Eleven Evolutions in Human Capability that Accelerate the Business

Many thoughtful colleagues continue to evolve HR by building on the past to create a better future. Much of this evolution comes from responding to the changing context of business (COVID, political toxicity, technology, ESQ, social patterns) and is captured with emerging insights based on innovative theory, research, and practice.

We have suggested and empirically shown (with three recent significant research projects: HR Competence and Capability Study (HRCS) with 28,000 respondents, Organization Guidance System (OGS) with a thousand organizations, and Governance and Guidance for Growth (G3) with 5,700 organizations, that the vast array of “HR” related initiatives can be clustered into a “human capability” framework with four pathways. 

Human Capability Pathways

1. Talent (often called “human capital”) deals with individual competence, people, workforce, and employees.
2. Leadership focuses on individual leaders at all levels as well as leadership capability throughout an organization.
3. Organization refers to organization capability, culture, workplace, teams, and systems.
4. Human resources (HR) defines the characteristics of the HR department, practice, and people.

This framework itself is an evolution of “HR” thinking, which has historically focused on talent (or human capital) as the HR agenda. Our work shows that the organization has far more impact on results than talent and that HR can be the architect of creating organization capabilities.

Exciting and emerging ideas are occurring in each pathway. Let me offer an overview of some of the evolving ideas in each pathway, building on the superb work done by so many.

Talent Evolutions

Talent refers to the people (individuals, employees, workforce) in an organization and how they are continually acquiring competence (knowledge, skills, ability) and developing sentiment (commitment, engagement, experience) to do their work.

1. Accessing Competence to Accomplish Work
Putting the right person in the right job at the right time with the right skills is the legacy of talent management. This delicate matching effort created workforce planning where full-time employees are matched to job assignments. Talent, or the resource to get work done, has since evolved to include contingent employees in a workforce ecosystem and a focus on work skills more than jobs. More recently, work task planning has emerged, which includes getting work done without formal jobs but by delivering on tasks either with people or technology.

2. Improving Employee Sentiment

Employee sentiment (attitude, perception, response to, and so forth) about work continues to evolve, with emerging thinking about the employee experience that deals with emotional well-being and mental health tied to being safe, believing, becoming, and belonging. Additionally, organizations around the world are increasingly framing their mission and their work in ways that makes it easier for employees to be safe, believe, become, and belong amidst global upheaval and challenges.

3. Sustaining Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Both in practice and in our research, DEI has become a major agenda for business and HR. We found that HR professionals who championed DEI were able to have a higher business impact. We posit four phases of DEI work that have moved from tracking affirmative action numbers to action, to strategy, to implementing two sustainable DEI beliefs and actions: everyone has something to offer and leaders use their power to empower others. Implementing these beliefs moves DEI from an aspiration to a commitment.

Organization Evolutions

Organizations shape how people (employees, customers, suppliers, investors) think, act, and feel. The study of how organizations operate has evolved both in defining the organization form and in creating an organizational culture.

4. Reinventing Organization Form

The logic and design of organizations have evolved. Organizations were originally conceived as bureaucracies, with hierarchy being the dominant logic. They have evolved to where organization is not the structure of a firm but the capabilities, which are focused on building market value.

5. Reimagining Organization Culture

Culture is not a new concept: its beginnings focused on anthropology and sociology. And in the organizational setting, culture is accepted as a critical factor for long-term success. The evolution of culture goes from a focus on internal values and behaviors to an external identity in the marketplace made real to everyone in the workplace.

Leadership Evolutions

Leadership is one of the most studied topics in the human capability field (google leader and you will get six billion results; five billion for leadership). Individual leaders engage talent (people and workforce) and create organizations (culture and capabilities) through the competencies they possess. Collective leadership is when a leadership brand exists at all levels of the organization and the actions of all leaders throughout the organization are consistent. In our review of leadership, we identified five general leadership competence domains that characterize what we call the Leadership Code. This code has evolved with new leadership competencies required for changing business conditions. 

 

6. Defining Skills of Effective Leaders

The five code domains are relatively constant over time and place, but the specific skills have evolved depending on the changing external context. Figure 8 lays out in some detail the emerging skills given the recent business context.