Ban the No. 2

I am attending a HR Manager's Face to Face most of next week. The HR Managers from our network are meeting to discuss the future of HR in our network.

My mantra for the week? My battle cry? Ban the No. 2 pencils! It is great to talk about operating at a strategic level all the time, envision how we would operate, imagine the job satisfaction we can have but talking, envisioning and imagining will only get us so far until we begin to make the tough calls.

The state of network HR is not as bad as my cross country skiing was a few years ago when I went to a workshop and the coach said, "let's just focus on the arms, there are too many things wrong here!" There are a few outliers we can start with:

• We must standardize our processes, not within the medical center only, but across the network. 
• We must be very selective with our hiring and our promotions. Promotions are not entitlements and if the skills we need are not present in our current staff, we need to hire externally.
• We have to mandate automation within our staffs, not encourage it. Yes, that means throwing out the typewriters and halting the show when we see someone addressing  mass mailing letters individually. It means Access databases. It means intranet usage. It means Sharepoint. It means collaborative learning.

The first step is no more No. 2 pencils! We can do this, I know we can!