Human resources

Next time you need to win over the CEO try a logical approach

Not too long ago, Sainsbury’s announced that its customer service director was adding HR to her brief. It’s cheering to see HR so centrally and crucially positioned. The company clearly recognises the fundamental truth that its sole source of competitive advantage is its people.

However, the appointment begs the question of when we’ll see a scissor movement, with HR directors acquiring responsibility for customer service?

In many organisations, HR professionals still don’t have a place in the boardroom, which would be a pre-condition for being given such a responsibility. They’re still out in the corridor.

I’m a great believer of the meaning of communication is the response you get, not the one you intended to get. All communication has to have clarity of purpose, there is no point communicating just for the sake of it. As the sender, what do I want the receiver to do? Know? Think or feel? If i don’t achieve my purpose that’s failed communication.

I have to analyse why and try something different next time. As in tennis, i need to play a variety of shots to win the match. For example, ethos, pathos and logos. Not the three musketeers, but the Aristotelian means of persuasion, respectively through the force of character, arousal of emotion and logic. To communicate effectively, one has to know one’s default strengths, then recognise the other potential weapons within one’s armoury. One also needs to know one’s different audiences, and what strategy works with which, or whom.

I remember once trying to convince my CFO of the value of L&D, using emotional arguments (increased motivation, stronger employer brand), only to find my rhetoric falling on deaf ears.

Success only came when I switched pathos for logos, and used rational reasoning: a development programme costing “x” generated “y” in increased sales or “z” in efficiency savings.

The most effective influencers persuade you of the benefits of what they’re recommending to you. If the CFO thinks HR only has its own interests at heart, rather than their own, or those of the company, why should they be influenced? It’s a fundamental rule of marketing to sell the benefits of a product, not its features: the “so what” rather than the “what” , we need to do likewise, making the explicit, causal connection for our internal clients between what we’re proposing and what it will deliver for them.

That’s why I’m a great fan of “quick wins” focusing on a few carefully selected activities, and proving their benefit before moving on. The best way to eat an elephant is bite by bite, especially if you’ve a mammoth to digest.

This does not mean a piecemeal approach to HR but rather a systematic, flexible one, strengthening the potential for longer term success.

I think it was Confucius – it usually is – who said “before we can rectify society we must rectify language”. And certainly our impact will be largely down to the language we use. We must make the potentially “fluffy” tangible and concrete, using the language of business, not the jargon of HR. So maybe talk about “price to book ratios” and “profit margin” rather than “learning organisations” and “social capital”.