Comments on: Who’s overlapping who?

By: Flora Marriott

Flora Marriott — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 06:42:52 +0000

Good post Sukh. It is probably a failing of mine that I am impatient with the L&D – OD distinction and debate. I started off my career as an operational line manager, nothing to do with HR at all. Except that I managed a lot of people. If I put my ops manager hat back on, my reaction is “what on earth is this debate about?”. What are all these myriad support function roles?
Since then I’ve ignored the differences in L&D/OD and just got on with learning my trade and trying to make a difference. Probably I should pay more attention and deliberately build up OD job titles on my cv.
However maybe that’s one reason why at the moment I’ve chosen to work in a smaller organisation. I don’t have to worry about these distinctions. I’m the only person doing an L&D/OD role so I can just get on and do stuff thats needed without worry about which box I’m meant to stay in. Plus I can get very involved with HR strategy in general.
That all sounds like its all about me. It’s not. I’m just saying in a clumsy way that I am unconvinced about the relevance of these words and that I dislike silos.

By: Shani Efford-Eliraz

Shani Efford-Eliraz — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:50:55 +0000

I’m encouraged to hear that – one day our dream will be reality.

(I also added the column to my Tweetdeck and am following it henceforth!)

Have a great weekend!

By: Sukh Pabial

Sukh Pabial — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:38:40 +0000

Hi Shani, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.

I think you’re right about the ivory tower effect with respect to the various functions you’ve mentioned there. I think one of the encouraging things that I’ve come across in my networks on Twitter, through the blog and communities like #connectinghr, is that there a growing number of people who are very willing to not let these types of behaviour continue. It’s not helpful to organisations when this happens and needs a strong team to be able to lead them out of these patterns.

I share that dream!

By: Shani Efford-Eliraz

Shani Efford-Eliraz — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:42:12 +0000

Hi Sukh -
Thanks for this! I think this is a very current topic. The conversation is very much in place, and like yourself, I found there is an overlap between the two, especially the minute L&D solutions are truly strategic.

What I have found, however, that in the professional community that surrounds people functions, there is somewhat of ivory-towering effect of each of the functions: HR is HR; OD is OD; L&D is L&D. The three rarely really work together and are very precious about their own contribution. They often replicate each other efforts, sometimes duplicate systems without considering sharing information or the implications of solutions they put in place have on other people functions.
Just as an example, how many organisations do you know who have a talent programme that’s disconnected from the L&D function? (I know too many.)

To borrow the words of a visionary – I have a dream! A place where HR, L&D and OD collaborate fully, share information and solutions fully and create a powerful, strategic people function that delivers real business impact.