Competence and Commitment emerge as limiting factors

What good are the most convincing strategic the-concepts if your people lack the ability and the will to put them to work? The challenge is to develop people and to develop them not only for what they are doing today, but for what they will need to do tomorrow. Strategic HR development is becoming a critical factor for the success of any business.
Professor Dr Dr h.c. Lutz von Rosenstiel, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich.

Admittedly, the commonplace call for aligning all HR development instruments with the corporate strategy is neither new nor original. Despite this fact, a lasting strategic alignment is still a rare find in everyday business. This means that the great promise of strategic HR development is left to waste. The eight-stage the-concept is meant as an appeal for a new way of seeing HR development: eight stages on the path from being a mere source for costs to becoming a recognized functional area of the business with its own service spectrum and a unique contribution to the success of the company.