HR from the Heart

HR from the Heart

Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business

By Libby Sartain with Martha I. Finney

pp. 271 AMACOM

Review by Lydia Morris Brown

According to Sartain, talented human resource professionals can build rewarding careers that are consistent with their personal values while, simultaneously, growing world-class organizations and having a positive impact on the bottom line. In HR from the Heart, she shares her more than 25 years of human resources experience at companies known for being great places to work, as well as for their products/services, and provides a wealth of unique and timely advice and strategies. These strategies and guidelines show practicing HR professionals, students of the discipline, and top executives (who want to know how HR can help their companies gain a competitive edge) how the human resources role can add value to a business, and how it can (by helping individuals harness their own innate capabilities, passions, and skills) also support and nurture the careers of every employee.

It is obvious, on every page, that Sartain loves the human resources profession, and that this love has been the driving force in her professional success and, consequently the success of such stellar companies as Southwest Airlines and Yahoo! Of course, when one tries to envision the linkage between love and HR compliance and administrative responsibilities (responsibilities that have a tendency to characterize human resources as the “enemy”), one naturally wonders, “What’s love got to do with it?” For, after all, who can forget the inimitable Grammy-winning words of Diva Tina Turner, who warned that “love is just a second-hand emotion. … who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” In the case of the HR professional, who needs a heart when a heart can be policied and procedured to death? Besides, the new and increasingly popular vision of HR is as a “business” that must hold itself accountable for the ROI of essential corporate assets, people and processes—a business that must abandon those people processes that don’t add strategic value.

From Sartain’s point of view, the “heart” required is one that must be fashioned out of “the seamless integration of emotional intelligence and business acumen.” This is not fly-by-night pop psychology, but a valid perspective, formed and borne out by experience, which says when HR professionals bring their authentic selves into their careers, they can successfully help employees do the same, and this is what contributes to the strategic goals of the company and the bottom line. The basic premise is that if an individual does not have a passionate calling for human resources work, and does not know how to find the perfect position that fits this passion, he or she cannot make HR an organization’s best business asset. First, and foremost, human resources work must be a quest for meaning in one’s own life, if it is to have any meaning at all for the organization.

This work is also different from other HR books in that it is written by a human resources practitioner for other human resources practitioners and it holds significant personal and professional lessons and insights for anyone in the workforce. Sartain has walked the talked, and with extraordinary success, if anything at all can be believed about the unique “people” culture of Southwest Airlines, where she spent 13 years.

Beyond the heart thing, the book also sports an iconoclastic, counterintuitive serendipity that delivers practical advice: Don’t worry about forging a path to the executive table, worry about being in a position to offer strategic support. Don’t listen to Greek-chorus consultants, if they don’t have anything positive to say about your HR efforts. Don’t talk HR, ask and listen instead. Don’t wear out your welcome and your usefulness, get out after three years if you have nothing more of value to contribute. Don’t think of human resources or human capital, think of “Hollywood talent.” Don’t rely on policy and procedure manuals, build strong managers instead. Don’t view diversity as black or white, view it as green. And, don’t go to work for a company whose HR department is not in or near the lobby.