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24 January 2012

Respect, innit? Pedestals, plinths and politeness

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, HR, line managers, management, motivation, relationships | Tags: , , |
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There was an entertaining, provocative and feisty – in a nice way – guest post at HRFishbowl earlier this month by Chris Fields that caught my eye, and its title gives a good indication of the content: The Audacity of HR. Its main argument is summed up in one of its own highlighted sentences:

Maybe we should stop talking about ourselves as if we were a different breed.”

Before anyone puts their hand up to ask to complain (there’s a comment box below, by the way), I come not to bury HR (although the praise might not be fulsome.) In some ways, the piece strikes the same nerve endings that The Guardian’s HR: Friend or Foe? article did last year – although in this instance the comments have been much more favourable.

In this particular case, one of the issues raised was HR professionals’ reaction to being laid off: a first person lesson in “this time it’s personal”. As one commenter noted:

Having seen first hand the attitude of *some* HR pros when on the orgs side of the desk vs the being laid off side of the desk this is a great reminder to us all that what HR pros do is not *just* business. It affects the lives of fellow humans in big ways all the time. When we forget that we get it wrong.”

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17 January 2012

All work and no play: how to strangle innovation

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, HR, leading performance, learning theory, learning transfer, line managers, management, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition, talent management | Tags: , , , |
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HRZone recently published an interesting article by Emma Littmoden, partner at The Living Leader, called Can HR devise rules that stimulate not stifle innovation? A question that begged for a response – possibly a fairly abrupt one – from the organisational equivalent of ‘the cheap seats’, I thought, so it’s lack of comments so far comes as a surprise. Perhaps everyone else’s HR departments have issued memos banning employees from posting comments at HRZone?

There were quite a few points I wanted to pick Emma up on, in the nicest possible way. First of these was her surprise at Apple’s apparent introduction of stern social media protocols, given the money it makes from handheld devices that encourage ‘the free-flowing ideas of the individuals on the payroll’. Once some of the world had stopped loading candle apps on their iPads and leaving £400’s worth of hi-tech equipment outside shops to mourn Steve Jobs (I’m no accountant, but a tea-light would have said the same, and been far cheaper and less of a personal data security risk), I got the impression that the control-freak tendencies of the recently deceased were aired more freely than previously. And Apple, for all the design savvy of its products (for which thanks should strictly speaking go to Johnny Ive), is a company that makes it very hard to dig beneath the OS, install open source software, and is very keen that we load our (very profitable) new toys with apps, tunes, books, movies and so on bought from an online store that very much runs by their rules. Apple’s version of the world is impeccably stylish, but pretty tightly closed. I’m not sure everyone wants to rule the world, but Apple is keener than most: their internal application of the tendency didn’t surprise me in the least.

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5 January 2012

Think of hope as a doorstep

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, coaching, HR, learning theory, learning transfer, life, motivation, recruitment, relationships | Tags: , , , |
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Ah yes, January. Bit of an opinion divider as months go. Some of us are raring to go, all ‘out with the old and in with the new’ – purging ourselves of brandy butter and port, and filling the void with earnest resolutions. Some of us are closer in sentiment to an old Flanders and Swann song:

Dark November brings the fog/Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December, then/Bloody January again!

My own take on resolutions is probably closer in spirit to an Oscar Wilde quote – “The basis of optimism is sheer terror”. The spur to think about changing things springs predominantly from the horror of the idea of more of the same old same old. Which in turn requires a modicum of awareness that things could at the very least be different, and possibly better. Faced with thinking or feeling “Uh oh, here we go again”, one answer is to go somewhere different.

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22 December 2011

Book Review: Leaders Make The Future by Bob Johansen

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, book reviews, communication, HR, leadership development, leading performance, learning transfer, life, management, motivation, organisational development, relationships, teamwork | Tags: , |
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The future is a tricky thing. An opening sentiment I’m sure many economists, policy makers and politicians would agree with right now, but also a logical truism. Books about the future and what it will bring always set themselves to invite ridicule a few years down the line, and have an inevitable lack of concrete foundations: what the future holders, even for professional futurologists such as Bob Johansen, can only ultimately be subjective guesswork. Whether we are looking at the future of work (as Richard Donkin did in another book reviewed here), of leadership, of organisations, or of society, it’s worth remembering a lesson from talent management: past performance is not a reliable guide. Yet, as Marshall McLuhan once observed, “We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.”

As a former President and Board member of the Institute For The Future, Bob Johansen should be as qualified a guide to what lies ahead as we are likely to find, drawing on four decades of experience of future casting for some of the world’s largest organisations. By its very nature, the future has always been uncertain; recently, the level of uncertainty seems to be increasing and leaders can no more be immune for anxiously wonder what it will mean for them than anyone else. Books such as Leaders Make The Future are, perhaps, only to be expected: that Johansen is one of a small number of authors essaying serious attempts to address this audience is to be welcomed.

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15 December 2011

Fools’ Gold and Human Materials Science

Posted by Ed under HR, leading performance, motivation, talent management, teamwork | Tags: , |
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They might have been being facetious, but I recently absent-mindedly eaves-dropped a conversation comparing HR with alchemy. The snatches of the conversation that I overheard were along the lines of turning base metal into gold, rather than exploring some of the other goals of a now archaic discipline – formulating the elixir of life (an aim now pursued more by cosmetics companies and surgeons and by life coaches) or creating the ultimate panacea. As a metaphor for talent management, I guess ‘turning lead into gold’ works rather better than elixirs, and panaceas can stand in for engagement strategies and BUPA membership. But it was an interesting reminder that the urge to discover the legendary magic formula that makes everything all right lives on, regardless of the fate of the disciplines that spawned the different approaches we’ve abandoned over the centuries.

I also couldn’t help but think – possibly as a measure of the prevailing lack of other stimulation at the time – that it was interesting that the other strand of alchemy had somehow dropped out of the equation. To quote everyone’s favourite wise friend (Wikipedia): “In general alchemists believe in a natural and symbolic unity of humanity with the cosmos.” This spiritual and philosophical strand was an integral element of alchemy, but one that fell by the wayside as the scientific discipline of chemistry evolved and displaced its metaphorical parent.

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8 December 2011

Inviting Mohammed to the mountain: HR and the Top Table

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, HR, leading performance, management, organisational development, relationships | Tags: , |
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It’s one of those perennial HR blog/article/networking event/moaning-over-the-canapés topics, isn’t it? How will HR ever get a seat at the top table where it deserves to be? I can almost hear at least two groups of readers sighing, for at least two different reasons. Some of them at the use of the word ‘deserves’, perhaps? Part of me – possibly the ‘bah humbug’ streak I can feel gathering strength with every glimpse of tinsel and waft of carols – can’t help but think that those at the top table may have come to the conclusion that HR is already being discussed in its most relevant forum: the HR Department. (And to be fair, even my more charitable streaks feel they may have at least part of a point.)

While any HR practitioners who haven’t already clicked away have no doubt started to bristle, indulge me briefly while I note some of the other objections that have been raised. Writing at the Management Information Exchange site, Luc Galoppin essays an opinion that will do nothing to unruffled HR feathers, arguing – among many other points, all worth reading – that HR is a force for continuity, not change:

HR Doesn’t Drive Organizational Change. Let’s face it: By their very nature, the fundamental HR processes are aimed at safeguarding stability. But when you ask HR managers about the core competencies of their departments, they will tell you that the management of organizational change is at the forefront. They are wrong.”

Some commentators have been even less civil on the topic.

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22 November 2011

Time to blow the whistle: Sepp Blatter and Leadership

Posted by Ed under communication, HR, leading performance | Tags: , , |
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I know it’s not how we usually think of it, but a football pitch is – at least for those in the football industry (and let’s be adult and admit it’s an industry, not a game) – a workplace. Football might be something that rouses fervent passions, but the people manoeuvring the round thing from one end to the other and back are paid really rather handsomely for their skills. It’s fair to say that even cynics acknowledge as much. Here for example, is Charlie Brooker, commenting on the last World Cup:

A huge number of my fellow citizens tune in and witness a glorious contest of ecstatic highs and heartbreaking lows. I see 22 millionaires ruining a lawn.”

(And yes, I know we quoted this when we talked about football in the context of succession planning, but as quotes that put things in their place go …)

The fact that Wembley Stadium, Stamford Bridge, the Emirates Stadium and Old Trafford are indeed workplaces makes one aspect of the recent hoo-ha about Sepp Blatter’s comments on racism in football all the more extraordinary. While it was heartening to see not only players, but managers and football industry authorities in this country speaking out in shock and dismay at the suggestion that on-field racist abuse should be settled by a handshake, I only heard one commentator pointing out that racist behaviour on the pitch – or, indeed, on the terraces – is illegal.

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8 November 2011

“What are they afraid of?” or “If Kirkpatrick must go, let’s at least give him a good send off!”: Guest post from Tony Martin

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, evaluation, HR, leading performance, learning transfer, management, reward and recognition, talent management | Tags: , , , , , |
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The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin D Roosevelt

There you go. Nothing like a well-worn cliché to kick off, and with the apparently imminent (again) collapse of the global financial market and the consequent disintegration of democracies around the world, that is probably as relevant and true today as it was 80 years ago. Except of course, the Armageddon scenario won’t happen because throughout time the brave have overcome the one thing that would precipitate such meltdown; the paralysis of fear and the temptation to sit on the touchline and watch the whole sorry saga dissolve before their frozen, staring eyes. (Caveat: if it does happen, by then you’ll have hopefully forgotten that you read it here first and have more important things to worry about.)

Robert Terry’s recent blog “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”, or “Kirkpatrick must go!” put forward an interesting ‘conspiracy theory’ slant to the whole training evaluation debate, and it got me thinking that the root cause of the lethargy that contributes to the huge sums that are wasted on training events might just be because it’s all a bit scary. Even in such austere market conditions, why are so many of our corporate leaders apparently content to sit back and watch the money flow out through their Learning & Development budgets? Why do they seem satisfied when they have a team who return from their development experience having made some new friends, are a bit more motivated and, at best, have transcended as individuals into better human beings, albeit not actually able to contribute anything of demonstrable additional value to the business?

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