Spark Perspectives: Recently, Spark Consulting has organized a series of salon activities around how internal and external experts can build relationships with business partners. Any internal and external expert needs three skills, the first is their own professional skills to implement the delivery, the other is the understanding and insight of the business, and the third is the consulting skills to build business partnerships. It's easy to misunderstand that communication skills and key person management are a substitute for consulting skills, when in fact they are completely different levels of skills. In terms of consulting skills, Peter Block uses the book "Perfect Consulting" to explain the internal and external consulting skills, the process and the three roles that experts can play, and the state of being that they need to have.
Through a recent business intervention project, we invited two on-site consultants, Lesley, an innovation expert, and Jing, an HR expert and executive coach, to share with you how to use Perfect Consulting and business units to develop annual plans and achieve strategic alignment.
[Project Background].
lesley
This is a private enterprise that has just been listed. Last year, the prototype of the three pillars was established, and the role of business partner was established on the HR and finance side. The Chairman found that the role of HRBP and Finance BP is very important, which deeply affects whether they can improve the management of talent and funds, and give full play to the role of talent and capital as capital, so he would like to invite more than 20 department leaders to meet and train with HRBP Finance BP to improve their understanding of business partners and promote their smooth cooperation with the business.
When we received this task, it was not difficult, but after in-depth interviews, it turned out to be tricky. On the one hand, everyone's expectations are very high, and many people take the initiative to interview us, presenting a lot of internal tension and management problems, and everyone has a lot of ideas and ideas. As an external consultant. If it is bigger, it will be a consulting project for organizational development, but the client's budget and time are not enough; If it is small, it will become a training, and it will not hurt the customer. In the end, the consultants decided to design a framework for perfect consulting to help business leaders and multiple HRBP finance BPs work together to form a collective contract and reach a consensus.
The client's needs changed several times over the course of the project, which was challenging, but overall the chairman's goals were met and he said they needed to create more collective dialogue in the future.
Now it's coming to Q4, and everyone needs to do a review with the business side and talk about annual needs. Therefore, today we will dismantle this project with you, share our experience, and let you be more familiar with and understand the consulting skills, how to better use the consulting skills to do a good job in the consulting project, the same process can be done for more than 50 people collectively contracted, can also do individual one-to-one contract.
[Set the tone for cooperation].
lesley:
When we work with the business, do we look at the business from the perspective of the business, or do we look outward with the business? The answer is to look outward together, to look at the user, to look at the customer, to see their needs, their experience, what kind of differentiator advantage do we need?
To form organizational differentiation advantages and create good performance, it is definitely necessary to cooperate with multiple internal parties and manage the expectations and commitments of multiple parties. This commitment has two dimensions, one is the content level of the joint cooperation, and the second is the relational level of the joint cooperation process.
To agree on the content level, requirements management is the first priority. It is often easy to see the demand generated by the gap in performance, but it is not easy to see that behind the achievement of performance is because we do not fully meet the user's experience, or in the process of user experience, the difference between us and competitors is not so big, so that the driving force generated by the customer is not enough. Therefore, at that time, we invited the chairman to share what the challenges have been since the listing, including products, users, channels, etc., so as to draw everyone's perspective to external users first, and then talk about what are the new organizational capabilities that need to be built around the challenges. We help them realize that the first thing to do in building the core competencies of the organization is the building of human resources.
However, whose responsibility is it to build human resources? Is it the responsibility of the business unit leaders, or is it the responsibility of HR, or is it a shared responsibility? We threw this question to everyone on the spot. We must let the people on the business side know that the core responsibility of human resource construction is business leadership, because the selection and retention of human resources, in which the core implementation is on the business leader. Let's first set the tone of responsibilities before we talk about the content of cooperation.
[Reach a consensus on the content of the work].
In the workshop, Spark helped customers reach a consensus on the content of the work through the following process:
Invite business unit leaders and human resources to write about their top three HR management tasks at the moment. At this time, everyone writes independently and does not communicate with each other;
The head of department and the corresponding HRBP put the slips of paper on A4 paper and sorted them by importance;
The department head and HRBP reviewed together to see what the commonalities and differences were, and the differences between the business unit head and HRBP on important issues and their priorities were revealed, and the two sides formed the basis for dialogue. Through the review dialogue, the department head and HRBP have a link and consensus.
lesley:
In general, there are three levels of work content: strategic, strategic and transactional. We need to know at which level our dialogue with the business side is carried out in our daily work, and at which level our time and energy are invested.
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After identifying the three core tasks, we invited all department heads and HRBP to jointly select a key HR job and list the main tasks related to it. Then ask the department head to have a conversation with HRBP to see what strategic work is shared by both sides. At what level does the conversation take place? Everyone's energy is invested in the best again.
They were surprised to find that 70% of HRBP was transactional, 20% was strategic, and 25% was strategic. They have less understanding of the strategy of the business, and they have less understanding of the strategic things of dismantling the strategy and resources. Let's find out why this phenomenon happens. Through dialogue, it becomes clear at which level the task is missing, where the dialogue is missing, and why is this happening?
We invited the participants to experience the work content hierarchy tool and invited the participants to share their feelings after the experience:
This tool is particularly good in helping us to focus and prioritize our work;
There is still some confusion about the dismantling of the three levels of work;
I am not sure about the dismantling of the time investment, and I don't know if such a dismantling is reasonable;
This Xi helped me find that most of my current work is at the strategic level, and there is less strategic or business support. In fact, we want to do more support for the front-line business, but the front-line always feels too busy, and we can't plug in;
Help us to clarify what we are doing in our daily work, what is strategically related, what is strategic and transactional, and help us redefine the scope of work;
From the perspective of third-party services, what exactly is our strategic work, strategic work, and transactional work? Our group has been stuck in the process of this discussion, probably because I am not Xi to this kind of thinking of three-dimensional structure;
I think back to the past few years when I was serving in private enterprises, 30% of my energy was on the strategic level and 30% on strategic work. However, more than 70% of my team, many deputy directors and senior managers, are busy with transactional things, and they can't even talk about strategy. So I can understand why I worked so hard and was so frustrated.
Teacher's Comments:
Wang Jing:
There is no optimal answer to the distribution of the three times. Because the environment that everyone copes with every day is changeable, and in a changeable environment, it is impossible to deal with it with the distribution of time and energy that you idealize. If you do that, it's going to be hard for you to have a real partnership with someone else.
You have to take the needs of your partners as your needs, and you have to rethink your time distribution a little bit and constantly adjust it. In addition to making the other person feel valued, you also need to know what kind of things you do are valuable and meaningful. The first of these structured tools is to promote your constant self-awareness. Clause.
Second, the more important point is your self-awareness, if there is no customer to pay, it has no value. So you need to use it to reach a consensus with your customers.
How to manage relationships
lesley:
Just because we have a consensus on content doesn't mean we can work together smoothly. It requires good trust and commitment to action to proceed soundly.
There are three important roles in the process of relationship management: the role of an assistant, the role of an expert and the role of a partner. The assistant is in the process of working with other people, always with the mentality of "you tell me what to do"; Experts are Xi habitually think that "I know better than you, please let me tell you what to do, you have to listen to me"; The partner is emphasizing that "I have some information, you also have some information, let's put the information together." And then I have some ways of thinking and making decisions, you have some different perspectives, and we decide what to do together. ”
In Perfect Consulting, the relationship between partners will be broken down into 8 different dimensions, among these 8 different dimensions, the right side from top to bottom is a process, and the left side refers to what happens in the process (as shown in the figure).
First of all, we need to negotiate and determine cooperation. Whether it is certain that the cooperation must be decided by both parties, rather than unilaterally. Then how to solve the problem, how to make an action plan, how to implement, the emphasis is on the joint exchange of information and joint decision-making. In the common process, they maintain their independence, each performing its own role, and at the same time it is an open, honest and interdependent relationship.
The emphasis on the left is that in this process, we are always a two-way communication, not a one-way street. We share a responsibility to resolve conflicts together. There can be elephants in the room, but not for a long time, and everyone will not hide and never talk about it. In the process of conflict resolution, we should not blindly emphasize harmony, but emphasize that there should be differences between each other, and we should take different opinions and conflicts as a better opportunity for cooperation, so that the collective wisdom can be better brought into play.
The goal of the 8 dimensions is to manage the internal tension, and at the same time, through the establishment of cooperative relations, the internal energy is released to meet the external pressure.
We designed a widget to invite people from the business side and HR to paste the location with small dots. Through this tool, you can see who is in charge of this matter in this relationship. Our emphasis is not on 50 50 for all dimensions, but on the balance of roles and relationships in general.
Based on the items selected in the Xi exercise just now, the participants used the relationship assessment tool to evaluate the relationship with the collaborator and shared their feelings
As a person in the business department, if I have a business problem, I may be eager to solve it, and I will cooperate with the functional department to help solve it;
The sense of responsibility of both parties is very crucial, because with responsibility, everyone will be more active and proactive in promoting problem solving and communication;
Our idea is that communication and coordination are soft skills, and HR is good at it, so HR generally has a larger proportion in this area. The specific work is accounted for by the business department;
Through this tool, I realized the problem of responsibility: I always thought that this should be the responsibility of the business department, but after communication, I found that this responsibility must be shared. Without sharing, the cooperation between the two departments may not be particularly ideal;
I feel that trust is very important. If there is trust as the foundation, collaboration is relatively easy to achieve, and it is generally a state of dancing together. When there is a sense of distance, whoever leads the project will have a larger proportion and is dynamic;
If you don't take the time to do the initial linking, it will have an impact on the work that follows. Airborne executives with different cultural backgrounds will have the problem of integration, and poor integration will affect the relationship, and will also affect the subsequent collaboration and consensus reach;
Teacher's Comments:
Wang Jing:Do you use this tool statically, or dynamically? Static is my opinion, and I think that's what should be done. Dynamic use is the process of working with your partner to share a common goal and a key task to unpack, what responsibilities do you want to take on each other, and what do you agree with each other about this. You will find that as time goes on, there will be a lot of uncharted territory and new challenges, new relationships to emerge. In this process, you still need to make a lot of dynamic adjustments to these 8 dimensions. If not, the consensus and trust built up in the early stage will not be enough to accomplish the ultimate goal.
There are two challenges in shared responsibility: one challenge is who is ultimately responsible for which dimension of which thing, which can be ambiguous. In the process of clarifying responsibility, it will involve a very deep test of the relationship between the two parties. Trust is hypocritical and cannot last if the elephant in the house is not allowed to emerge. Therefore, when clarifying the responsibility, it is right to do things and not to people. Failure to do so can damage trust. The second challenge is that responsibility is often confused with the field of expertise. For example, the problem of employee engagement: the employee's experience of the company is the most direct to his line manager, and if these people do not come forward, the employee's engagement cannot be improved at all. Therefore, in this dynamic management process, it is necessary to repeatedly discuss and consider what each other is good at, the company's responsibilities to each other, and who will bring greater benefits to the enterprise, and reach a consensus.
Trust is the evaluation of a person as a whole. The other party is not only judged by your professional ability, professional skills, and performance at work, but also considers your character, his trust and dependence. True trust is the openness of your own values, opinions, personal and spiritual world at work. These things go beyond the work itself, which is very important for building trust in the professional environment, and is the spirit and philosophy behind the "Open Self" that will be talked about in the "Perfect Counseling" course. For people from different backgrounds, the assumptions behind the definition of these 8 words are different. Therefore, everyone should reach a consensus on the definition itself, and then reach a consensus on the distribution and coordination of work, which is the real consensus.
[Manage tension and promote cooperation through perfect consulting].
lesley:
There are different levels of trust, including the individual level, the team level, and the organizational level. It is not entirely sufficient for us to rely solely on personal trust. In the process of managing an enterprise, conflicts and tensions will naturally arise due to different positions, different company interests, and different shareholder interests, and even psychological insecurity at different times. So trusting it is not a static one, it's a very dynamic process.
When there is a lot of tension within the enterprise, who has the ability to surface this tension? First, do you have the courage and ability to bring this tension to the surface? Second, after you surface, whether you can hold it, let everyone have trust in you, and let you take everyone to solve this matter together. On this basis, everyone is also willing to take out their professional skills, and believe that you have professional skills and can do this together. This ability is called counseling ability.
Counseling ability is an ability that is independent of other things. Consulting, delivery and business capabilities form the HR capability framework. Counseling skills are a very important ability. We often combine counseling skills with communication skills, but it's not just communication skills. It is the ability to surface tension and contradictions, and at the same time make the people in the tension feel safe psychologically, and you are safe, and at the same time everyone respects you and is willing to continue to do this with you. This is a very tough ability.
Let me briefly explain the difference between consulting skills and professional (HR or other) skills. Counseling technology is a process of doing things through a conversation, sorting out the needs of the other party, understanding the other party's concerns, reaching a contract, and then exploring the advantages in an appreciative way and proposing a plan that the other party can do. And the expert perspective is often the perspective of letting me tell you what the right best practices are, and I think you should do what I say you will have a better chance of success.
In Perfect Counseling, this technique has some core doing skills at each stage (the core skills are how to negotiate needs, understand and deal with customer resistance, how to explore, how to feedback and make decisions), as well as some of the state of being (the consultant's behavior style, the four basic principles of role tendency, etc.), and how to link the other party's being through doing, especially how to establish a lightning link between mental and emotional connections. Facilitate effective decision-making and commitment to action by helping clients move projects forward safely and in control.
Through the above sharing, do you have a better understanding of consulting skills and partnerships? Welcome to share with us in the comment area!
You are also welcome to participate in our online training during the National Day and work together with Paul Lesley!
Spark Enterprise Management Consulting was founded in Singapore in 2004 and entered China in 2010.
We work closely with Talent Dimension, ExperiencePoint, and CCL to provide a systematic strategic innovation perspective to lead customers to insight into the future and identify customer growth opportunities.
We specialize in providing tailor-made training and coaching solutions in conjunction with our clients' talent programs
On the one hand, it helps customers solve problems such as strategy and innovation, strategy and operation, assists in scientific decision-making, supports enterprise transformation and upgrading, and provides continuous strategic growth support for the company in the era of Internet of Everything; On the other hand, it empowers talents and improves their own systematic ability to innovate and solve problems.