In today's changing environment, uncertainty is the only constant. We have no choice but to live with the uncertainty; we can't fix it, says international guru Dave Ulrich, co-founder and principal of the RBL Group. Speaking to a packed room at People Matters TechHR this year, he pointed out that no matter how hard we try, we cannot fix the uncertainty.

So what do we do? We find that core of certainty underneath it, he says, and we build on that. In the same way that we might not know anything about our child's future - but we do know that we love our child and we can continue to give that love - we focus on the certainty about the world that we are sure of.

But in this whole process, HR is limited by its own assumptions, says Dave. "We have assumptions about our world that have to change," he told the audience. Without getting over those assumptions in some way, it's not possible to make a difference, he pointed out.

How do we do get past our assumptions?

Dave shared three key ways of overcoming limiting assumptions.

Firstly, we need to realise that HR is not about HR. It's about creating value for others, recognising and providing the important things that leaders can give an employee. And those things may be rather different from what we assume.

"The best thing we can give an employee is a company that succeeds in the marketplace," said Dave. "Without success in the marketplace, there is no workplace."

Expand this truth, and it quickly becomes clear that for HR professionals, the job is really about connecting what they know and can do with what the customer, the investor, and other stakeholders need and want and expect.

Everything that HR professionals do, from admin to functional expertise to strategy, is so that the organisation can succeed in the marketplace; everything on human capability that the HR function offers to stakeholders has to lead back to that. Opportunities and challenges alike must be connected to customers.

Secondly, HR is not to be done for HR's sake; it must be done for stakeholder value. "I am scared of all these 'latest HR initiatives'," Dave quipped - pointing out that new and shiny things are not necessarily what the function needs.

Instead, he said, HR professionals must organise what they do in a way that makes their value-add simple. He outlined four broad categories that can clearly define every programme, initiative, or process: talent, leadership, organisation, and HR. Which of these things does an initiative create value for stakeholders through?

Thirdly, the HR function needs to evolve and upgrade its quality. Pointing to research that identifies the top 10 characteristics of HR, Dave said that the most important characteristics are reputation and relationships: how HR professionals are viewed, and how well they get along with people outside and inside their own function.

Overcome the fear of failure

In conversation with Ashish Kumar Jha, co-founder and CEO of Vani.coach, Dave offered some keen advice on how to get past the obstacle of potential failure. The point, he said, is not to see failure as a huge negative - but as a necessary part of progress.

"Do not be defined by the past failure," he said. "Be defined by your future opportunity."

Many people, he pointed out, are terrified of what happens if they fail, and they have difficulty answering questions around failure. But in truth, he said: if you are not failing, you are not learning or progressing.

"Think of where you are in relation to your objective," he said, pointing out that always, the cost of inaction is greater than cost of failure. 

In HR terms, this means that we cannot look at employees in terms of their individual successes or failures. "You fight a war with people, you win a war with organisations," he reminded the audience - meaning that the individual's failure is negligible in the larger picture, and that the focus needs to be on the organisation as a whole.

Similarly, he added, we should look at the individual's success in the perspective of what it means in the broader view: "Don't think in terms of how much they've improved, think in terms of how much more they will benefit customers, investors, stakeholders."