Understanding how to manage Human Resources will  be key to your success as a business leader.  

Believe it or not, many business people with  great business strategies, plans, and products fail  

because they do not fully grasp the importance  of human resource management.

Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM said you can get capital and erect buildings, but it takes people to build a business.

Managers use a lot of words  to describe how valuable people are to their organizations.

Human resources, human capital, intellectual assets, and talent all imply that people play a vital role in business success.

No matter what part of the business you're dealing with,

whether it's figuring out where to put a new  plant, designing a new product,

formulating your strategy, or developing a cost structure, every single business issue ultimately becomes a people issue.

At the heart of it you've got to have  people with the right skills, opportunities, and motivation

to face those challenges and achieve  business success.

This is the essence of human resource management: to manage people in a way that drives business success.

To drive success, human resource management involves a wide  variety of activities including analyzing

a company's competitive environment and designing  jobs so the company's strategy can be successfully implemented.

This in turn requires selecting  the right people, developing their skills

to meet strategic objectives, and motivating them  toward a common goal. So if you enjoy bringing  

people together for a common purpose, coaching and  training people to succeed in an organizational setting,

and making sure people are properly  rewarded and recognized for the work they do, 

then Human Resource Management may be the career for you.

To provide additional insight on whether HR management is the career for you,

we've gone out to ask some experienced managers questions about why they chose HR as a career.

We got some pretty  interesting answers. What do you love about HR?  

I love the variety in HR. I am an HR generalist  which means I work in organizational talent in  

training and hiring and recruiting.  I work in organizational structure,  

helping to reorganize companies and restructure  them or bring in companies that are being acquired. 

It's actually an interesting field, I  had a great mentor once that talked about  

why he went into the field of OB and HR after doing  undergraduate work in finance.

And something resonated really well with me. Basically it said  that no matter what business or organizational issue

you're dealing with, that could be entering  a new market, that could be designing a product,  

that could be solving some analytical challenge  or technical challenge, every single business  

issue or organizational issue ultimately becomes  a people issue. At the heart of it you've got to have

someone with the right skills, capabilities  to face that challenge, and so it's how do you find

those people, how do you get them into the  right roles, how do you motivate them,

how do you help manage and unleash their performance, but  ultimately every business issue is a people issue.  

And the one function HR and OB is one that touches  every aspect related to people.

There are so many reasons why I love the field of Human Resources.

And it's actually hard to sort of figure it out and if I go back to what drew me into the field of Human Resources it's really sports.

I was a big jock in school I played three sports in high  school, I played two in college and everything

I loved about sports I find is translatable to the  world of organizations, such as organizing to win,  

just as if as when you're on a team and you've  got to try to figure out what's the right way  

that we can organize the skills and talents we  have to achieve our goal, the same thing is true in an organization.

When you're in organization  development and human resources, you're getting a  

chance to figure out how do we assemble the people  and the resources and the assets we have to win in  

the markets that we want to win in, to put the best people in the best roles and amplify their skills and their strengths.

And so I found over the years the more I got into human resources, the more I loved it

because everything I loved about sports  is what I loved about human resources.

Why would you want to work in HR? I knew ever since I was  an undergrad that I wanted to go into consulting  

and I knew I really wanted to go into consulting  around leadership development, executive coaching,  

organizational behavior, and organizational design  because in my experience having had jobs through  

high school and through college, I knew most of  the challenges in an organization were with the people.

You know organizations have figured out  how to make products

they haven't figured out how to rally people around a cause.

Of course HR is a fun and exciting area to work in,

but what will you get from studying organizational behavior and  human resource management in school?

What skills will you develop to help effectively manage  people and drive business success?

What do I get from studying HR?

I think the advantage is that we've actually been trained with people who have spent time in this field,

leaders in the field, thought leaders in the field of Human Resources, organizational development,

organizational design, you have a chance then to put those theories into practice when you go out into the field.

The great thing about OB HR coursework is it will make anybody in any profession more successful.

In fact we've done a study at General Mills of the things that derail a person's career 

and it's usually the OB HR competencies that are the great derailers.

So even if I'm planning  to be a finance director or a marketing VP,

if I learn about the HR skills: communication,  collaboration, innovation, understanding the organization,  

being empathetic and listening to  the organization, all those things that HR has  

kind of an upper hand in, it will make anybody's  career more successful.

What is the most useful skill you learn from studying HR?

So for me it hasn't so been a skill that's been most useful for me in my work, it's been a mindset.

And the reason I say that is because the mindset that people have when they're dealing with a talent

is that if people aren't doing something right, it's a motivation issue and

you know these lazy people or I have the wrong people in the job.

But a lot of times they're mechanisms set up within  an organization, so the structure can influence,  

processes can influence why people aren't  successful. But they'll look at people as  

you know shame on them they're not doing the  right thing. But the really really interesting  

and fascinating thing and the mind that  I think you have to have is to look at  

an organization as a system and look at how  things are influencing that system because  

so many times you'll figure out that it's that  system, it's not the individual that's creating  

the outcome and if you can change the system the  individual within the system will change as well.  

The theory and skills you'll obtain while studying organizational behavior and human resource management are pretty valuable. 

They'll help you think more holistically, to push against the status quo,

and question existing assumptions.  They'll help you examine organizations as systems  

and be able to change dysfunctional systems to ensure that people and organizations are aligned towards success.

But such competencies are not  only important for HR managers, they are vital for  

all people working in organizations. How do you  know if HR is the right career for you?

Probably the test question that annoys me most when I  interview people is they want to get into OB HR  

because they like people. That's that's helpful,  but that's not really what drives the field,  

it's really the intersection of the strategy the  business is taking and your ability to influence that,

the degree of effectives you have in terms  of building systems and processes that enable strategy,

and then your ability to translate  that in meaningful terms to the broader employee population.

That's really the art of OB HR, so  if you have an interest in that intersection of  

strategy process and people, that's where it all  comes together. So it's much broader than liking  

people, and again I've been at enough campuses  around the world where a lot of HR people will  

tribute their, their need to get into HR because  they like people. It helps, but that's not a  

differentiator, the differentiator's  be able to connect strategy, process,  

systems with people. And a very effective, in  a very efficient way that drives value in the business.

If you're thinking about it, I would  say ask yourself if you are comfortable in both  

partnership situations and team situations where  you can help build on the momentum of a team,  

but also if you're comfortable in pushing back  and dealing with confrontation and interjecting  

ideas or disagreements in places where it's  not as comfortable. If you can be successful  

in both of those or be comfortable in both  those you'll do great in HR. The other would  

be business partnership. Are you comfortable not  just as a people person, not just as an amiable,  

but as someone who can again understand  the whole business and understand how  

the organizational aspect fits into making an  entire business situation become more successful.