Fire H.R.!

Imagine letting your mother select your dates for you.  Forget scoring some hot young thing off the set of "The O.C."  Mommy's gonna get you someone SAFE, the romantic equivalent of oatmeal in skim milk.  You're craving passion, imagination, personality, even a little danger — but you settle for safe.  Perhaps you've been burned recently.  Perhaps you don't trust yourself.  Perhaps you're mildly insane.

And as it turns out, safe ain't bad.  No headaches.  No heartbeats, either — but it'll do.  For a few years...

Then you find yourself reading the personal ads "for entertainment."  And hanging at work later and later, grabbing drinks with the cube-mates, and casting glances at the interns.  Your safe life has become so lifeless, it's sporting toe-tags and a chalk outline.  And that's when you see your arch-rival wrapped around some hot young thing off the set of "The O.C."  And s/he is — no it can't be — thoroughly fucking happy.  Thrilled.  Vibrant to the point of exploding.  And you suddenly realize that could have been you — but it's too late, kid.  You're safe and completely sorry... 

Well guess who else lets their mommies pick out their significant others as a matter of policy?  Try almost every major corporation in America.  And all these corporate mothers sport the same initials: H.R.

Now hold on, you're saying.  Human Resources is nothing at all like a matchmaking mom.  And you're right: your mother would do a far better job screening candidates for your affection.  At least she's factoring in earnings potential.  Your typical H.R. drone strives for the completely innocuous, someone who will fit in seamlessly, and — most importantly — someone who won't get H.R. into trouble.

And who can blame them?  If H.R. hires some freak who screams "worker's comp!" every time his finger gets bit by a three-ring binder, who will the boss spank for letting vermin through the filtration? 

So when it comes to hiring fresh meat to refuel a company and lead it into the future, H.R. inevitably plays it safe and neuters the talent pool.  So what if leaders are characterized by passion, imagination, personality, even a little danger?  Mommy doesn't want that.

That's why most companies won't allow H.R. to touch recruitment of top executives.  Peons, sure, but CEO's?  Not a prayer.  'Cause If H.R. had their say, eBay's Meg Whitman would have been ignored for lack of online marketing experience, Bill Gates would have been scorned for being a college drop-out, and 4-time Super Bowl coach Marv Levy would have been locked out because he got his Master's Degree in English, not football strategy.  H.R. has made small-mindedness an art form.

In the tiny self-aggrandized world of H.R., rules are all that matter — not vision, not opportunity, not competitiveness.  Just read the help wanted ads they write, which sound more like tax rules painfully excreted by constipated Klingon CPA's.  And if an applicant's resume doesn't exactly match the job requirements, it gets trashed or "saved for consideration for future openings" in the same gargantuan warehouse holding Indiana Jones' Ark of the Covenant.  It matters not that people successfully pursue careers unrelated to their college degrees, or that they can easily transfer their skills from one industry to another.  H.R. can't quantify talent and intelligence on their spreadsheets, so deviation from the specs is not allowed.

Hence, by letting H.R. handle all underling hires, corporations are killing the opportunity to develop leaders from within.  Instead, they wind up with flocks of bleating middle managers concerned mostly with keeping their jobs.  No one dares offer ideas or take risks.  And while the corporation may function smoothly for a while — no headaches, but no heartbeats either — it slowly stagnates into catatonia.

Fortunately, the solution is simple: toss the H.R. department.  All of it, from hiring to benefits to handling the sexual harassment briefings.  Most of these tasks can be handled more competently by a lawyer, an accountant and — here's a great leap of thought — management itself.  Whatever management can't do, numerous contractors will happily perform as needed with a higher degree of professionalism.  And subcontracting confers the added benefit of turning a fixed overhead cost into a variable.  H.R. is America's number one argument for outsourcing.

But what about all those executives that management needs to promote, but doesn't want anywhere near the value chain?   In the past, they were named V.P.'s of H.R., where they could feel important without making any key decisions regarding corporate direction.  Well, for now, they can always be exiled to that other repository of incompetence: in-house P.R.  (Grist for another issue of Más Kapital...).

Way back in b-school we endured an H.R. class called "Competitive Advantage Through Talent," which should have been subtitled "In Your Dreams, Buddy."  This exercise in wishful thinking was based on the fallacy that H.R. could be a driving force in your company.  In reality, the only thing you should ever let H.R. drive is a U-Haul to the unemployment office... [$]

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