HR heads become CEOs and business Leaders

Hi folks

Have published this on my blog. So might be a repitition for some

HR people crack the glass ceiling at BPO cos.

Well I am not talking about the usually understood contexts of glass ceilings as applied to minorities in the corporate workplace.

Instead, I am referring to the functional glass ceiling. For years, accounting, sales, marketing and finance people were usually the first choices to lead businesses as CEOs. Most people who had spent their careers in a support function like HR had to be content with a job like Director HR in the corporate ladder. The only route that was open to them to actually head businesses were in niche industries like HR consulting outfits.

No longer.

In India at least I see a rash of HR honchos who've made it to the corner office, and interestingly its in the people intensive BPO industry. There are several reasons for this but lets take a look at the people:

- Sujit Bakshi of vCustomer
- Aadesh Goyal of Hughes' BPO unit
- Bhaskar Das of Sutherland Technologies
- Prashant Sankaran of Digital Contact Centre (a part of HP)
- Vinoo Thimayya of Honeywell's BPO

I am sure there are others in the non-BPO industry too ( I know of Dr. Ajoy Kumar who briefly headed Cummins Deisel Sales & Service after a stint as GM HR of the Tata Group, but then he wasn't a career HR person). And a lot of CEOs have done some stints in HR.

Coming specifically to the case of HR people heading BPO operations, I have the following theories:

- BPO work is quite content-free and the essential skill required for a leader is people management skills, where HR people are the assets
- When BPO organizations mushroomed in India there were not too many top leaders available and with the reason given above HR directors were given the chance

What do you think?

Warm regards,

Dear Gautam,

BPO organisations have started being competitive and if you observe most of the successful BPO's are headed by people from Sales and Financial Background.
As you said People management is the core-competency in BPO business but when it matters doing business can the HR community take the pressures?
Having said that let me remind you that I am an HR Professional myself.

Regards
S

This statement operates on the unspoken dual assumption that:
- Sales and Finance guys would not normally manage people well
- HR guys would normally be able to manage people well
Both statements are unwarranted generalisations falling into the same genre as:
- Political scientists make good politicans
- MBAs make good managers

Sorry for my question, but what is BPO organizations mean?

BPO - Business Process Outsourcing

I believe we should stop this categorization of HR vs. Marketing Vs. Finance blah blah . We should not make it another discussion like Men/Women make better managers.

We should try understand that it is the business instinct that needs to be present in a person to do business. It is all about managing resources and getting the work done. So, we should not bring in some people in picture to highlight that a group of people make better managers.
We HR people should now bring out ourselves of that "People" mantra and start aligning our actions to the reality..thats business.

Lets hope we people in HR drop this idea of defining our identity. We are a part of business like any other part is.

GG

I have to agree to what you are saying, I think people intensive industries tend to honor HR equally with counterparts and one of the primary reason HR got its much deserved chair in the board meeting is because of emergence of the IT industry.

Regards

Hey guys as far as the HR guy becoming CEO is concerned let me tell you one thing it not important whether you do become the CEo or not but as long as HR is able to become a parter in the org. growth and profitability HR will have a dominant role to play.As far as the CEO aspect is concerned you will see that in the days to come as one rises up in the hierarchy funtional specialsation will become irrelevent and the so called HR skills of today will become the necessary competncy and the diffrentiating factor for achieving the top position.

I think the simple reason why people from sales/marketing or Finance get CEO positions is because perhaps these people tend to be more result oriented compared to HR people? Don't get me wrong, I too feel HR is a very crucial component in running an org. but perhaps Finance and Sales background people tend to be more result and objective oriented people that's why board directors prefer to hire a CEO of such a background. Could it also be that the sales and marketing or finance department are considered to be more important business functions in an organization? I know some of you may not agree to this but sadly it's becoming like a stereotype

It's good to know that HR people are eventually becoming ceo's.

Though not all HR gurus can become CEO, we can all be "strategic partners" of our organization. If HR remains the admin guy on the block, most of our functions will be outsourced

High paying HR practitioners are those who successfully transformed HR role from just admin experts to "strategic partners" and "change agents".