Donovan - The world's highest paid HR professional

Arguably the world's highest paid HR professional is Dennis Donovan, the HR head of Home Depot and here he spells out his approach for change:

- A sense of direction shared by the entire organisation, which depends on effective leadership at every level, as well as a uniting cause, spread from the top of the organisation down
- People: "A high-performing, diverse, workforce"
- Effective processes: "You can't have systemic change on a continuous basis without process," Donovan says. "I see a lot of organisations that think systems are the answer when, in fact, processes are, and systems merely automate processes. Unsuccessful launches of enterprise systems are usually the result of lousy process design"
- Organisational structure: "Structure is the enabler for direction, people, processes and systems to work together," Donovan says.

I learnt about Dennis Donovan from Tom Peters' ChangeThis manifesto where he talks about how Donovan is the benchmark for staff functions evolving into Professional Services Firm

"It's time to get serious about HR," said Tom Peters - dubbed the world's top management guru - while pacing the stage at March's London Business Forum. "In every organisation, the person with the second-highest pay should be the HR director."
You could almost hear the collective intake of breath. There were hundreds of senior executives present, and most had been expecting tips on how to boost their leadership skills or margins. Now they were being told to put HR at the centre of their business plans, supported by all the spending they could afford.