« HR, do you know what your job is? | Main | From Innovation to Excogitation »
February 07, 2006
Orlando, Huizenga B-School
At the Orlando Airport reflecting on lessons learned at this morning's speech at the Nova Southeastern University's Huizenga Business School.
The presentation was a kickoff for a breakfast series that's expected to continue monthly, so I had no idea what to expect. And, though I'd received a roster of attendees and their organizations, it didn't capture titles, so I didn't really know who I'd be speaking to, beyond that, given the title of the presentation, they were probably in HR.
I spent about an hour going over three interrelated topics: HR, past, present and future; Working--what employees want from their work, in their work, and sources of voluntary effort; and, based directionally on the outcomes of points I'd made about these first two topics, finished with a discussion of brand, branding, and vertically-integrating internal brand positions.
At the beginning of the presentation, I asked how many audience members were in HR, and almost all raised their hands. (I'd guess there were about 50 people in the room.) Near the end, I asked how many of them were recruiters. Three raised their hands.
Now, here's what was really great about the response. Despite the fact that most of the people I was talking to didn't have traditional internal brand management roles, the responses I got--both in terms of head nods, note taking and other affirmative gestures during the presentation and comments after I was done--strongly supported the premise of my talk: that internal brand management will, in the fairly near future, be one of HR's key strategic value-adds. More importantly, the people who provided this affirmative feedback are not the people who traditionally own brand management. But they got it. And they liked what it had to offer them and the organizations they support.
Posted by davidkippen at February 7, 2006 03:14 PM