The HR strategy that almost missed the point entirely

A coaching client of mine once asked if we could dedicate a session to the HR strategy she had created. I was happy to oblige, so she sent me what she had prepared in advance so I could review it before the call.

The strategy looked decent enough on the surface — employee engagement, some training, a fair amount of work on culture development. I always slightly pity anyone who asks me to have this kind of conversation, because I'm going to get straight into the difficult questions and not let them off lightly. She knew this and she was still up for it.

My first question was what problems in the business she would be solving with the initiatives she had suggested.

Was there an engagement or culture issue these interventions were addressing? Not particularly. The business had been trying to create a more joined-up culture after growing through an acquisition, but it hadn't been especially difficult. Even so, they felt the culture work might be helpful. When it came to engagement, they were essentially running the same survey they had run in previous years because it was something they always did. The scores hadn't been bad the year before, but they were keen to improve them year-on-year.

I then asked her what the biggest challenge the business was facing right now. I knew she had a great relationship with her CEO, was an active member of the SLT and wasn't afraid to challenge — so I knew she'd have a real understanding of what was going well and badly.

Even so, her answer stopped me in my tracks.

"We lost 30% of our clients last year."

I asked her to repeat herself, and she did. 30% client loss in a single year. I remember saying "you do realise that if that happens twice more, you have virtually no clients left?" Then I asked what had led to such a drastic loss.

It turned out there was a Director of Customer Services who was particularly difficult and who actively disliked the Head of Sales. This individual had created an us-and-them culture between the two departments, with both sides actively working against each other. Sales would bring in new customers and Customer Services would drop the ball with them repeatedly until those customers ended the relationship out of frustration.

I said to my client: "This is the problem you need to be focused on solving in the next 12 months."

She went away and we had a follow-up session a week later. She had completely rewritten her HR strategy. Her recommendations were now entirely focused on this one issue:

• Action to be taken against the destructive behaviour of the Customer Services Director — he ultimately left the business

• Cross-training between Sales and Customer Services so both sides had a better understanding of each other's roles and the customer journey

• Culture work focused specifically on strengthening the relationship between these two departments

They didn't lose 30% of their clients the following year.

None of what she ended up doing was particularly complex or unusual. The difference was that it was focused on the problem that actually mattered.

This is where so many HR strategies go wrong. We focus on activity, best practice, or what feels like the right thing to do, instead of starting with the problem the business actually needs solving. The engagement survey wasn't wrong in itself — it just wasn't the answer to the question the business was desperately asking.

Strategic HR is about doing the right things, for the right reasons, at the right time. And you can only do that if you know what the real problem is.