Dave Ulrich is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organizations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. HR Magazine has ranked him the #1 most influential thought leader in HR.

Moreover, Ulrich and his colleagues have been observing HR closely for 25 years. Six waves of data collection have helped them identify the core competencies for effective HR—and the latest 2012 wave accounts for 20,000 professionals around the world. With Ulrich returning to open the 52nd Annual BC HRMA Conference + Tradeshow on April 15-16, 2014, we revisit a PeopleTalk interview from 2008 to set the stage. His insights are as timely as ever.

What is happening in business that changes the game for HR?
Let’s think about what is happening in the world. Globalization is changing the business world and giving rise to new business realities. Technology, industry and economic trends, demographics and CEO expectations are all driving forces that are changing the role of HR. Everything seems to happen quicker. The half-life of knowledge is shorter. If you want to know how fast technology is changing, consider (how old) the Internet is. The goal is not to be more knowledgeable. The goal is to be more productive. How can you take what you know and make something happen?

What is the greatest challenge HR professionals face in their jobs today?
It’s an interesting question. As I went around the room at our executive program at Michigan recently, people wrote down the following. My challenge is managing talent. My challenge is leadership. My challenge is performance management, accountability, diversity. From a true or false perspective, my response to them was ‘incomplete’. What I want people to think about is not HR, but business.

What we have to think about is not leadership, talent and performance management, but what is the outcome of that activity. From that perspective, the biggest challenge facing a company is creating new products, dealing with a recessionary environment, managing a diverse workforce, being able to increase productivity and meeting shareholder expectations. If we think that our challenge is related to the business, then we can connect what we know in HR to that challenge.

How is the emerging workforce changing the nature of the workplace?
When you look at people 25 and under, they are different. They don’t have work/life balance. They have life/work balance. Life comes first. They are bringing new issues to the forefront when looking for employment. Environmental sustainability, the green footprint, managing effectively in the world we live in. The second issue is around philanthropy, learning to give back to the society in which we operate and third is employability, finding a safe place in a company so that we exercise citizenship for the employees we serve. Many companies are seeing these as key factors. For students graduating from university today, they are looking at these things as key criteria of the company they work for.

How can HR define and deliver value?
It’s a simple concept. Value is defined by the receiver more than the giver. It’s not what we know, it’s what we do. It’s not what we know and do, it’s what we deliver. I’m an HR person. I’ve learned some wonderful stuff at this conference. The value is not what I have learned, but how that knowledge helps others. It’s not only about HR. It’s about helping your business leader get what he/she needs out of he people in your organization. HR’s customer base is not only the employees, but also the customers of the company. We need to serve multiple stakeholders. If we can begin to see that connection, if we can begin to build that bridge, then we  can begin to deliver value.

How can HR professionals step into more open strategic discussions at the CEO level?
The main complaint I hear about HR from business leaders is that we fail to address the business. When I sit down with a business leader, the first thing I talk about is not what I know and do, but what they need done. This is not about me. This is not HR narcissism. This is not HR Jeopardy: “I have the answer. What’s the question?”

The comment I make is: “What are you struggling with and let me discover with you how I can help you solve those problems.” The humility we offer as we try to solve their problems with their words allows us to be more successful.

Dave Ulrich is a plenary speaker at the 2014 HRMA Conference + Tradeshow. His session What Matters Most: Six Key Competencies for Delivering Sustained Value is on Wednesday, April 16, 2014. For more information, please visit bchrma.org/conf2014.

(PeopleTalk Winter 2013)