Jan Hills, managing director of The Hills Consultancy, argues that HR must look to Ghandi when implementing a change programme.

‘You must be the change you want to see in the world’. A famous piece of advice from Ghandi, but is it relevant to HR? I think very.

Most CEOs I meet are undertaking some kind of change programme in their business: a strategic change, culture change or both simultaneously. Their HR function usually advises and frequently leads major parts of these change programmes.

For example, ‘talent management’ is a focus for many CEOs right now. HR spends a lot of time advising businesses how to handle their potential future stars. But a lot of HR directors I speak to say they haven’t identified their own high performing people. And often they haven’t planned a robust development programme or put succession in place for their key positions.

It’s not easy. ‘Talent management’ is tough at the best of times. It brings up awkward concerns like ‘Are my people actually good enough?’ – questions that are particularly difficult to address when asked of your own function.

It’s much easier to tell others what their problems are than to sort out your own. But until we do, line managers won’t see HR practicing what we preach. And, in my experience, this makes them sceptical about the advice we give.

How do we remove this scepticism? By following Ghandi’s advice, and by making sure the HR function is a role model of the change you’re suggesting to the business.

For example, if the business is seeking to be more client-focused and you’re leading a programme to help achieve this, have you given your people the same client skills training that the business is receiving? Are you measuring client satisfaction levels in the same way you’re advising the business to? Are you thinking about their business needs, like they should be about their client needs?

The recent work we’ve done with the luxury menswear company Ermenegildo Zegna is an example of how to apply these principles. There, the HR team have successfully moved from being transactional administrators to valued partners of the business. This transformation started when the CEO hired Lynda Tyler to be the new head of HR.

Looking at her brief – to help Zegna change from a product-led to a customer-led company – Lynda realised that, if the business were to achieve this goal, her HR team had to lead the way. So first we surveyed her internal clients, and understood exactly what they needed from HR in the future. We then began a four-year-long process to build new skills and a new customer-led mindset in the HR team to reflect these needs. This approach really paid off. In fact, the CEO has just made Lynda Tyler the process leader and overall co-ordinator of the change the company is undertaking.

Why? Because, by going through the process first, the HR department became a working example of the changes they were advocating to the rest of the business. And because HR were honest enough to share what difficulties they came up against with the rest of the business, there was no scepticism in sight.

You might be thinking that this all sounds terribly time consuming. True, it’s not a quick-fix. But if you can get this process in place in good time, you’ll reap the benefits later. Wouldn’t you rather spend half an hour sharpening your axe than go at a tree with a blunt one?