the first thing that they can get out of this the second thing is we have tried to be a bit specific in a couple of chapters about implementation strategies implementation practices what are the typical pitfalls and so on so I think one thing is hey we would like to have this okay that's great but what you also get by reading the book is some kind of a guideline on the how to avoid the worst pitfalls and how to get started effectively in the organization with this all right so let's dig into that the implementation strategy how does the book uh deal with that so when you look at the implementation here that there are normally there are certain things that can stand in the way from an effective implementation uh and you know one of the things is history we already have a title structure we realize that it it actually now stands in the way from what we have how can you bridge these two things because if you start having them competing and fighting against each other then you're not going to be successful in implementation another thing is yeah but could we tie the structure to our job grading system whatever job grading system you you well you know what job creating systems are great and they can be used for compensation benchmarks and so on but maybe you don't want to intervene in in job grades versus special this Pipeline and so on so some of these basic things how can you avoid making these basic mistakes that we have seen many places they'll get some guidance to that in the book that's the negative side and there's also the positive side how do you build a business case around actually doing these things right and well let's go into that give me give me some of those examples how to build that yeah well you know it's uh most people we have experience who have read some of uh either the book or some of the chapters of the book I must say the immediate reaction is we need this okay good start but the next step is then but how do we convince the organization that we should do it and then it comes down to the business case part and you know as human resource function just like other all other functions we have to build our business case what could it be as an example we have a fearful fight for a specialist uh we're not able to attract we lose too many Etc instead of put some money on that what does it cost to hire what does it cost to lose what does it cost to do this implementation okay another thing is we want to break down our hierarchies in the organization that could be a more transformational agenda how can you tap into that transformational agenda well you can do that with this because if you enable the specialist to operate on their own then you can cut out layers of the organization you don't want decisions to walk up or down up or back you don't want that you want decisions to be made down here but then you have to enable people at that level to operate it effectively there if you just say now you can make the decisions they're not trained to operate themselves that train to operate through the managers so you have to change that part so this is another example on on so there are different things that you can tap into the organization getting the business case in place for doing this uh and you know HR finally has to see the table for a lot of companies for many many years HR was always in the background now they've got to see the table where they're involved in this decision making processes at companies if an HR Manager were to get a copy of this book how would they be able to sell the concepts of the specialist pipeline to the other leaders because now they finally have a seat for years they've been finding it that seat now they've got that seat but what can they tell their uh super other people on their senior leadership c-suite folks the importance of this yeah the funny thing is we've actually experienced that for HR it's easier to sell in the specialist pipeline thinking than the leadership pipeline really well the thing is when you come in with the leadership pipeline who makes the decision of this lead us but when you come in with the leadership pipeline then leaders start reading and say huh am I sure that I can actually live up to these expectations am I comfortable with this am I able to let go of that and am I able to change whereas when it's just a specialist oh yeah of course they should do this and they should change and so on so sometimes it's actually easier because that's the other people whereas leaders oh boy that's myself too so it has been easier but having said that even if it's easy I would advise ETA don't pick the easy straw take the hard way and build the business case find this strategic agenda that you can tap into the in your organization find that agenda because that's what's going to make it last whereas the the cheap straw the easiest role that's gonna get you going but then six months nine months 12 months later you can often hear this thing but haven't we done this now and I know you don't do this in six months time this is a cultural change in the organization but then they lose interest whereas if it's tied into a real business challenge then they never lose interest and and back to your point about HR getting to the table those HR people who get to the table are those who operate with business cases are those who separates our function into the business strategy whereas those HR folks who are still left a little out are often those who can step into this business context so actually either way it's an easy sell quite often uh easy strong but I'd rather go the hard way and get this business case in place and why do you think that that is the hard way why do you think the business case is the hard way well you know sometimes if you could if you could just go in and get a budget and then get started on on things one year why not do it and and you can you can actually get that here because you have this specialist and everybody knows that the Specialists have been alienated over the past 10 20 years all the focus has been on the people managers in most companies by far so it's an easy win but you get the budget one year you may not get it the second and the third and the fourth year that requires that you have to get in say hey let's build a business case but the business case the challenges with a business case then you're also going to be measured Are you delivering success now and that's why I say it's just more challenging hey it's great it's cool and it who wouldn't want to do that well I have met a lot of people who don't want to be measured too much I should say I think that would be cool if you can deliver success you can deliver success with this a big medium but you can deliver success with this I'm sure but it is smaller it's more dangerous when all of a sudden people are going to hold you accountable for this I can give an example yeah so we do this specialist transition programs and then you can do impact measurements we do have clients who say no thank you because we said but but look that's cool because then you can measure the impact yeah but what if it's not good I said yeah okay that's fair enough then then you fire us again first of all so it's not good for us either but if you look at our history in other companies it works but still it's a little dangerous because you know then I have numbers and and here we are talking HR uh I have a good calling in another company he provides a system that measures strategy implementation success but shouldn't they want to measure the challenges if they got the number then they have to show to the board then it's maybe better not to have the number so you know so the hard way is create a business case say this is where we're going to be in 6 12 18 36 months this is how we're going to measure success that's the harder way I'm just saying it's also the most sustainable way in an organization um yeah but of course you can test it out you could take one function as an HR you take one function and say let's let's do a trial in here in a safe environment yeah and before you spread it out that's fair enough but at the end of the day I think it's a good idea to to build this business case and it's not too hard I never thought the word dangerous would come up in our conversations here right it happens oh it's a dangerous book the book is the specialist pipeline here's Kent Johnson Ken thank you very much thank you [Music]