MUSCLE BUILD YOUR ORGANIZATION
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Make Human Resources a partner

You can't improve an entire organization by yourself. As you would expect, you certainly need the support of all your executives and managers. As you might not expect, your other partner in the process is the Human Resources department. I'll talk about each of these in turn.

Muscle building an organization is impossible without the active involvement of your line managers. But how do you convince a busy general manager to shoulder a new set of responsibilities? You need to do more than express your own commitment to the upgrading process: You have to be unrelenting in your emphasis on people development.

Make it clear that you are asking executives to do more than just preside over annual reviews. (And if you feel someone isn't emphasizing even this part of the process enough, try attending a couple of review sessions with subordinates.) Every time you see or call a manager, you should stress your interest in the key people and their individual performance. Ask specific questions. What has been done about the marginal production manager? What progress has there been in the Cleveland office? What projects is the new recruit working on? After a few run-throughs, the answers will be ready before you ask the questions.

You can deepen your executives' involvement in other ways, for instance, by asking them to showcase their "comers" at periodic business reviews or to nominate people to serve on special task forces. You should also make time for observing the best people in action during your field visits.

Commitment from line managers often doesn't come easily, you have to create it, nurture it, and even push it. You're asking them to rethink their job priorities and make more difficult decisions. The Human Resources department can be a valuable ally in this effort and serve as a burr under the saddle of resistant managers.

Human Resources people are often seen as peripheral to the real action in a company, a group of shufflers who develop benefit packages, collect evaluation forms, and process paychecks. But these activities are not their most important reason for being. Outstanding Human Resources people can be a force for positive change in the organization. They can help ensure that line managers handle their people responsibilities properly, and they can help the whole company make the best possible use of its assets.

Unfortunately, business leaders rarely recognize the potential of the personnel function, so they often fail to staff the department with high-caliber people. Their low expectations then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Human Resources executives can facilitate organizational muscle building in several ways:

• They can push executives to make consistent, demanding evaluations of their subordinates. This might include, for example, pointing out differences between a criticism shy manager's performance appraisals and other managers' evaluations of their people, and giving advice on how to deliver bad news in an appropriate way.
    
• They can force managers to take action on marginal performers (reassignment, coaching, allowing time for improvement) and insist that poor performers be replaced.
   
• They can help search out the best people in the company and the best slot for each person. They can encourage executives to take risks on high-potential prospects. (Superior Human Resources executives, plugged into every part of the company, are especially valuable here.)
    
• They can encourage executives to focus on results and heap rewards on the best performers. (Some Human Resources systems set rigid limits on compensation, so pay increases average out, and no one is motivated.)

If you want valuable assistance from your Human Resources department, you will probably need brighter, more highly skilled Human Resources executives than you may have now. The good news is that if you give Human Resources more responsibility and integrate it with other executive functions, you should attract better people.

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