HR Transformation: Building Human Resources From the Outside In

Book excerpt: Named as BusinessWeek's #1 Management Educator, expert Dave Ulrich and his team of authors bring human resources a whole new way of thinking and practicing—moving the focus from internal issues to actively helping to set business strategies. Businesses of the future need "all hands on deck" when implementing new ways to stimulate grown and cost efficiency, and this includes human resources. In HR Transformation, the team presents a four-phase model of transformation that shows you step-by-step how to make meaningful progress in contributing to the performance of your company by redesigning HR to work as a strategic partnership. From the “#1 Management Educator & Guru”-BusinessWeek “The authors have presented us with an accessible, readable, and practical illustration of a clear path for successful strategy execution in a complex environment.” -Majed Al Romaithi, Executive Director, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority “HR can only transform organizations if it transforms HR. This book shows us how. HR Transformation would have been important in the past-it is critical now! We are entering a new world. HR Transformation can help our organizations thrive in the midst of uncertainty.” -Marshall Goldsmith, author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers What Got You Here Won't Get You There and Succession: Are You Ready? “Ulrich and his colleagues talk tough and provide a detailed blueprint for how those of us in the field can use our own tools to do a “720-degree” evaluation of ourselves. We cannot contribute to the success of our organizations until we upgrade ourselves.” -Linda A. Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School “Based on groundbreaking research with hundreds of companies and thousands of executives, HR Transformation provides compelling theory and practical tools to create alignment between strategy, systems, and people. This important book should be read carefully by leadership teams everywhere.” -Mark Huselid, Professor of HR Strategy, Rutgers University, Co-author of The HR Scorecard, The Workforce Scorecard, and The Differentiated Workforce Turn to the front matter for more than thirty rousing endorsements of HR Transformation. INCLUDES CASE STUDIES FROM Intel, Pfizer, Takeda, Flextronics