Video
Proactive, empowered chief human resources officers are vital to successful transformations—those cross-functional efforts to dramatically alter the trajectory of a company. Patrick Litré, leader of the Results Delivery® practice, discusses how a CHRO can help a company to manage and sustain energy during a transformation.
Read the transcript below.
PATRICK LITRÉ: Transformations are those amazing cross-functional efforts that dramatically alter the trajectory of an organization with game-changing results. But they're also a battle for energy. And managing and sustaining energy is the reason why only 12% of transformations achieve or exceed the full potential value that they expected to reach when they started.
And at the heart of this role of maintaining energy and sustaining energy is the role of the chief HR officer, because the chief HR officer can act on three levers. The first is really working at aligning the leadership team and coaching both the CEO and the top team in providing the align message and leadership for the company and for the transformation. The second is never wasting a good transformation: to use it as an accelerated boot camp for developing the future leaders of the company—the top talent—and redeploying them, assigning them to cracking the toughest challenge in the transformation itself and growing them to the next level. And the third is, it always requires adjusting, refreshing, the culture of the company, which itself requires [changing] some behaviors at the front line, middle management and with the senior team.
In addition to doing all of that, to be the Chief Energy Officer of the transformation, they also have to role model that in their own shop, and very often transform HR first. So overall, that's why it's such a challenge, but also a great opportunity for chief HR officers.
Read the Bain Brief: The Chief Energy Creator