Interview with Alan Collins, President & CEO, SuccessInHR.com
& former Vice President of Human Resources at PepsiCo

Welcome to our new HR VP Interview Series. In each issue of Sharing HR Knowledge, we'll feature an interview with a different HR VP from around the globe.

In this issue, we will launch our series with an interview of Alan Collins . Alan is CEO, SuccessInHR.com and formerly Vice President of Human Resources at PepsiCo where he led HR initiatives for their Quaker Oats, Gatorade and Tropicana businesses. He is also our new editor here at Sharing HR Knowledge. His new book, The Unwritten HR Rules, will be published later this summer on Amazon.
He is also author of the “HR Recession Guide: 7 Ways To Recession-Proof Your HR Career & Avoid Losing Your HR Job” which is available as a free download.

Enjoy the interview…

1. Alan, thank you for helping us to launch our HR VP Interview Series. Tell us more about you?

I'm thrilled to help launch this new series. As background, I'm a lifelong Chicago resident and an unabashed Chicago sports enthusiast -- the Bulls, Cubs, Sox, and Bears are my passions.

I began my career as a labor relations trainee at Inland Steel Company. And since that time, I've moved through 16 different HR jobs over my 20+ year HR career. For the last nine years of my corporate career, I was VP of Human Resources at Quaker Oats and then PepsiCo. And, I've been fortunate to have had a variety of great experiences in HR. I led HR initiatives for Pepsi’s Quaker Oats, Gatorade and Tropicana businesses. I led an HR organization of 60 HR managers and directors, spread across 21 different locations in North America and was accountable for their performance, careers and helping them succeed. I helped architect the annual HR strategic plan for five years for a workforce of 7000 employees. I’ve done M&A work helping to integrate new acquisitions as well as divest existing businesses. And, I provided HR leadership for the largest single change initiative in the history of the organization. I've had generalist roles and HR specialist roles. And, it was a great, great ride.

Last October, I left my HR executive career in corporate America and am now pursuing my dream of becoming a published author. My new book, The Unwritten HR Rules, will be published later this summer on Amazon. In addition to the book, I'm running a blog, I've founded a scholarship program, and I'm working on a number of other initiatives to help make a difference in the HR profession -- including being the editor here at Sharing HR Knowledge. A few years ago after the death of my son, I re-purposed my life and career. At this point, my life's work is all about giving back and making a difference. As part of this, my mission is to continue to serve the Human Resources profession, contribute to causes that I care deeply about and continue to use my strengths to strengthen others. HR has given me a fulfilling and extremely rewarding career and it's time for me to return the favor and "pay it forward" to other HR professionals. And, today I'm doing that and having a blast!

2. Let's talk about HR careers. You mentioned re-purposing your career. What should HR professionals be doing to manage their own HR careers during tough times?

There are a number of strategies, but let me give you a couple.

First of all, I would strongly urge HR professionals to make sure they're visible in their organizations. This is not the time to stay out of the line of fire. It's the time to step up and make sure that you're consistently selling yourself and your HR accomplishments. But you have to do it subtly, so you don't turn off your colleagues or look like an ego with legs. But, let me be blunt about this, so there's no misinterpretation: unless your boss knows you’re exceptional - and so does his boss - and anyone else who could be your next boss, you might as well be invisible. And you have absolutely no shot at keeping your job during tough times or advancing your career when times are good. Just working hard and expecting that your HR results alone will be recognized, noticed, or appreciated guarantees one thing and one thing only: old age. And focusing on doing what you do better than anyone else and trusting that that alone is enough, guarantees you one thing and one thing only: a long life laboring in oblivion.

Secondly, I would suggest that they begin now to build their network. Pulling a good network together takes effort, sincerity and time, so it's important to start now. Most executive recruiters will tell you that networking will deliver more job interviews to you than any other method. More than answering ads. More than searching on the internet. And more than putting your resume down Monster's black hole and hoping that you'll get some hits. The tough thing about networking is depending on your personality, it's either a lot of fun or a lot of work. For me, I'm not a natural networker, so it's work for me. So, if you're like me, you have to discipline yourself to do it. But you must do it. Start taking people to lunch. Start attending cocktails, dinners, and networking events. Set goals for yourself. For example: “I want to have a good conversation and exchange business cards with at least 3 people during this event.” There's an old saying that you should dig the well before you're thirsty. Well, this applies to networking. LinkedIn is also a great tool for helping you do this.

3. As a former human resources VP, what would you consider to be the top priority for Human Resources in corporations today?

The answer you'll hear most often from HR VPs is to make sure that your HR strategy is aligned to your business strategy. And that's true, but let me go even deeper.

On the talent front, as an HR leader, you absolutely have an obligation to your company to lead initiatives that help them retain their best people. I believe it's a mistake for HR leaders to believe that a recession makes this any easier to do. Your best people get voicemails from headhunters three and four times a week. And they will always, at least, listen to a great opportunity if it's presented in the right way at the right time. And, when this happens there's a big risk to your organization. When these people are running your regions, divisions or markets they know your organization cold and have come up through your system. Losing any one of them robs your organization's of some of it's crucial institutional capability and could dramatically impact your P&L. It would be like the Cleveland Cavaliers losing LeBron James. The performance of that team and the profitability of the Cavaliers organization would drop like a rock. For HR VPs, this means ensuring that your organization has HR programs and systems in place that recognizes, rewards, stretches, strokes and lets your best people know they have great career options available to them at your organization.

Having great talent isn't enough, though. You have to have great leadership too. You can't just throw a bunch of highly talented, hard charging, type A personalities into a room and expect them to work together productively without a war. Now a little bloodletting is okay, that's all part of building a team. But, this is where leadership comes in. You need to have great leaders at all levels of your organization who can bring together A players, get them to collaborate and not bicker, get them to keep their egos in check, establish business priorities and tradeoffs and channel their best collective energies into your business agenda. Regardless of your politics, you have to admire the great job Obama has done to bring world-class talent into his cabinet and get them all focused on his agenda with minimal drama. The role of HR is crucial in developing leaders with this Obama-like capability. We should be making sure that there are HR initiatives and programs in place for grooming and developing these types of leaders in our organizations...and that these stays front and center on the senior management's agenda.

4. What is the biggest mistake you see organizations making with their workforces?

Cutting people and not work. Most companies have responded to the recession by downsizing their workforce and eliminating people. Hundreds of thousands of people. And, though it’s very sad for the employees involved, there are sound business and financial reasons for companies to do this. And, I agree that this has to be done.

However, one thing this doesn’t do is make these organizations more efficient -- or even necessarily more competitive. In fact, once the bodies are gone, that’s when the problems really begin. For example, you are now left with 20 people doing the work that 50 people used to do. Leaving these remaining 20 people overworked, frustrated, angry and now looking for jobs themselves. And much of this new work on their plate goes undone. Or done poorly because they are less experienced at doing it or are too busy to fit them into their expanded to do lists. For these reasons, I strongly believe that work should be cut first, before cutting people. By eliminating the work first, you can then “rightsize” the number of people needed to do the remaining work. However, very few organizations do this beforehand. Or even after the fact, which would be good too.

5. What HR skills or competencies are most important for HR professionals to possess?

I'm a big Dave Ulrich fan. And, I buy-in to his HR competency model big time. At the University of Michigan, I think he's done a tremendous job of defining HR skills needed for success so I see no need to reinvent his wheel. He's done over 20 years of research with over 30,000 HR professionals, so he's got a terrific data base that supports his model. I attended a recent webinar he put on where he laid out six competencies that HR folks should have. They are:

1. Being a credible activist: Someone that earns and maintains the trust of employees and managers, while taking proactive business positions.
2. Being a business ally: Possessing a solid understanding of the business financials, strategies, and context to make better decisions.
3. Becoming a strategic architect: Being able to shape the strategic story and guaranteeing that it is translated into HR practices and leader behaviors.
4. Operational execution: Ensures things happen on time, every time.
5. Being a talent manager and organization designer: Someone who can shape HR practices that deliver talented people and capable organizations.
6. Being a change agent: Someone who makes change happen and shapes new cultures that link the internal values to external expectations.

I believe as an HR leader, you absolutely have to be prepared to have and deliver these six capabilities within your organization. Otherwise, you and your function risks being outsourced to someone who can and you miss a great opportunity to impact your organization for the better.

6. Lots of HR people talk about how difficult it is to be taken seriously as a member of the leadership team. There are articles like "Why We Hate HR" that Fast Company did a few years ago and the most recent one in CFO magazine "Memo To CFOs: Don't Trust HR" Everyone seems to be taking a shot at HR. What's your take on all this?

 

Here's my take. Both of those articles talk about HR's lack of credibility and ineffectiveness in impacting the business. And, if you're in HR and you're not helping to drive the business forward, then some of the disparaging stuff that's being written about in those two articles is warranted and applies to you.

But, I believe it's easy to gain credibility, positively impact the business and impress your business leaders as an HR professional....when you've impressed them with your knowledge of their business first!

Anyone that has become off-the-charts successful in HR does so by first getting brilliant on their business. I don’t mean the HR business. But the business that is providing you with a paycheck. Succeeding in HR requires high degrees of influence and personal persuasion with business leaders. And that only comes by knowing their business well enough that you can tie your HR programs and initiatives to how they can move that businesses forward.

Let me give you an example. Let's say, you're an HR manager in the Gatorade business at Pepsi, and your Gatorade general manager was out sick, could you step in and give his 30 minute monthly financial update to the leadership team? Could you describe the current challenges facing the business? Or talk with confidence about how Gatorade is made, where it’s made, how it makes money, and how the product has been positioned to attract consumers in the marketplace? And could you describe how the P&L impact of the HR programs and initiatives you're accountable for. Tough standard? Yes. Impossible. Definitely not.

There are many HR managers that could pass this test for their organizations with flying colors. And you'd be amazed that how much credibility they have in their companies and how much they're valued and are able to influence the performance their business. They don't worry about articles like the ones you mentioned. However, if you don't fall in this category, much of what's written in those articles applies to you.

7. What were the biggest disappointments in your HR career?

Early in my career, there were a couple of times when I was disappointed at being passed over for key HR roles I felt I was ready for. At the time, each event was crushingly disappointing. But surprisingly enough, each of these disappointments opened the door to other amazing things that happened in my career to the point where I was able to say, "Thank goodness, I'm now glad I didn't get that promotion or that job.

Each of those disappointments caused me to take a different, alternative path that ultimately resulted in taking me out of my comfort zone. And, I'm so much better off as a result. It taught me that situations happen in your career for a reason. And that if you persist through these setbacks, take risks, stay focused on doing great work and market yourself and your accomplishments, that there is more than one pathway to achieving your career goals.

8. What's the best thing that new people coming into the HR profession can do for themselves?

I believe that first company you join is critical. I advise people to try to work for a company that's going a have a formal HR development program for them. Companies like Pepsi, GE and Johnson & Johnson are examples of companies that will actually invest up to two years of the company's money in a new HR person's development. That's a valuable career launching pad for the new HR professional. These companies have well-developed HR practices and are constantly innovating them so they are great learning labs. Sure, this can also happen at start-ups and at a smaller companies too, but it's a lot more difficult. Smaller firms often don't have the resources and the structure and you often have to do things without an "old hand" available helping to guide you -- which is not a good situation if you're trying to learn the profession from the ground floor up.

If your company doesn't have a formal development program, then work with your boss to create one that works for you and the company. It's worth the investment to do this both for you and the business.

9. On a daily basis, what's the toughest aspect of being in HR?

For me, on a day to day basis, it was working with individuals and groups to resolve disputes. Often in HR, you frequently work across functions and help differing groups that are at war try to find common ground. It happens during labor negotiations. It also happens when you're trying to resolve disputes between a manager and employee over compensation, a promotion, an appraisal rating or in alleged discrimination or sexual harassment complaint. The role you play in these situations is important and tough. And often there is no common ground.

If you take a stance in favor of a company value or principle, some people are bound to take it personally and believe that you're taking a stand against them. If you take a position against the employee, they'll hate you because they think you're simply a stooge for management and that there is no “human” in human resources. And, if you take a position against the manager, he or she feels like you're not a business partner and instead, you're trying to work some social agenda or be this annoying do-gooder. Some days, you can feel like a double agent trapped in the middle of this crossfire with no way to win in sight.

In all these situations, I've tried to keep in mind the title of Spike Lee's movie from a few years back, "Do The Right Thing." You can't waffle, you must do your homework, gather the information, and get input from the right people to guide you. But then take a stand and do the right thing. HR folks that lack a point of view or are indecisive don't last long. Stay true to your values and the company's principles and you'll be able to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day. Sure, you'll make enemies now and then. But you'll be able to control who they are and how many there are. And you'll feel better about yourself.

10. Finally, where do you see HR headed in the future?

I certainly don't have a crystal ball, but I believe the future is bright for HR. Obviously I'm biased, but I've never met a CEO who is not interested in improving the performance of the business through people. And working with the CEO and his leaders on crafting initiatives that do this is exactly what HR is all about. So in the future, I don't see HR going away any time soon. However, I do see the work that HR does changing dramatically.

For example, most large businesses are going global or are already, so the HR executive of the future will absolutely need to have global experience and be able to design HR strategies that can fit the cultures of India, China, Germany and other countries in Asia and Western Europe.

As more baby boomers defer retirements because of the recession, the HR leader will need to help address generational issues at work. We'll see more innovations in benefits like elder care, pet care, concierge services, paid time off and flextime. With companies competing for top talent, HR folks will need to come up with these and other newer benefits to meet the diverse generational needs of the millennials, Xs, Ys they want to attract and keep.

Technology innovations will continue to be big. Enterprise-wide platforms like SAP and PeopleSoft that simplify and standardize HR transactions will continue to evolve. So will the use of social networks in recruiting and the use of virtual teams of employees who communicate through video-conferencing, e-mail, and text messaging. Online technologies that allow more work to be done without much face-to-face interaction will also grow by leaps and bounds in the future. And, HR will need to stay on the leading edge of all of this - both for HR’s own use and to ensure that people issues are being considered as their organizations make these types of technology investment decisions.

I believe we'll also see, as a result of the financial banking crisis, HR stepping up and playing a stronger internal role in the regulation of issues such as fairness in the workplace, executive pay, 401k’s, and ethics. Or at least, I hope so. No one wants their company to be the next AIG.

Finally, in the future, I hope to see an HR executive appointed as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I don't know when it'll happen, but certainly it will happen in my lifetime. HR executives have already moved into senior-level operations roles, marketing and sales positions for years with great success. So I believe it's only a matter of time. And when that does happen, it'll be a great sign that the HR profession has finally arrived.