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Why CEOs and Human Resources Managers need our Applied Management Program

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Greetings. I am Chuck Mitchell, creator of the OE21 Program and I have over 25 years of experience in helping multiple organization types and sizes solve many of their most challenging problems. This short white paper is on my mind these days and I want to share it with you. Please use my contact form on About Us page to reply if you wish.

 

From what I have seen, the career path to top executives (C-Suite) is not easy for Human Resources people. The view of some executives is that HR folks don’t understand how the organization’s products and services are designed, produced, delivered, supported, and marketed. Most HR Managers I have met don’t get to participate in how strategies are developed and implemented to boost market and financial performance. This makes it more difficult for HR Managers to advance up to the C-Suite as Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)..

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A New Way for HR Managers to become Top Executives

 

My solution is that HR Managers should become Management Analysts in order to be of far greater value to the top executives. Let me explain why. I will use the exact content used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics to make my point. Let's see if you agree.

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Using the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOC), I first compared and correlated the job duties of three occupations:

  • Top Executives (CEOs, Presidents, Senior VP, CHRO, etc.)

  • Management Analyst

  • Human Resource Manager

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The OOC describes the duties of the Top Executives exactly as follows:

 

Top executives typically do the following:

  1. Establish and carry out departmental or organizational goals, policies, and procedures.

  2. Direct and oversee an organization’s financial and budgetary activities.

  3. Manage general activities related to making products and providing services.

  4. Consult with other executives, staff, and board members about general operations.

  5. Negotiate or approve contracts and agreements.

  6. Appoint department heads and managers.

  7. Analyze financial statements, sales reports, and other performance indicators.

  8. Identify places to cut costs and to improve performance, policies, and programs.

 

The OOC describes the duties of the Management Analyst exactly as follows:

 

Management analysts typically do the following:

  1. Gather and organize information about the problems to be solved or the procedures to be improved.

  2. Interview personnel and conduct onsite observations to determine the methods, equipment, and personnel that will be needed.

  3. Analyze financial and other data, including revenue, expenditure, and employment reports.

  4. Develop solutions or alternative practices.

  5. Recommend new systems, procedures, or organizational changes.

  6. Make recommendations to management through presentations or written reports.

  7. Confer with managers to ensure changes are working.

 

First, I compared the duties of Top Executives with the duties of Management Analysts and used a 1 to 5 rating scale to score the value of the Management Analyst duties to the Top Executives (by task). My total value score is 26 against the maximum value of 35 (7 x 5) as Table A presents. Your score will likely vary from mine but please stay with me. .

Table A Top Exec and MA.JPG

Table A Management Analysts Value to Top Executives (Score: 26)

Next, I compared the duties of Top Executives with the duties of Human Resource Managers as shown in Table B.

Table B HR Managers Value to Top Executives (Score: 22)

Then I combined the value of the HR Manager and Management Analyst to the Top Executives as shown in Table C. 

Table C Top Exec MA and HRM.JPG

Table C -HR Managers Combined with Management Analysts Value to Top Executives (Score: 48)

CONCLUSIONS – Table C provides insight into the significantly greater value to Top Executives of having an HR Manager who has attained the additional skills and experience of a Management Analyst.

 

We firmly believe that other organization manager roles can also benefit from attaining the additional skills and experience of a Management Analyst.

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Of course, the argument arises that a busy HR Manager does not have the time to add the training and experience skills of a Management Analyst, and other organization managers listed in the OOC might make the same argument.

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The good news is that our new OE21 Applied Management Program is specifically designed to combine Management Analyst capabilities with almost all organization manager roles (including HR Managers).

 

We do this by forming small focus teams of organization managers. Each of the focus teams work together in learning and implementing our OE21 Program 34 standards and over sixty (60) management analyst models that have been proven in many of our customer sites over the last 25 years. 

 

The OE21 focus teams are grouped as follows:

 

  • Leadership Focus Team (LFT): 1 to 4 senior leaders (e.g., CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, CHR, etc.). The Leadership Focus Team (LFT) is responsible for Leadership Excellence results, including financial performance, marketplace performance, strategy alignment and accomplishment, leadership and social responsibilities, and impact.

 

  • Customer Focus Team (CFT): 1 to 4 managers (e.g., VP Marketing, Manager of Sales, Manager of customer relations, etc.). The Customer Focus Team (CFT) is accountable for Customer Excellence results, including customer engagement, satisfaction and value, key stakeholder's satisfaction and value, product, and service performance (in the eyes of customers), and program outcomes.

 

  • Operations Focus Team (OFT):  2 to 8 managers, e.g., managers of product and/or service design, creation, production, supply chain, delivery, and project managers, process innovation, risk managers, process efficiency and effectiveness managers, quality managers, MIS/IT managers, safety and emergency managers, administrative, and financial managers.

 

  • Workforce Focus Team (WFT): 2 to 8 managers, e.g., Talent Development, Learning Managers, Human Resources Manager(s), and Work Unit Managers. Work Units are small groups of similarly skilled people within Departments or other sections of the organization. The Workforce Focus Team (WFT) is accountable for Workforce Excellence results, including workforce satisfaction. engagement, workforce capability and capacity,  learning and development, and rewards-based workforce performance.

 

The OE21 approach provides Management Analyst knowledge and data collection and analysis models for all focus team members. The time spent on OE21 learning and implementation depends on the organization’s ongoing workload. Our new OE21 approach is designed to ensure that the focus team members finish all OE21 processes and implementation tasks on a part-time and flexible basis, over a period of six to twelve months.

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The economical way to get started is to register at least four managers (each belonging to a separate focus team) in our new course to be published in July 2023. This self-paced online training course must be successfully completed before moving foreward to full implementation of our OE21 Applied Management Program. Students who successfully complete CMA-OE Training receive Training Certifications from our learning and development platform.

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The organization’s managers that finish both training and implementation become Certified Management Analysts (CMA-OE™). Each year new managers can be rotated through the program as the organization sees fit.

 

Bottom Line – We can add Management Analyst capabilities to almost any organization manager, and these new capabilities combine with their normal roles and skills to make them of far greater value to the Top Executives they report to. Most importantly HR Managers and other managers can leverage the OE21 Applied Management Program as a new path towards the C-Suite.

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Chuck Mitchell, Managing Director and OE21 Program developer.

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REFERENCES

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Extracts from US Bureau of Labor and Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (online)

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What Top Executives Do

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/top-executives.htm

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What Management Analysts Do

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/management-analysts.htm

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What Human Resources Managers Do

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/human-resources-managers.htm

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