HR on the box…

People Management Magazine reported in their magazine a report on TV program “Can You Bank On Me? BBC1 24 August 2009” the program was about City high-flyers that were sent to work in struggling business to come up with ways of saving the real business. According to the write up the high-flyers managed to fail spectactually.

Unfortunately I was on holiday when the show was aired and have not managed to find the full show yet. It stagers me the amount of so called “business experts” there are who I believe don’t actually know or have that true business acumen. I spend a lot of time reading HR information and I find it so easy to work out in seconds if the report is getting written by either an acting HR professional working operationally or someone with pure business acumen and someone not operating in an operational role.  When I was studying at university we spent many hours analyzing a business’s cash flow and market position coming up with ideas of what could save the business and discussing pros and cons of each one.

It does highlight that to run a business it is impossible to have one skill but you need a range, a lot of high-flyers will be skilled in one area and not be able to look at the bigger picture.