I am pleased to announce that we are transitioning the Human Resource Planning executive editor role from me to Ed Gubman (Strat

I am pleased to announce that we are transitioning the Human Resource Planning executive editor role from me to Ed Gubman (Strategic Talent Solutions). I have been in this role for five years-it has been a labor of love as well as one beck of a journey (including geographically from Houston to Singapore to Las Vegas). Under Ed's leadership, I have no doubt that the journal will continue to grow in making the unique connection between people and strategy. Ed has served the journal well over the past five years as an associate articles editor with responsibility for the knowledge area of HR Strategy & Planning. We have all been thrilled that he accepted our request to become the executive editor. I warned him that they told me this was a two-year assignment (and five years later ...). For the last year we have been discussing and executing succession within the editor roles--in this case, the cobbler's children have shoes. As we are the Human Resource Planning Society, it is nice to practice what we preach! Ed is the special edition editor for our final edition of 2007, a special journal on HR's role in supporting the CEO's growth agenda. We will have continuity on the team: For a year I will "switch" with Ed and take on the HR Strategy & Planning area--my poor, humble attempt to avoid withdrawal symptoms from a group that I learn from and have fun with every time we interact (I also suspect they may like meeting at Bellagio); and I will continue as secretary on the HRPS board of directors.

Richard Vosburgh

SVP-HR, MGM MIRAGE

rvosburgh@mgmmirage.com

Special Edition Editor Introduction

We started planning this special issue on HR's role in the CEO's growth agenda early in 2007 when the economy was in high speed and the race to grow your business was top of everyone's mind. Richard Vosburgh and Rich Lynch of Oyster International brought forward the idea for the issue. Oyster is a consulting firm that specializes in helping clients establish new growth platforms (NGPs). Our editorial group was intrigued by the idea of NPGs, though it took a while for all of us to understand the concept. When Rich said the best current example is the iPod, then we got it a little faster. (As I write this while sitting on an airplane, my iPod is blasting away in my ears--"Spoonful" by Cream, in case you're interested.)

As our team of editors considered the issue, we felt we should address the broad issue of business growth, including, but not limited to, NGPs. So, as you read on, you will see our authors consider what HR needs to do to support growth in existing and new business models, through mergers and acquisitions, through innovation, and in the other ways companies attack their top line goals.

Since the early part of the year, the US economy has sputtered some, largely because of the sub prime lending crisis and the resulting credit crunch. Still, despite slower economic growth on the horizon, the business growth imperative has not gone away. Sometime after the brief recession of 2001 to 2002, businesses realized that bottom-line cost cutting and restructuring were not enough to keep them competitive. Some companies, like Google and Starbucks, always have been focused on growth, but others, including icon GE, have had to reorient themselves to find new ways to push the top-line faster.

It must be working. We are in the fifth year of a bull market, and most analysts think there is more room to go. So far the market is up about 100 percent over five years, which is still way below the average of the last five bull runs. The underlying foundation for a bullish stock market is earnings growth, so companies have to continue to seek out fast paths to grow. As an editorial group, we felt that five years was enough experience among companies to help us report back to you the changes HR is making to support growth.

The fun of editing or co-editing a special issue of this journal-and this is my third after Engagement and Retention, with Fred Frank, and Innovation, with Jay Jamrog--is how much you learn by shaping an approach to a significant business topic. Robert White, the famous Harvard psychologist, noted that you really learn the most about someone or something when you are surprised. I learned some surprising things while preparing the articles in this issue.

For a long time, I have felt that the most significant and strategic role HR could play is in the talent arena. Getting, keeping, growing, rewarding, and measuring the productivity of talent seems to me to be the 80/20 of strategic HR. Get that right and everything else takes care of itself. I am not quite prepared to give up that thought, but, as you will read in several of our articles, other strategic activities and roles are emerging for HR.

Among the most vital is the opportunity for HR leaders to help fellow executives determine what they need to learn to be able to grow the enterprise. As Mark Vickers points out in "HR Growing Pains: Getting from Awkward to Accomplished," defining what executives need to know so they can lead growth initiatives and then figuring out how to supply appropriate learning experiences may be among the most important way for HR to "get in the game" and be a most valuable player on the executive team. Mark reports the findings from a national survey, completed specially for this issue by our remarkable research partner, i4cp, the Institute for Corporate Productivity (formerly the Human Resource Institute). Unfortunately, Mark finds that many HR leaders and organizations are "on the sidelines," not playing a key role in helping their companies identify and embark on strategies and tactics to rapid growth. Read this short but hard-hitting piece and figure out how to put yourself into the starting line-up.

You will make a strong step forward in your business knowledge by reading Donald Laurie and Richard Lynch's piece on "Aligning HR to the CEO Growth Agenda." The authors do an excellent job of describing the growth imperative and the "growth gap" that often arises when companies think they can reach aggressive targets just by doing more and better of the same. Laurie and Lynch show how this thinking ends up in shortfalls and what to do about it. They explain that NGPs often are required to make breakthrough advances in size--just as Apple jumped out of computers and into music, only to have iTunes and iPods boost its iMac business and lead to the introduction of the iPhone. The authors show how to put together NGP teams and the ways that savvy HR leaders have contributed to building those teams. HR must get involved in chartering new teams, selecting growth-oriented executives, assessing what leaders need to learn and do to succeed in NGPs, and determining how close and how separate those teams need to be from the core business to hit growth targets.

Our colleague and friend Sue Mohrman from USC is quite clear: Managing talent is necessary, but not sufficient, for HR to support business growth in a meaningful way. In "Designing Organizations for Growth: The Human Resource Contribution," Sue argues persuasively that HR leaders must get involved in work and organization design--work processes, structures, management processes, people, and rewards--to be considered major players in growth initiatives. Sue's work advising companies tells her that HR often outsources these crucial activities to consultants, often because it lacks the expertise or is too busy on daily employee relations or talent issues to tackle them. Thus, it declines to take on a vital strategic role as the company creates its direction for growth--a major missed opportunity. Fortunately, Sue describes several paths to growth and what the salient work and organization design issues are. Reading her piece is almost like a quick, graduate-level survey course in how to get involved in design.

Finally, we conclude our articles by bringing all of this learning together in a wonderful case study. Allan Bradshaw of Weyerhaeuser shows "How HR Helped Weyerhaeuser's Extreme Makeover." Weyerhaeuser's residential wood products is a $7B division involved in building homes (and sponsoring "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on ABC). Big changes in home building demanded big changes from Weyerhaeuser to do things faster, more productively, and at lower cost. The response was a new "iLevel" brand (though nothing to do with Apple) and single point-of-contact delivery of a host of building products and services. The results were record financial results while the market was still hot and stronger competitive muscle to sustain the company during the current slowdown. Allan and his team tackled everything: sweeping organization and work redesign; transformational culture change; new, more engaged leadership; massive training and communication; and the all-encompassing rebranding of what had been a very stable business. The Weyerhaeuser story shows how HR can help take the reins in a 100 year-old company and drive the engine that enables a crucial division to thrive and grow. Read it and consider how HR needs to help the organization understand what it needs to learn to grow--and how you can help teach those things to your company.

Ed Gubman

Special Edition Editor

Founding Partner

Strategic Talent Solutions

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