Learning HR Strategy through Certificate Programs

When choosing a career in HR, you will come to learn that a large majority of your job tasks include formulating, executing, or guiding others through strategy; understand what strategy is all about will be key to your success. There are many certificate programs to choose from to enroll in; enrolling in a certificate program will prepare and educate you on this subject. Success in the field comes from success in the classroom.

What exactly is strategy? How would one define the term? Henry Mintzberg, defined strategy as a pattern in a stream of decisions, in which a group of managers define their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which determine a strategic plan. Mintzberg wanted to highlight that oftentimes strategic plans do not accurately mirror what's going on in the organization.

If you really want to understand an organization's strategy, you have to look for a pattern in how all of the decisions that are made, how resources are allocated, where talent is put, and where the best people end up wanting to go within the organization, this will give you a better sense of the true strategy of an organization. After completing your human resources certificate, you will hold the key skills of strategic decision-making, which will be extremely beneficial in your career.

Strategy is involved with making decisions about competition, where every conclusion deals with answering one of three basic questions. The first question is where to compete. This focuses on the topic of, what geographic product locations are you going to compete in as an organization? What customer groups do you want to target? Some people have referred to this as the domain-choice decision: trying to figure out which industries to enter, which product markets to be associated with, and which geographies you will be present in as an organization.

The second question is how to compete through the value that you deliver to customers. Basically, what is special about your product or service that will make a customer want to buy from you instead of from competitors? Certificate programs will discuss three generic strategies: cost, differentiation, and focus. The strategy based on focus was eliminated because focus is simply being a cost or differentiation strategy within a particular customer position. Cost strategy was also later eliminated, and today we are left with differentiation, which tries to understand the characteristics on which you're going to make your product or service unique from your competitors. It could be differentiating on cost, quality, or innovation among many other factors. Ultimately you want to help your organization understand the value you're going to bring to customers will surpass that brought by competitors.

Lastly, you ask what area does the product or service compete in? Is it the people, technology, or processes you are going to need to develop in order to differentiate yourself? When completing your human resources certificate, it will be helpful to know that mistakes in strategic decisions happen because decision-makers focus either on where or how to compete and neglect on what to compete. For example, if a soda company was interested in entering a new market, they may look to acquire some fast-food companies. The strategy behind this decision is to be able to leverage into the industry to be able to differentiate them, and also for better distribution. This allows them to have better access to customers because any customer that came into one of those fast-food establishment is automatically going to buy the soda product. However, this was a bad decision on how to compete because the soda company had absolutely no competence on how to run a fast-food company. They were focused on the idea of higher sales, but failed to incorporate management skills in the new acquisition, and as a result suffered.

Overall, when making strategic decisions it is important to think about all areas of business and how they will be affected. It is smart to focus on differentiation and competition. Making educated business decisions will set you aside as a firm business leader and will push your career as an HR leader.

About the Author

David Shoemaker is Vice President of Learning Solutions and Innovation at eCornell. For more information on certificate programs, human resources certificate, or eCornell, please visit http://www.eCornell.com

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