More Tony, Less Toby: Inside The Modern Reinvention Of HR

Ahead of the big SHRM trade show, I couldn’t help spotting several interesting articles related to the future of work, corporate culture and the practice of HR itself. One of the most interesting, from professor Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, spoke about the futility of the job interview and why it is such an overrated form of assessment. Another focuses on the challenges of managing talent that lives in a dual-career household.

The theme seems to be that the way we are interviewing, hiring and motivating workers is wrong, or at least flawed. As a symbol of this shift, the rise of the “Chief Culture Officer” has been so pronounced over the past seven or eight years that top tier business schools are even training MBA candidates on how to become one. Yet the stereotypes of the HR person as the chief rule enforcer (like Toby from the TV show The Office) endure. What will it take for HR to become the ones leading and nurturing the transformation of culture? To be less like Toby and more like Tony Hsieh from Zappos?

If you would like to read more of my thoughts on this topic, I wrote a LinkedIn article on the modern reinvention of HR.