Continuing on the thoughts from
an earlier post, HR is not the only group that will change dramatically due to the influences of this recession and the causes of it. The company as an entity will itself change.
As the
Washington Post pointed out, “Since roughly the mid-1980s, the American public corporation has been run primarily for the purpose of creating vast wealth for its senior executives.”
This is a fundamental problem that led ultimately to the situation we’re in today. Focusing on shareholder (short-term) goals has led to bad decisions with terrible long-term impacts. When only the shareholder is considered to be a worthy stakeholder, then the promise of the capitalist market is lost.
In the same vein, Harvard Business School recently published a Q&A with the authors of
High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage. Key observations in the interview include:
I am looking forward to this change. We already work with visionary “HCHP” CEOs such as this at numerous clients of ours, including Intuit, Dow, and Thompson Reuters. These leaders truly understand valuing employees, who in turn value customers, who are ultimately responsible for keeping your company in business. It’s not the shareholders you should be focusing on – it’s your entire community of stakeholders.
Who does your executive team serve? The shareholders primarily or your entire spectrum of stakeholders, leading with employees?