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When you say dealing with ‘management’ it can be interpreted in two ways….The first is when HR has a seat at the executive table. The most common problem you will see here is between the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Human Resources Officer. CFO’s and CHRO’s constantly bicker about how to allocate finances (as they should).The CHRO may be presenting a new employee wellness program and the CFO will consider it a cost of doing business and strongly oppose the new programs creation because it doesn’t produce more revenue for the company. The human resources leader will then respond with data about how it saves the company money by preventing sick days. In this instance the most difficult thing is creating a business case to the other people on the leadership team using information that may not directly appear on any of the three main financial documents.Other times when HR does not have a seat at the table -and is merely viewed as an administrative function- it becomes a problem of pride. Managers and revenue producing departments like sales or engineering sort of get a free pass. When there is a pissing contest between a manager vs someone in HR it isn’t a matter of who’s right and who’s isn’t because management has a trump card.Whenever they want there way they simple say, “I have authority over you. So do what I tell you.” Or they simply go to the higher ups and say, “HR is preventing me from doing my job and I should get my way because I actually make the company money.”Most of the time HR is just trying to comply with the law. What they are suggesting was never their idea in the first place. Its more of a matter of, do you want to follow the law and/or company policy or not? This is very often seen when hiring managers want to ignore background checks or avoid having employees complete paper work when they are returning from giving birth or some other type of leave.It’s often true that HR does hinder managers from performing at their best, but not because that is there intention, its just because it’s the law to do things a certain way. Where HR falls short is not with enforcing the company policies, but in not giving recommendations about what can be done instead. HR is too much of a “no you can’t do that department” and not enough of a, “You should try this instead department”.

It means that Jack, who appears to be some sort of business executive, hires people whose strengths are different from his. Your friends should do this too because it’s a good idea.For example, let’s say Jack is a quantitative finance wizard… but he’s the CEO of a company that manufactures remote control cars. He’ll be great at managing the company’s investments, and will likely have a solid idea of what to do with the books, but there’s a lot more to that company than just investments and books.He’ll need a Chief Industrial Relations Officer to manage the collective bargaining agreements. This position is often merged with Chief Legal Officer or CHRO.He’ll need a Chief Financial Officer, probably an accountant to balance out his expertise, who can be up to date on the company’s various filings.He’ll need a Chief Operations Officer to figure out how to source all these car parts and ship all these cars.He’ll need multiple engineers to design, blueprint, quality control, and do just about everything with these cars to make sure they run smoothly and don’t explode in some poor kid’s face on Christmas Day.He’ll need a VP of sales to build relationships with department stores and toy stores… possibly around the world.So on and so forth.Let’s say Jack is also very shy in front of the media. He’ll need someone, possibly any of (a) the LR or HR guy, (b) legal, or (c) a public relations executive, to speak to the media.Can you imagine how disastrous this company would be if Jack hired no one but quantitative finance wizards who are shy in front of the media? Who would perform any of the tasks he doesn’t already do?Know your weaknesses. Even though some of us are Swiss Army knives in human clothing, no one can do everything. Having different personalities and perspectives at the table also reduces groupthink, which is a huge benefit of diversity.

Honestly it happens quite often; many companies invest in a senior Finance leader before investing in a senior People professional, and by default a smaller People team will appear to be largely administrative, and it is an easy decision for a busy CEO to park it under the CFO.I’ve known many CFOs who are thoughtful all-round leaders, and they manage the HR function fine. But it rarely grows or professionalises as a function that can really add value to the company until there is a leader in place that reports to the CEO directly.If a company understands the value of the Talent in the organisation, and wants that Talent to grow and develop and add value to the business, then the People function needs a professional leader who knows how to do this, and is focused just on that - not dividing their time between this and the many responsibilities of a CFO. The CFO and the CHRO should be good colleagues, but there is typically a creative and important tension between the priorities and perspectives of these individuals, and the CEO should be hearing from both.People teams and leaders typically suffer from a lack of data to support their roles and activities, and this is seen as a weakness that the CFO can typically help solve. My company, Panalyt (Panalyt | Home - People Analytics), was specifically started to solve this problem, and our product produces real-time People Analytics to help HR be as data driven as the Finance organisation.