At the recent SHRM Global HR conference, W. Chan Kim spoke as a keynote. He is the co-author of The Blue Ocean Strategy . This is an interesting book that I read a few years ago. Its subtitle was very interesting to me, too, How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. That will be fodder for another blog some day.

I’d like to share my take-away from Chan Kim’s speech. He talked about innovation and doing things differently. It is what he said about HR and this strategy that I found gripping. The number one thing that HR can do for the strategy of the company is to create an environment in which the workforce can innovate and stimulate innovation. He repeated it several times, and it really struck me as the best advice I can give our customers. If Human Resources or Human Capital departments would design themselves around the mission that everything they do must enhance the workforce, its intellectual environment, and its tools to foster innovation, HR would be at every strategic discussion in the company.

As a CEO I get to help influence and foster innovation throughout the organization. My team is incredibly innovative, continually inventing new solutions and new software categories to solve customer problems. I see clients who have truly innovative organizations, and they are more spirited and energetic than organizations that do not thrive on innovation. In the press, Dot.com organizations get all kinds of buzz about their lively and engaged workforce. But, if you want to experience an innovative, engaged, and lively workforce, have lunch in the corporate cafeteria at Lilly in Indianapolis. When I was there, it felt like you were having a meal before going into a rock concert. The conversations were animated, the energy level was contagious, people were greeting each other and waving to one another from across the room (and it’s a big room). It felt great. Lilly is a VERY innovative organization. We have medicines and medical treatments in this world that we can thank them for everyday. They have an environment that fosters innovation in all areas of the organization, not just the research and development departments.

If HR knocked down barriers to innovation so that employees could do the best for the company at every turn, HR would be heroes. Outsource the transactional stuff, if you can, and get your hands dirty in the creation of value through innovation. There are a lot of rewards in that, both personally and for the organization. It means that HR needs to be seen as innovative, too. It may take a lot of innovation to find the barriers to innovation in your organization and then knock them down. Changing the industry name from HR to Human Capital Management is the shift towards the spotlight on employee value, as capital for the organization. Only people can innovate. So it is your job to foster, development and encourage those people to bring innovation to fruition in your organization.

There are MANY books on innovation, some better then others. I often find innovation inspiration in the least likely materials. However, if you want to look into the more current thoughts and ideas about innovation here is a decent book list for you to explore:

• Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
• The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
• Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Companies to Fail

I have lots of gadgets. I get a lot of them because my husband figures them out or likes them and they become a part of our lives. He picks out good gadgets for me. The DVR and my iPods (I have more then one now) have been my favorite. I have a new one on the favorites list. For Christmas I received the Amazon Kindle. This is the electronic book by Amazon. It is FANTASTIC!

I know there have been other electronic books, some of them more successful then others. I think this one is going to go crazy in the market place. Here is why:

• It has the dimensions of a small note pad.
• It is light enough to carry in a briefcase or good sized purse.
• It is easy to read and you can adjust the font if you need it bigger.
• You can load over 200 books on to it without expanding the memory, and if you add an SD card you can jack that up to around 800 books.
• You can download books wirelessly from Amazon when you are anywhere. (It hooks up to your Amazon account automatically.)
• There are currently over 80,000 books available for download – as well as magazine and newspaper subscriptions. (That number appears to grow every day).
• It has a real “cool” factor. Every flight attendant and many fellow airplane travelers have asked about it and studied it during my travels.
• It downloads books in seconds.
• It allows me to have more then one book in progress, without carrying all that weight on a trip.
• The prices of the books are great – most around $10.00 even for current best sellers because you are not paying for shipping and paper/printing, etc.
• It’s “green.” You are saving trees by reading an electronic rather than a paper version – especially newspapers, but I have not used it for that yet.

Things I don’t like about it:

• You can turn the page accidentally if you don’t find a good way to hold the book. (You turn the page by pressing the paddles on the side.)
• A few of the books I want are not yet in the Kindle format.
• It doesn’t have a backlight so you still need the bedroom light or airplane light on to read. They missed an opportunity here – maybe future versions. But I think they did this to keep it light and keep the wonderfully long battery life.
• I won’t share my books that are on my Kindle.

If you like to read, if you travel and get tired of hauling too many books, and your tastes are not too esoteric – then I highly encourage you to get the Amazon Kindle.

When I traveled in Australia most people said Amazon was not as a big a deal as it is in the states. However, they were certain that if Kindle took off people would shift to Amazon because books there are so expensive to import, etc. They believed the electronic delivery would be a perfect way for them to buy books. So, there you have it. Amazon – a better way to go global…straight from your potential customers. (At the date of this writing it is not available for downloading books outside of North America).

It’s a great gadget. I know it will get even better. I will read more books and my bedside table won’t be stacked beyond my alarm clock with books in the queue to read…they will always be with me.

Hate writing job descriptions for a new position? I’d like to share a few tips that should make your entire team happy. When you know you can hire a new person, or as you build a case for hiring a new person, check out the team that will be working with that person. Talk to them about what they do best and what they have to do that zaps their energy. Then create the new position that includes some of those energy zappers, freeing your star performers, and hire someone who loves to do those things. (It takes all kinds, remember.)

Great sources to help you articulate these processes include Marcus Buckingham’s Now Discover Your Strengths and Dan Sullivan’s “Unique Ability,” written by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller. It doesn’t matter where you are in the org chart, there are some things that, if you could delegate them, someone else would love to do them. If you enjoy it – you’ll do a better job. Everyone wins.

This produces a team that really gels, and realizes the value of every member and what they bring to the organization. They will support each other. This process also works in leadership development but that’s a topic for another day.

This method of job description or task development also helps with recruiting and employee retention. If you really know exactly what a person will need to do in their job, it’s easier to qualify a candidate and find the best match. The best match for the job will stay longer, too.

At the fantastic conference “Forbes Executive Women’s Forum,” Deloitte’s Chairman and CEO, Sharon Allen, discussed the firm’s ability to let people “Dial Back” on their current work schedule without destroying their career. This allows employees to cut their hours, possibly to even a project based arrangement, and then, when they are ready, come back swinging without the stigma of taking time off.

This benefits employees because they can pursue other needs or interests (a little more about this later). And it benefits Deloitte because the organization keeps talented people from leaving permanently – less brain drain, fewer recruiting fees, and the practice attracts the best and brightest of balanced people.

I’d even go so far as to say it benefits society. Employees may need to “dial back” for a number of reasons: maybe to personally raise your children as preschoolers and avoid becoming a stranger to them; (happier family, good for society). On a personal note, my husband, sister, and I took very active roles in helping my Mom and my mother-in-law in their final years of battling cancer. All of us benefited from the extra time and love shared.

You might want to take the time to pursue a mission sabbatical. Former Microsoft Employee, John Wood, took a sabbatical that led to “Room to Read” (www.Roomtoread.org) one of the most outstanding non-medical outreaches I have ever encountered. One of our customers, Eli Lilly, has seen employees take sabbaticals to 3rd world countries to provide medical care. I am sure the adrenalin rush from those trips brought new fervor and ideas back to Indianapolis.

On the same panel as Ms Allen was Margaret Robertson from Withers/Withers Bergman, an impressive law firm that allows career professionals to restructure their jobs for more flexible time. They were about to lose a talented man with highly sought after expertise because the demand of his current job did not allow him to maintain a practice schedule as a concert classical musician. A close-minded manager would have challenged his dedication to the firm. An enlightened manager asked him to take advantage of the firm’s flex time policies. The employee said he thought that was only for “new moms.” He still works for the law firm – and continues to play concerts.

Something to think about.

Think for a minute about your company’s hierarchy. When you look at the very successful relationships of who reports to whom, you’ll likely find something that appears commonsense after you identify it – but not highly pondered when an organization builds its structure. Successful relationships between managers and their teams can be tied to the similarity in the timeline scope of their goals and objectives.

The question to ask is: what is the thought horizon, or goal horizon, for each manager and team member? In other words, if the boss’ objectives, goals, even compensation, are tied to events and plans that take a year to achieve, can they effectively relate and manage people whose objective is that their goals be met by the end of the day? For example, should the bank branch manager manage the teller whose primary measurement is a balanced till at closing time?

This logic is beautifully structured by groups following a practice typically called the Requisite Organization (RO), defined and developed by the late Elliott Jacque. Organizations like Rio Tinto, Ford, Novus, the U.S. Army, and many others, use this and other methodologies supporting the Requisite Organization, as well as the Stratified Systems Theory.

The RO system provides a framework and details for refining your corporate structure to maximize efficiency. The Global Organization Design Society is an association dedicated to bringing RO to companies. The GO conference draws members from all four corners of the earth to share ideas and exchange benchmark data on their success. Some organizations dive into the practice to the letter of the theory, while others adopt or adapt many of the best practices.

Wikipedia contains a concise definition of the Requisite Organization theory. Elliott Jacque has written a number of books, as have the Society members, to help you on this quest.