Coming of Age in HR - anthropologist Jennifer James interviewed about changes in human resources management - Brief Article

Workforce, August, 2000 by Bob Rosner

Anthropologist Jennifer James talks about the HR leader as "revolutionary" and warns that the profession has to change, or face being "flattened" out of existence.

Let's play a quick game of word association. If I say anthropologist, what immediately comes to mind? Margaret Mead in a village in New Guinea? If that's your mental image, then Jennifer James will surprise you. She has a Ph.D. and has taught at the university level, but for the last 15 years she has applied her anthropological skills to the study of corporations and popular culture. He Latest book is Thinking in the Futur Tense (Simon & shuster, 1996), which explores ways that you can learn to, see the future and stay ahead of the change curve. We sat down with her to hear her thoughts on the current practice of HR.

Workforce: Jennifer, tell me the first thing you'd do as a newly hired HR director.

James: Well, I'm an anthropologist. I'd interview the last two or three HR directors, if I could. I'd also interview anyone who could talk to me about the successes and failures of the previous HR directors. Then I would do as I did at Boeing, where I was a consultant. I'd go through every layer of the company as an anthropologist, I'd ask them, what's working, what's not working, what's getting in the way of energy, what makes sense, and what do you need? I would do it in a casual way that would make them comfortable. If you're talking with line workers, you need to look and act like a line worker. I would go through that whole sequence and I'd assume that I'm going to hear truth from the bottom of the pyramid and not necessarily dishonesty from the top, but almost a total lack of awareness.

WF: You would start your information gathering at the bottom of the company?

James: I would never start out getting my data from the top because then you buy into it, you're one of them, you believe them and it's harder to hear what anyone else is saying. I'd start at the bottom and move up.

WF: How would you define the goal of HR?

James: To get more productive workers who show up for work, who use better judgment, who don't harass anyone, who don't cost the company money, and who can inspire people. In other words, people who have energy. People who bring the right kind of energy into a room. It seems like a kind of magic, but it isn't. It's an awareness, an understanding. It's self-knowledge.

WF: How can HR do this?

James: HR can get caught up with the latest way to handle employees, or the latest training video or the latest buzz word from management or managing by best-seller. And they end up doing things that don't really make a difference. I would hone down to the two or three things that I think are blocking energy. I would get ahead of it. I wouldn't wait for management to come to me, or a journal to write about it, or the workers to complain. I'd try to get way ahead. Things you can see in hindsight, like family leave or onsite day care or special arrangements for overtime or flextime or whatever. I'd develop some confidence around it and then I would present it to the workers. You know only maybe a small group and say, "What do you think?" I'd test it, I'd hone it, and then I would go to management and say, "I can save you 10 percent." If you're not proactive, if all you're doing is mopping up afterwards, then the company will always need you, but it's never going to value you.

WF: Based on your research, what do you see as some of the coming issues that will affect HR?

James: I'll cover three of the more obvious ones. First, employees leaving have to be celebrated as specifically as employees arriving. Why? Because they may want to come back in two years and you may need them. And they'll tell their friends and family, who you may also want to hire. Second, the increasing need for employees to be able to work in their own environment, especially from their home. But there is this herd mentality that it's better when everyone is on-site. Third is eliminating layers of management. What layer of management did you eliminate last year? And if you haven't, why not?

WF: How do you see the profession of HR changing?

James: There was a time when HR directors were revolutionaries. It was very unusual for a company to have one. The companies that did recognized that workers were human beings--that you could get a lot better work out of people if you had someone operating as a coach, a teacher, and a supporter. Gradually, it became more technical. It became more disciplined. It got sociologized. It got tested and surveyed. It turned into statistics, plans, and models. It occupied more and more space, created more paperwork, and became less effective. We're moving into an extraordinary new working world where each individual is becoming his or her own HR director: learning to self-manage, learning how to negotiate, and how to work with teams. If HR directors don't recognize they need to revolutionize their own culture so that they can offer coaching, teaching, and support for this new worker, they'll be gone. Just as we've flattened layers of management, somebody will take their place. Someone with a different background, wit h a different view of the future and maybe even a different title. We'll always need someone, but we won't need traditional HR.