If everyone took the time to read everything that's printed everyday about the Human Resources profession, the world of work, and how to make it better, we'd all be lost in a sea of mostly meaningless words. Interesting concepts? Sure. Thoughtful? Maybe. Relevant? Only you can decide that.

As an HR professional, you've likely been conditioned to think you aren't living up to your potential; that you don't get it. You've been told over and over that you're not doing the workplace - or your employees - any favors. Go ahead and google "finance doesn't get it" and it will return "did you mean fiance doesn't get it?" Google "HR doesn't get it" and you'll get 133,000,000 results in .40 seconds.

It is sooooo easy to pick on HR. I've done it for years. And I'm an HR professional by trade. That's kind of messed up, isn't it?! Do I think there's a lot we could be doing better? You bet. But I could also rant on and on about what Finance, Marketing, IT, and any other substantive function should do better. The unfortunate difference is that when we talk about HR, we talk about it as if it's all the HR professionals' fault. We use words like "hate" and "sucks" and "stupid".

Come on. Admit it. This is a shared problem - not one to be generalized and heaped upon a multi-disciplined, diverse set of professionals who are mostly trying to do the right thing. HR is rarely given the resources, authority, or encouragement to be everything we say they should be.

You want mind-blowing strategic HR? Then fucking pay for it.

You want better data analytics and business intelligence from HR? Then give them the systems, the technologies, and the know-how to produce it. You want futuristic thinking? Then stop asking them to manage orientation, commoditized benefits plans, and rote compliance activities. Restructure. Reorganize.

This is not entirely your fault, HR. You are part of an ecosystem much bigger and more powerful than you are. You are stuck in the quicksand of "be careful of what you ask for." Organizations hired you to do something different than everyone else is telling them you should be doing. They are afraid to come to terms with what it will take to fix that. It won't be easy and it won't be cheap. It is easy (and cheap), however, for bloggers, journalists, and pundits to say HR doesn't get it. And in my opinion, that's a narrow-minded and terribly elementary way of trying to fix work.

I don't hate you. You do not suck. You are not stupid.