III) METRICS, RESULTS AND SPEED - CEO's “think big and act fast" Senior managers are driven by the need to continually produce results. They live in a world driven by quarterly results. Failure to meet the quantifiable quarterly expectations of the industry analysts and investors will have an immediate negative impact on the stock price. HR must also realize that great hiring and retention among top executives is closely watched by analysts and thus impacts the firm’s stock price.

In contrast HR people often think tactically and move at deliberate speed. HR professionals frequently acknowledge the need for speed and metrics but in reality they seldom count more than program costs. HR professionals often even consider "having a program" as an indication of success rather than focusing on actual results. Most of the HR metrics that do exist are done at year-end rather than monthly. They also almost always leave out the most important components... quality and the impact on productivity and profit.
If HR professionals are to be recognized as business leaders, they must continually measure and distribute their monthly results (as they relate to attraction, retention and people productivity) among all managers. Feelings and intuition must be replaced by data driven decisions.

"Senior management will create the opportunity for HR to take on this new role as strategic business partner but HR must step up the challenge-and do so in Internet time".
CEO Cisco systems

HR action steps

• Stop measuring and rewarding "process efficiency" and effort. Instead measure and reward only results and business impacts
• Compare our results to the best in our industry/ class, not to the average
• Require every major HR program to have monthly continuous improvement goals and metrics
• Always include quality and manager (employee or applicant) satisfaction in any priority thing you do
• Develop an HR “dashboard"as well as a single over-all HR index which measures the overall effectiveness of our people effort
• Monitor people productivity (dollars spent on people compared to the dollar value of their output)
• Eliminate barriers, silos, excessive meetings and the need to “build relationships” Replace them with incentives for working together and project completion