You Can't Get There From Here

We had a back-and-forth on my yahoo!group about a billing issue. One of our members is a web designer and she had designed a website for a client. To her chagrin, the client was leaving the designer for someone new, and wanted the source code for the site. The designer was asking our group whether this was her property (in other words, whether she could properly bill the client if they wanted it) or not. She got a bunch of opinions from other members. But here's what I noticed:

Half of the responses came from the legalistic/contractual/factual side of the house. Those folks said things like It depends on your contract language/Precedent holds that/If the code is x, y or z/If your client wants this and not that/etc. The other half of the replies were completely different. They came from the emotional/relationship side of things. They asked questions like How do you want to leave your relationship with this client? What kind of message do you want to send (e.g., Leave me and it'll cost you?). How do you want to feel about this incident and the way you handled it, months or years from now?

TWO POKES AT THE ELEPHANT

These two perspectives on conflict are valuable. We need to have those underpinnings of contractual language, of precedent and commonly accepted industry practices.

But we don't want to jump right to that place. If we do, we immediately define the problem as a problem of Law. This designer was upset. The Law was a place to turn because we get angry when people desert us, understandably. We want to Get Even.

If you take out the legal aspect of the thing and think about the relationship/communication/self-concept piece, you see (as my friend Susan wisely remarked when I told her this story):

"If we keep our customers by virtue of charging them fees to leave us, we will never know which customers would leave us, but for the associated fees. If we allow customers to freely leave us and come back when they choose, we'll learn what we have that's valuable and know why our clients remain so."

THE HR TUG-OF-WAR

In HR, we run into this problem all the time. I'm not talking about clients leaving us - I'm talking about the tug-of-war between the Legal approach and the Relationship one. We jump to Legal in a flash: you broke the policy, that's not how we handle that, a VP will need to approve that, I'm sorry - no exceptions, we must take corrective action. We are masters of the Law, which is odd, given that as HR leaders we are immersed in relationship and communication issues all day long.

Still, we cling to the Legal framework in so, so many instances. We take comfort in the Word, the employee handbook, and refer to it instead of our own good judgment and knowledge of human nature.

Here is an HR example of Law over Culture, and a terribly silly one. In many companies, an expecting mom is asked whether she's planning to return to work after maternity leave, or not. If she says "Yes, I am returning to work" her insurance coverage is paid by the company during maternity leave. If she says "No, I'm not returning" then she terminates when she delivers, or leaves work prior to delivery - and she pays her own insurance premiums after that.

Now, what person with a brain would say "Look, I'm not returning to work after the baby" if she knows that saying those words will cost her five hundred dollars? Would your company hire anyone that stupid? No. So she says "I think I'll be returning, at least I hope so" and then everyone acts as though she's committed a grave sin when she calls to say "Nope, I changed my mind" six weeks after the baby is born.

THOU MOM WITH FORKED TONGUE

When we come from the Legal perspective, we think "She lied to us! How unprofessional." If we have that thought, we have ourselves to blame. She's not unprofessional. Until the moment that mom is due to be at her desk, her decision remains flexible. We created a stupid Law that encourages people to waffle and keep their feelings close to their vests. That's our fault, not theirs. We should pay the insurance during maternity leave whether Mom is staying or leaving, and tell people to share with us their true feelings about staying home or returning to work.

When the Law impels people to be less than forthcoming, it's a bad Law. When we uphold the bad Law and say to our workmates, "These moms going on maternity leave! You can't trust them!" we're part of the problem.

BACK UP THE TRUCK

We need to step away from the Law as HR leaders and remember that our ideal state is not to lead the HR function in an orderly and well-run organization. Our highest ambition is to lead our function in a vibrant and connected organization where all of our employees' energy goes toward attacking business problems and succeeding in the marketplace. The Law will never get us there. Focusing on interactions, relationships and the messages that move throughout our organizations, just may.

And the thing is, the Legal plane and the Cultural plane don't intersect. You can't get there from here. They don't mesh all that easily, either, but when we appeal to fairness and equity, we're harking back to the fundamental reasons the Law was created, if not to its tedious and ever-changing particulars.

If you approach HR issues, people issues, business issues from this perspective: what relationships are at stake here, what elements of trust and accountability that my solution must incorporate? If we look at what we're out to accomplish with a cultural frame of reference, the Law will be served but will not be made paramount. Because it isn't. Not when you're dealing with people on teams and organizational cultures that wither every time the words "That's not our policy" are uttered.

You can keep the Law in mind, but focus on the human beings operating in your midst. You will never build a winning organization by policy-making and -enforcing your way there.