This blog is in response to the HBR blog 'It's not HR's job to be strategic' - http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/its-not-hrs-job-to-be-strategic/
Unlike the blog above, I believe HRM and HR Technology (including L&D) have a very important role in the organisation's bigger picture, supporting people within the organisation, which requires a strategic overview of how people can be attracted to the organisation and supported to reach their fullest potential. While traditionally HRM was built on McGregor's Theory X, facilitating Taylorist style industrial age organisations, today's HRM is needed to support organisational transformations focusing much more on workforce motivation, agility and resilience.
Organisational Development (not to be mistaken for L&D) on the other hand is committed to the organisational bigger systemic picture, which includes people, process, finance, IT, governance and other organisational functions. With this broadness of overview, OD helps to remove silo working mentalities. They should be seen as the organisation's 'bees', cross-pollinators of ideas. Siloed strategic thinking around one aspect of the organisation does not deliver efficiencies or innovation. This is where OD draws strategists, planners and doers together to collaborate on cross-functional innovative solutions.
OD does not hold the detail, they are solely the facilitators of collaborative strategic working practices as part of the bigger organisational picture, bringing people, knowledge and ideas together from across the organisation. This makes OD is a useful partner in partnership working with other organisations whose culture and processes may differ, as ODs expertise in Organisational Behaviour, Culture and Design supports the building of bridges and the re-designing of organisational systems and structures.
So in summary both HRM and OD have an important strategic function. The only difference is that HR is a functional strategist while OD is a cross-functional strategist.
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