STRATEGIC MUSCLES

Explore the
6 Muscles of Strategic HR

1
2
3
4
5
6
1

THINK

Analyzing data, understanding systems, making predictions, diagnosis & insights

2

SENSE

Capturing signals that matter, inside and outside, feedback, indicators, trends,

3

CREATE

Co-creating solutions solving problems, creativity, design thinking, anticipating, decision making.

4

DELIVER

Execution, orchestration, resilient and agile, change management navigate resistance & barriers, sustainable results

5

FEEL

EQ – self-awareness, beliefs, and values, accountability, confidence, intuition & curiosity

6

ENGAGE

EQ – other awareness, relationships, showing up, communicating, influencing, challenge, navigating politics

Learn more about the 6 Muscles of Strategic HR

THINK muscle

  • Putting order to the inputs from your sensing
  • Analyzing the root causes of a phenomenon
  • Forming a diagnosis that leads to insights and the best possible remedies and solutions
  • Stepping back to see the whole picture and how the dots are connecting
  • Go beyond a siloed functional interpretation
  • Anticipate cause and effects when you apply certain levers
  • Converting data into a diagnosis and insight
  • Ask the right questions to form the possible hypothesis
  • Seek the right data inputs
  • Call out misrepresentation and misinterpretation of data
  • Spot the weaknesses in an argument

SENSE muscle

  • Catching signals, seeing, smelling, listening
  • Become intimate with the most important business problems and opportunities
  • Focus your curiosity, seek data, asking questions, observing, digging in, benchmarking, understanding trends, reacting to threats, anticipate risks
  • Sense the value of your people practices
  • Expand your data sources beyond your function
  • Seek exposure to the truth out-of-the-box sources of inspiration and learning
  • New impulses for your challenges, to explore different perspectives and approaches
  • Balance your radar between inside versus outside.

FEEL muscle

  • Strong self-awareness and ability to regulate emotions
  • Conscious about your values, style & role
  • Owning up to the strategy and being accountable for success and failure
  • Confidence comes with exposure – having the courage to show presence
  • Intuition will take you the last mile to important decision making… But don’t let intuition replace the hard & necessary work of seeking insights
  • Curiosity – being an active sensor and listener for inputs, inspirations, risks, trends…

ENGAGE muscle

  • Empathy for the world around you
  • Show up and claim your seat at the table of strategic discussions
  • Build trust that you can contribute, add value with insights, have assets, be accountable, lead and be part of the solution
  • Navigating the ecosystem of stakeholders and develop relationships
  • Comfortable playing in a team of diverse contributors
  • The ‘challenge moment’ is where the rubber hits the road, where your strategic thinking comes out in the open
  • Your message is coming across, you are precise, concise and synthesize appropriately
  • Coaching your team on their strategic capabilities

CREATE muscle

  • Co-design forward-looking strategy and solutions aligned with your diagnosis & insights
  • Business strategy and HR strategy become ONE
  • Navigate the multiple factors have surfaced in your diagnosis: Competition, complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty and constant change
  • Meaningful and impactful strategy and solutions require creativity and out of box thinking
  • Unexplored paths may have the potential to solve the most complex problems
  • Quirkiness, diversity of thought, breaking with paradigms and inspiration from the most unlikely sources may open your horizon
  • Anticipate, make assumptions and create scenarios
  • Facilitate informed decision making and pro-active approach to managing risks

DELIVER muscle

  • Confront a lack of decision making and seek constructive conflicts
  • Develop high-quality action plans with effective follow-up mechanisms tying back to the analytics that facilitated the original decision making
  • Inspire & energize all actors to buy into the direction of your strategy
  • Mobilize and enable to ensure high-quality execution and sustainable change.
  • Facilitate transparency, openness and feedback loops to continuously improve your plans
  • Seek transparency and be proactive about risks
  • Confront and evaluate the barriers and rebukes: New data point that has surfaced and you need to be agile and consider new directions. Or your approach needs strengthening in, for example, seeking buy-in, improving enablement
  • Prompt, constructively aggressive and resourceful about managing problems