RBL Institute member companies will each send their top HR person to discuss current challenges and share best practices.

As we begin to see light at the end of the recession tunnel, we see many wondering what lessons we have learned as we go forward.  Clearly, we live in changing social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic times.  And, the global village has permeated nearly every facet of our professional and personal lives.  As we look forward, we need to learn the lessons of the past and apply them to new requirements.  Please join your fellow Chief HR Officers from some of the best companies in the world in an engaging open forum to share what’s working as well as envisioning new ways to accelerate progress.

We realize that time is among the scarcest resource for any CHRO.  We also know that top CHROs want ideas that will have impact.  We have created the CHRO forum to maximize your time and give you ideas with impact. 

THE CHALLENGE: SESSION OVERVIEW

Leadership: Developing individual leaders matters and building leadership capability matters even more.  In this two-day “think tank” we will respond to three questions that will improve each participant’s ability to build stronger leaders and better leadership capability:

1. Why does leadership matter?  We will discuss our latest round of studies about how investors consider quality of leadership as a factor in investment choices.  We have completed a survey of several hundred investors and have led focus groups all over the world with different kinds of investors.  We will ask participants to understand their company from an investor perspective and to build a strong case for investment for their company.

2. What is good leadership?  We will review RBL’s six steps for building a leadership brand and then show the differences between how the top companies compare to everyone else in each step.  We will use regional and global examples of top companies (based on the 2011 Top Companies for Leaders study conducted in partnership with RBL, Aon Hewitt, and Fortune.)

3. How do leaders ensure sustainability?  Leaders are able to make things stick when they follow seven proven principles - simplicity, timeliness, accountability, resources, tracking, meliorate, and emotion.  We will review ideas from our to be published book on leadership sustainability.

The purpose of this workshop is to generate new and fresh ideas for these leadership concepts.  As faculty we will both present our latest thinking and facilitate discussion among participants.

SESSION OUTCOMES

Participants will leave this “think tank” with the ability to better develop leaders and leadership within their company.  This session will help each participant understand leadership issues both from an outside-in (investor) perspective, from a systems perspective, and from an individual leader development perspective.

As in all RBL Institute Think Tanks, we envision an open discussion more than prescribed solutions where we co-create and learn together.

SESSION OVERVIEW

We realize that time is among the scarcest resource for any CHRO.  We also know that top CHROs want ideas that will have impact.  We have created the Annual CHRO Forum to maximize your time and give you ideas with impact.  The agenda for this two-day “Think Tank” will be determined by the CHROs in attendance at the outset of the session based upon group consensus.  Once the top agenda items are determined by the group we will take a deep dive into each area through open discussion.

RBL Institute member companies will each send their top HR person to discuss current challenges and share best practices.  Please join your fellow Chief HR Officers from some of the best companies in the world in an engaging open forum to share what’s working as well as envisioning new ways to accelerate progress.

On June 26 from 10:00am to 11:00am (New York time) will we hold a mini-forum call on “Practices of Top Companies for Leaders.”  The Top Companies for Leaders study is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of talent management and leadership practices around the globe.  The first results, published in 2002, showed a link between financial success and great leadership practices; several “truths” or disciplines characterized Top Companies. The study was conducted again in 2003, 2005, and 2007, and this research provided the foundation for our more comprehensive 2009 global study.  This year, 470 companies participated, each completing a detailed questionnaire.  From those submissions, finalists were identified and hundreds of interviews were conducted with senior executives.  From our research we are able to compare the talent management practices of the best companies around the globe on literally hundreds of data points.  In our analysis, we found the gaps between the Top Companies and all others are often quite dramatic.

We know a lot about what goes on inside great companies when it comes to leadership and talent.

We know Top Companies significantly outperform companies in their industries.  We know their practices and programs have a clear business purpose.  They are not particularly sophisticated or elegant nor are they put in place just because they are a “best practice.”  Top Companies use simple ideas, and then execute them well.

Their leaders fundamentally believe talent is key to sustained business results, and they model the behavior they expect of others.  Top Companies are very focused around defining leadership and high-potential, critical talent; what is expected of them; and how they accelerate the development of that talent. They use leadership as a strategic lever.  As they alter strategic direction or priorities, they aggressively change expectationsfor leaders and develop needed skills and capabilities.  We know how they use talent and leadership to grow in emerging markets.  They use strong metrics to guide what they do and how they do it, and to better understand risk and vulnerabilities.

We know a lot about Top Companies for Leaders.  The question is: How do they get there? 

QUESTIONS FOR THIS CALL

In this call, we will discuss a couple of key questions.  Participants should be prepared to discuss the following set of questions:

1. What do you think matters most in developing leaders at your company?  What is the single most important ‘thing’ or intervention that makes the difference?

2. If you were advising another company to build or create what you have or what Top Companies have, where would you advise them to start?

3. What is your most important learning from your work in developing talent/leaders?

PARTICIPANTS:

Each RBL Institute member company is allowed to register ONE person to participate in this call.  Ideal participants include: senior HR leaders, HR functional experts, and Leadership and Talent directors.  The participant should come prepared to share their point of view on the questions.

The Challenge

Better information and analytics drive faster and better business decisions. In functions like finance and supply chain, that’s old news. In many organizations today, enormous energy is going into marketing and customer analytics. HR has not traditionally been viewed or managed as an “analytical” function, but that’s changing fast as available data, technological tools, and appreciation for the power of analytics all advance. We see enormous opportunity and innovation in applying analytics to HR. Also growing pressure – to maintain talent supply in the face of demographic imbalances and skills shortages, HR has got to use all the tools at its disposal, including more advanced analytics. In this two-day “Think Tank” session we will address six questions that will improve participants’ ability to put analytics to work.

Session Overview

1. What are the key challenges in measuring and improving HR performance? We will discuss trends and challenges in measurement and decision making around both the operational and business effectiveness of HR. What business decisions might benefit most from better descriptive or predictive analytics?

2. What roles can analytics play in meeting those challenges? We will outline the technical and behavioral sides of analytics, the range of analytical applications, the relationship between analytics and business experimentation, and frameworks for how analytical capabilities advance.

3. How can we use analytics to improve the operational performance of HR? Analytics are at work today in a variety of HR’s operational processes and throughout the employment lifecycle. We will explore a variety of examples with emphasis on where the payback lies and how to get analytics into the hands of line managers as well as HR professionals.

4. How can we use analytics to improve the business effectiveness of HR? Analytics can help us understand the connections between HR outputs and business performance, as well as drive more informed decisions regarding HR strategy and investment. We will explore examples.

5. What are the success factors and pitfalls in using analytics? We will discuss the pragmatics of what it takes to succeed with analytics initiatives, what problems to anticipate, and how to build analytical orientation and competence over time. What strengths can you leverage – and what weaknesses must you overcome – to put analytics to work?

6. How can HR build analytical culture and commitment across the organization? Any business unit or function can set a good example of using analytics to improve decision making. HR can also play a special role by recruiting for analytical capability and by building the expectation for fact-based decisions into to the organization’s performance management system.

Session Outcomes

The purpose of this Think Tank session is to share experiences and generate fresh ideas around these six questions. Exploration of the questions will be supplemented by pragmatic exercises and a panel discussion among experienced practitioners. Participants will develop a clearer perspective on the landscape of analytics in HR and be better able to find opportunities and follow through on the best ones. HR professionals can improve their own decisions through analytics, and they can help drive analytical orientation across the enterprise. As in all RBL Institute Think Tanks, we anticipate a highly interactive discussion where we learn and create together.