Trying Not To Lose in HR

I love March – primarily for March Madness and because I love basketball.  I spent the weekend watching as many NCAA Tournament games as possible, including a trip to Columbus, OH to watch my Michigan State Spartans compete in the 1st and 2nd rounds (which technically is in accurate – it was actually the 2nd and 3rd rounds because of those stupid play in games on Tuesday and Wednesday are “really” the 1st round – but they’re not, we all know it – the only people who truly think that is the 1st round is the NCAA and the parents of the kids playing in those games – which BTW are the only people in those stands watching!).

While enjoying this pastime I heard very often the sports cliche: “They are playing not to lose versus trying to win”.

For those who have competed in sports (and for many in business), you know exactly what this looks and feels like.  It’s playing keep away with the ball when you’re up 3 in the first half!  No! Stop! Run your normal offense. It’s your favorite NFL team going into a prevent defense up 10 points with 15 minutes to play (Don’t do it – it’s going to “prevent” you from winning!).  Playing not to lose is being conservative – maybe to conservative – to the point of you stop doing what it took that got you in the position to win.

We do this in HR.

Too many times we tell managers “No”, when we should be telling them “Yes” – we become some risk avoidant they we miss out on some very good opportunities for our organization.   It’s not HR’s job to avoid risk – it’s HR’s job to measure the level of risk and work with our organizational partners to determine if they are comfortable with the level of risk we are about to take.  Those are to very different things – many HR Pros misconstrue this issue.   They try at all costs to avoid all risk, which isn’t necessarily the right thing for the business.  They aren’t trying to win, they’re trying not to lose.

The next time you find yourself in a position of giving advice to your operations partners at work, ask yourself this one question –

  • Am I trying to make the company/organization better right now, or am I trying to eliminate risk?

Then determine, what should I be doing?  For some of you the right choice will be to say – at this point, right now, I have to eliminate risk – it’s the right call.  But for many of you, you will have to circle back and truly try to make your organizations better by managing the risk that is presented.

Spend today trying to win.

7 thoughts on “Trying Not To Lose in HR

  1. Well, I do not always agree with Tim but who does! I do love his passion though and who could hate his love of the Final Four…(no sport compares to this madness) but I have to agree with Tim on this one.

    Lawyers are there to give advice to HR, HR does not have to take it. During the tech boom, I got a ton of advice from Legal and I took some of it…maybe 15% to 20%, boy am I am happy I went with my gut and instincts and did what I did with my team…the whole company won. The lawyers were risk adverse when it came to branding, competitive intelligence, our war room, recruiting tactics and so much more.

    Great post Tim, (really!!!)

  2. Both are good articles but I’m Sackett’s blog so I’ll stroke his ego (kidding) I like it. One reason is because it lets me know that even when you are having some down time you are still thinking about HR, which would mean you love it, or obsessed! either way I’m that category too. PS your boys the Spartans saved my bracket a little bit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.