Posted by Brett Smitheram, Senior Consultant on 2nd April 2015

For those of you who haven’t already heard Dave Ulrich, father of the HR Business Partner concept, has just unveiled a new HR operating model. Moving towards a more relationship-focused methodology Ulrich likens the interlinking of the varied functions within HR to that of the relationship between two people in a couple.

Effectively, Ulrich is focusing on “love maps” – or what is important to the other person – to try to prevent bickering, blame-giving and inter-departmental politics which can cause disruption and breakdown in communications between specialisms.  By synthesising relationship research (such as that of John Gottman, who could predict with 90% accuracy whether a couple would remain together) he has established 6 points, distilled into:

1. Sharing a common purpose – while accepting each area has different roles to play in its achievement
2. Respecting differences – communicating positively about the roles each function has to play as part of the whole
3. Governing, accepting, connecting – solve the solvable problems and don’t obsess about those which appear to persist
4.  Caring for the other –trust in each other to deliver
5. Sharing experiences together – encouraging movement/interaction among functions, so when problems arise, they can be met with emotional confidence and a joint move towards a solution is made
6. Growing together – by recognising past successes and progress, in order to achieve future development

Initial responses have been along the lines of “wow, that really makes sense!” and there is no doubt it does.  However, I find myself reflecting upon this as an operating model and wondering at what point we lost sight of the basic facts of human value and interaction. Should we really need to be told that our functions all have a valid role to play in the success of our business, and should not therefore be derided? Should we need to be told that trust is important?

Perhaps we have become so obsessed with introducing operating models in the name of efficiency that we really have become mechanistic in the way we do business and treat our colleagues/counterparts. For me this is more a matter of culture right now. It’s not about theorising, it’s about simply engaging on a human level. Once this part is being done properly, then it’s no longer a case of picking up the phone to the comp team and rolling your eyes because you expect an answer two weeks later, it’s about having a chat with Bob and getting what you both need out of it, even if it does involve asking about how his cat is doing.