Text: Mu Sheng
In recent years, the profession of "Organization and Human Resources" has not developed much, which is obviously inconsistent with the strong demand for this profession in the digital age. It stands to reason that the complex business environment in the digital age requires more sophisticated design in organization and human resources, but unfortunately, our profession does not give a satisfactory answer.
01 The dead knot of HR professional progress
Many bosses and business units have once again bombarded the HR department and questioned them about value creation. In some companies, the HR department has been gradually eroded, and some modules that were considered professional in the past have even been abolished.
Many people in the industry seem to be surprised, in the past, didn't the human resources department have been growing up in "bombardment"? After each bombardment, mention the "HR competency model" like chicken soup for the soul, shout slogans, promote trends, and engage in some sports, won't you be able to go to work as usual? Even better, there are a lot of "new jobs" created by the trend.
But what I want to say is that this shelling is really different. In the past, people attacked more about "service attitude problems", but now, people are attacking "existential necessity problems". To put it bluntly, the current bombarders are beginning to bombard the foundations of this profession.
The biggest problem with this professional development is that it is too qualitative rather than quantitative. If it's not quantitative enough, it's not a science, and all the trends and trends are actually sitting and talking about themselves. In the face of these currents and trends, you can neither prove nor falsify.
As a result, the supporters look for positive evidence with positive conclusions, and the opponents look for negative evidence with negative conclusions, and everyone quarrels. In the end, HR said with tears in their eyes: "Do you know how difficult it is for us? The boss and the business department scoffed: ", I want results!" But if you really want to ask them what results they want, they can only give "organizational ability improvement", "good generals are like a tide", "human efficiency improvement by 20%" or the like, or metaphysics or YY. Quarreling back and forth, both sides are aggrieved.
Think about it carefully, isn't this kind of quarreling like pinching each other in the rice circle?
02 Quantifying organization is the challenge
You may wish to ask yourself, in the past few years, how much effort has this professional person made for professional data? Anyway, the biggest effort I can see is the "big division", that is, dividing the overall revenue and profit by the number of people, and counting the so-called "human efficiency indicators". The division that elementary school students can do is the human efficiency index? If this is the so-called "dataization" of the organization and human resources profession, the barriers are too low, right?
Can the organization and human resources profession be digitized? This is already an indisputable fact. In the past, Musheng Consulting has made many similar efforts, and so far, the index algorithms such as the flattening index, the proportion of combatants, and the real incentive index that I proposed have also been put into practice by a large number of enterprises to assist in key decision-making of human resources and even strategy.
There are many directions for the digitalization of organization and human resources, but one of the key links is the "quantification of the organization". After all, for the "quantification of people", you can also count shallow data such as age, seniority, education, major, etc., and no matter how poor it is, you can also use a scale to measure leadership or competency. But organizations are different, and with traditional expertise, it's hard for you to quantify it, and it's hard for it to fill out the scale. Many companies will not even work in this direction at all, they think that if they do a good job in "quantification of people", they will do a good job in "quantification of the organization", because the state of people reflects the state of the organization. This statement is actually a trick, and of course it is not true.
Today, in the face of all of you who have come from afar to pay to participate in the forum, I also come up with a quantitative organization tool - Musheng Tissue Refining Compass, which is my personal research precipitation in the past ten years, and I hope to help you fill the skill gap in this field.
Source: Musheng Consulting
I designed this tool with the belief that most enterprises have a lot of waste in organizational design and need to be refined, and if scientific indicators are used, these redundancies should be found and targeted to achieve organizational refinement.
03 "Tissue body fat percentage" indicator
In addition to the flattening index and the proportion of combatants, I am going to release a few new indicators today, the first of which is the "organizational body fat percentage", which is used to measure the proportion of "peripheral organizations" outside the internal value chain of an enterprise.
First, let's explain what an "intra-enterprise value chain" is. The resources in the enterprise are transformed into R&D, procurement, production, logistics, service and sales, and finally become products, services and solutions, which are delivered to customers, which is a value chain. Among them, each link (department) has generated value appreciation through its own professional operation, and the value increment created by the enterprise is the sum of the value added of all departments.
With this concept in mind, it is easy to distinguish between two types of organizational structures:
One is the "organizational structure on the internal value chain", referred to as the "value chain structure". These organizations or positions are responsible for translating resources into products, services, and solutions, and they are more like "suppliers" than "administrative agencies".
The other type is "organizational structure outside the internal value chain", referred to as "peripheral organizational structure".
The first part is the administrative bodies, i.e. those organizations that are set up to maintain the efficiency of the value chain, usually to develop and maintain rules.
The second part is ineffective suppliers, that is, organizations that do not play a role and are eliminated by the enterprise value chain, such as ByteDance's talent development center and Manner Coffee's HRBP. I don't think these companies should abolish these organizations, but in their eyes, the decision must have been made because they didn't deliver the value of their in-house suppliers as intended.
So, the algorithm for tissue body fat percentage is:
Obviously, the unit of measurement of the above-mentioned establishment should be "person". When measuring this indicator, enterprises need to classify the functional modules within each department, and for some functional modules, different positions within them also need to be classified. According to our practical feedback, according to the classification logic from large to small, this indicator is not difficult to calculate.
Some people will see this indicator and say, the existence of the "peripheral organization system" is very problematic, and this part should be completely reduced! But the idea is naïve.
First of all, there is no rule and there is no circle, and it is necessary for the administrative body to exist as a "peripheral organization". Of course, the administrative agency should not be overproportionate, intuitively speaking, we cannot invest in another person in order to supervise one person, and the overall efficiency of such an enterprise must be extremely low.
Second, should ineffective suppliers be eliminated? This is also up for debate. I gave an example, a football player has a strong left foot and a weak right foot, should he cut off his right foot? Apparently not. It is necessary for the right foot to exist, but it should be exercised to upgrade, what is the snack operation for you to chop it off?
Therefore, the tissue periphery is equivalent to body fat, and it must be necessary to exist. Just as no one can reduce the body fat percentage to 0, and no company can reduce the body fat percentage of the organization to 0, it must not be a healthy state.
Musheng Consulting calculated this indicator for the 10 sample companies that could obtain data, and found that the data results were not optimistic.
Our baseline is:
First, the "functional body fat percentage" in the middle and back office functions should be below 50%, in other words, more than half of these departments should be in the internal value chain. However, the results show that the middle and back office bureaucracy of these sample companies is serious, and only one of them has a functional body fat ratio of the baseline.
Second, the overall "corporate body fat percentage" of the enterprise should be below 30%, in other words, seven out of ten people should be serious about creating value. However, the results show that these sample companies generally have a large number of idlers, and only one company has reached the baseline.
Source: Musheng Consulting
04 Some companies don't use quantitative indicators
Dear friends, are these indicators sharp enough? Can it be calculated? Would the bosses like to see it? (Answer: Yes)
Don't be so sure, are you sure that the bosses would like to see this indicator in action? Let's put it this way, are you willing to see your physical health indicators at any time? Actually, it's not like that, what you want to see is an indicator of your health, not the actual situation.
Just as a friend of mine who often socializes in business said: "Every year the company organizes physical examinations, I don't want to check anymore, knowing that I have mild fatty liver, what is the use, and I can't reduce it, and hearing the results of this examination can only add to the blockage!" ”
I know his pattern of action, every time I see the results of fatty liver, I learn from the pain, run for two days, diet for two days, buy cheap gym equipment online (such as abdominal wheels and the like), and then, there is no more......
How different is the action model of many companies from this big brother? When the boss saw these indicators, he went crazy in the company, and then carried out some layoffs and downsizing campaigns, and then bought a management special drug, and then, there was no then......
There is a threshold for these indicators, and for most companies, they look at it or not, and the result is the same, so don't waste the cost.