A few weeks ago I wrote about IBM’s new human supply chain solution for internal allocation of human resources. Since then I’ve read the full article in Intelligent Enterprise magazine and had a personal encounter with IBM’s HR requirements. Although I still praise the supply chain effort, the front end supplier, HR, is hurting IBM’s competitiveness.  It's backwards.

Here is a quick refresher. The supply chain matches demand for knowledge and skills with supply, at an enterprise level. As engagements mature in the sales pipeline, forecasts for consultants are matched against available and soon to be available resources. Gaps are filled by new hires, outsourcing, or additional training of existing staff. The capabilities database and the enterprise system for mapping demand and supply has reduced bench staff, increased utilization, and salved $1 billion annually. That’s the good news. Here is the original blog entry on IBM's Workforce Optimization.

I very recently learned from personal experience that HR isn’t aligned with the supply chain perspective. In the new world, capabilities, knowledge and skills, are what you hire. Personally, I believe it’s best to hire attitude and potential, not just capabilities, but for today’s post, we’ll pretend that the supply chain thinking is sufficient and effective. The system minimizes the gap between supply and demand. HR’s function is to recruit new capabilities to fill gaps that cannot be supplied internally.

My experience with IBM’s HR is this. IBM is looking to fill four positions of organizational change consultants in Denver. HR is requiring degrees in Organizational Behavior or Organizational Development, no exceptions. Huh?

Expertise, not Degrees

Today, anyone of any age and any background can become an expert in anything. Books, experience, and the Internet are the great levelers. Everyone knows that degrees from business schools teach knowledge. The abilities to change people and organizations are skills. A person’s degree doesn’t matter, only the person’s ability to create results does, and the main determinates of results, in the supply chain model, are knowledge and skill.

Why only consider OB and OD degrees? Wouldn’t MAs and PhDs in psychology and therapy not only have knowledge but have highly relevant clinical experience? Surely it’s more challenging working with addicts than with ordinary managers and employees. How about people with other business degrees who also have training and experience as change agents? Wouldn’t someone with 1000s of hours in executive coaching be a good candidate, regardless of degree?

Inside IBM, the system runs on knowledge and skills, but HR is using degrees to find and filter employees. This is analogous to Whole Foods selling freshness, quality, and taste, while its buyers are purchasing using criteria of low price and closeout specials. It doesn’t make sense.

Well Meaning Lightweights

The more you know, the worse it gets. Among business executives, the general perception of OD people is that they are well meaning, lightweights. They are “helpers” without understanding of power or politics or business acuity. CEOs come from many backgrounds: marketing, sales, operations, finance, and sometimes accounting or legal, but is there a CEO in the fortune 1000 with a degree in OB or OD? I think not. By limiting itself to these degrees, IBM is ensuring its organizational change practice won’t be taken seriously.

Of course, who takes HR seriously either, and that’s the point. Unless HR changes its thinking to match the new world, a world of expertise and results, not degrees, it too is a well meaning lightweight. How many executives trained in HR become CEOs? Sure, HR provides valuable services in organizations: payroll, workforce management, benefits, capabilities databases, etc., but hiring? In most hiring cases, HR is too disconnected from that actual work to add value.

For the experienced job seeker, never, never, never send your resume to HR. A software program or low-level clerk, without a clue about business, will filter your resume into the circular file. Always speak to the hiring manager directly.

A New World

If you are the CEO, take HR out of the filtering business. IBM, let your capabilities database drive your new employee searches. Automate the scanning of resumes and put easy-to-use search tools on the front-end so hiring managers can efficiently and intelligently find the resources they need. It’s time to disintermediate HR from hiring. It’s a new world, accept it, embrace it, change.

Keywords: change leadership, organization Development, business culture, engaging change

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com