By Nathaniel Luce
Nancy Abbott has a very straightforward message for her Executive MBA students, one that cuts through any doubt about HR’s relevance to a manager’s toolkit: Human capital development is a responsibility that all managers must bear, regardless of title.
“In most companies, the ratio of HR people to employees is 1:100,” she explains. “So who is actually interacting with employees, and interpreting messages? It’s you, the manager, not HR people.
“You are, in your essence, an HR manager.”
In her five-week course “Strategic Alignment of Human Capital,” Abbott calls on her own extensive experience to teach a model for alignment that incorporates an organization’s customer value proposition into a team’s culture, hiring, management, and development practices.
Professor Nancy Abbott
During her career at General Electric and GE Capital, Abbott served in Human Resources leadership roles in a number of industrial and financial services business units, most recently as the Global Human Resources Leader for GE Capital Commercial Real Estate. She previously served as the Organization and Development Leader for GE Capital’s 95,000 employees worldwide. As GE has evolved, she has led acquisition, reorganization, and divestiture teams.
“I bring the strong experience, helping people steer ideas into reality,” she says.
She enlists the help of impactful speakers to help students see the value of that application. One notable speaker in this year’s course was Thomas Cigarran, the co-owner and chairman of the Nashville Predators. Cigarran spoke to the class about his three keys to success, and how those elements played into the development of the Predators, an NHL team founded in 1998 that — under Cigarran’s leadership — earned its first Stanley Cup appearance last year and its first Presidents’ Trophy this season.
Abbott is quick to point out how the Predators’ goals fit into her model for capital alignment. Finding great people requires effective talent acquisition, goal creation necessitates performance management, and a successful environment comes from a purposeful culture.
Her course “is more application than theory. It seeps into everything that I teach. It’s all about applying what you learn. Our guest speakers are the image of that concept — you take it and apply it.”
To learn more about the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program, click here.
