Have you seen the newest Microsoft commercials featuring a four and a half year-old girl who can’t read what’s on-screen but knows how to operate the PC anyway? This is a prime example of the workforce of the future – Generation Z. You will need to at least be as sharp as these people to lead them. In ten years, 100 of the Fortune 500 companies will be using technology that hasn’t even been invented yet. Are you prepared to attract or even recognize that kind of talent?
The VP - HR in the organization of the future will need to be the sharpest executive in the organization. Not just a merely competent person but the most dynamic, most creative, cutting-edged person in the organization. The new Director of HR needs to be the person who can spot trends before they become trends, be willing to toss everything they know about HR and not be bound by tradition or limited thinking. They will possess leadership abilities which far surpass those of the CEO. People will hang on every word of the VP-HR. They will become a superstar to the HR world.
The HR department of the future will transform from an “inbound” philosophy where benefits are prepared, future hires resumes are filed away neatly and ads are prepared for newspapers and sites like Monster. (OK some HR departments aren't like this but most are). The new HR department of the future will have an “outbound” focus rivalling marketing and sales. The department itself will operate like a political campaign war-room and be abuzz with activity from early morning to late at night. The members of the HR team of the future will operate like sports scouts who go out and find the top talent. The HR scouts will go out across the nation, search out top talent, do their research and return to the war-room with their findings. Large numbers of team-members will sit around the table poring through mountains of paper, stats, YouTube videos, blogs, Facebook and Twitter sites, LinkedIn and a whole lot more. They will openly discuss the precise placement of each candidate within the organization. No longer will a position be advertised and be filled by just some warm body.
Human Resources will be headed by the brightest, sharpest, most creative minds in the organization in order to attract the brightest, sharpest and most creative minds in the world.
It won’t matter in the future how bright the CEO is. The people under that CEO are going to be a lot brighter anyway, faster, more connected and able to find out anything about anything in mere seconds. If the organization is full of really talented leaders, do you really need a really sharp CEO anyway? The faces of organizations are going to change drastically from the “top-down” model we suffer through now to the “collaborative philosophy” of the future.
Now, this is the part where it gets a little ugly and I am going to take a lot of flack for this one but it needs to be said. If you are currently heading up your organizations' HR department and you know that you are not the brightest, sharpest, most creative executive in the organization, then you, in the near future, will need to voluntarily step aside and make room for the brightest minds to take your position - if you really care about the future of your company, its future ideas, its future performance and its future survival. Otherwise, you will be standing in the way of organizational progress.
If you, as the current director of HR don't already possess the brightest, sharpest and most creative mind in your organization, then how in the world would you be able to recognize that kind of talent? From a resume? The resume is dead - especially with Generation Z getting ready to be hired in a few years. They will have no experience, no background and best of all, no fear about trying anything new. And they will be good at whatever they try to do because they will have viewed hundreds of thousands of videos posted on YouTube and be able to master whatever they watch in one viewing.
In the future, the young, energetic, bright-minds will run the HR departments because they will know where their peers can be found. They will speak the same language, they will interact the same way and they will be able to spot talent amongst their own better than any Director of HR who is five years away from retirement.
If you think technological changes come fast, wait until you see what happens with the organization of the future. Any organization that desperately clings to the current top-down model of today will be overtaken quickly by organizations that operate collaboratively.
How do you best engage and spur an entire workforce? Make them part of every decision. Collaboration. It’s coming. Are you prepared?
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