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reward and recognition

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2 February 2012

If risk is the currency of progress, what’s the exchange rate?

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, leading performance, reward and recognition | Tags: employee value proposition, evp, kate tojeiro, risk, risk and reward, robert reich |
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Kate Tojeiro, one of ASK’s Associates (and whose blog you can read online), recently sent us an article called “Risk is the currency of progress”. It’s a great example of a strapline for our times – Chris Evans made it the title of his Breakfast Show on 11 January, so the phrase is ‘in the air’. Kate was referring to many things – the bravery and charitable efforts of Dakar Team GB, the new experiences in the broadest sense that we can enjoy when we take ‘the leap’, but also “new territories, products, people, ideas, experiences, luck… profits.”

I understand the idea of the risk/reward principle, but I tend to see it as a mindset, a particular lens for viewing life through, or something closer to the rules of a particular game. A game, moreover, often played by people who think of themselves as ‘players’ and see their lives in terms of ‘winning’. Losing is not an option, and all that. It often comes – and no offence is meant to Kate here – with a keen sense of heroics and derring-do.

Although unbuckling might feel appropriate, swashbuckling tends to figure – at the very least metaphorically, so I couldn’t help chuckle when I googled ‘swashbuckling’ and Wikipaedia’s opening line quickly equated it with “rough, noisy and boastful swordsmen”. I know we’ve moved on a bit from rescuing damsels in distress, and nowadays the maidens have an equal right to bear arms. But if my honour – or even my petticoats – were in danger, I’d be tempted to hold for being ‘rescued’ by someone a bit more … well, admirable.

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26 January 2012

Faith, value and returns on investment

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, leading performance, learning transfer, line managers, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition | Tags: delegation, faith, giving feedback, interpersonal skills, working relationships |
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Like so many words that start with ‘f’ (fairness or federalism, for example), faith can be a topic that leaves some of us slightly twitchy. As a word, its roots are actually secular: it derives from the Latin word for trust, and the religious sense was a 14^th century acquisition. But for all the trouble humanity has wrought upon itself around faith in a theological sense, is it worth asking if we have successfully mastered the idea of faith in the broader, earthly sense?

I came across an old adage – “Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow” – that left me wondering if we don’t put too much emphasis on what we believe about the world around us, rather than on being mindful or receptive to the faith that others have in us? Most of us appreciate the merits of a fine pillow: whether we hold to a religion or live as atheists or agnostics, our lives are still touched by sorrow, frustration, setbacks or doubt, and a little pampering never goes amiss. In terms of the comfort or sense of strength that it can bring, faith can definitely be its own reward. But I’m thinking about the idea of faith in a less … well, self-centred way: the benefits we can bring about by showing faith in others.

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19 January 2012

Book Review – Betterness: Economics for Humans by Umair Haque

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, book reviews, leading performance, organisational development, relationships, reward and recognition | Tags: audaimonia, corporate social responsibility, csr, economics, organisational performance, sustainability, umair haque |
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The clue, as they say, is in the title. Or rather, two clues. Umair Haque’s argument in this short but fascinating and energising book is that our model of economics – and of ‘business as usual’ – has had its day, and that it now fails to serve us. Not an entirely novel argument, except that he has the bravery to move beyond mere protest and offer us at least a preliminary sketch for a more uplifting alternative. If you have the mental appetite for a challenging wake-up call, this is the textual equivalent of a pint of espresso (although you will need a Kindle to read it on).

The challenge begins with a comparison between economics and psychology. While the latter traditionally sought to address and minimise pathologies (on the basis that an absence of them meant a healthy mind), it has spawned a new paradigm of positive psychology that focuses on fulfilling human potential rather than merely on curing mental illness. The scale was extended to cover not just zero down to a negative figure, but also upwards to a positive figure. Haque contends that economics, however, still operates on the basis of a negative paradigm. What we call a healthy economy is one where ‘economic pathologies’ have been minimised or removed: if we remove barriers to commerce or trade, the economy will enjoy ‘health’. And as business is based on this economic paradigm, business-as-usual follows suit:

“Business” as we know it, live it, and do it is the expression of this economics of antipathology.”

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19 January 2012

The day the Net went black: SOPA or Soap Opera?

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, organisational development, relationships, reward and recognition | Tags: copyright, ethics, integrity, intellectual property, IPR, jaron lanier, PIPA, social media, SOPA, technology |
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Anyone who relies on Wikipedia to maintain their position as most knowledgeable spark in their milieu might have struggled yesterday (particularly if they hadn’t Googled how to ‘View Source’ beforehand). If you missed it, several of the world’s largest Internet sites ‘took action’ yesterday in protest against the proposed SOPA and PIPA Acts currently being discussed in the different chambers of the US parliamentary system. This would be an awfully long blog posting if I stopped to explain them; thankfully the BBC News pages provide an overview and the (now-restored) Wikipedia can also tell you more.

Essentially, the arguments are around intellectual property rights and digital piracy: as we embrace Web 2.0 and user-content (and, by extension, social media, crowd-sourcing and many other topics you may already feel you’ve read your fill of), it’s technically far too easy for people to upload copies of films, music and so on that has someone else’s copyright legally attached to it. (Unless you’ve never watched anything on YouTube or burned a copy of a friend’s CD to iTunes, it’s a fair bet you’ve broken copyright law.) Because it’s easy, it happens; because the end result is free, other people watch, listen to or re-download it. Various high profile websites’ issue isn’t so much with the problem as with the proposed solution: if someone uploads a copy of a Hollywood movie to Wikipedia or YouTube, SOPA would – if enacted – mean that Wikipedia/YouTube has broken the law and could be taken down in total, Google could be forced to remove links to them, and so on … That’s why you either had to do your own thinking or find it in a book yesterday.

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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: innovation, learning transfer 2010, mckinsey, steven johnson |
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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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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: accountability, business models, kirkpatrick, learning and development, organisational performance, working relationships |
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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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27 October 2011

Teamwork – more bees, more buzz. But do hive minds make honey?

Posted by Ed under communication, life, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition, talent management, teamwork | Tags: co-opetition, crowdsourcing, groupwork |
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One of my colleagues here at ASK recently handed me a Times article that she thought might inspire thoughts (or better yet, words – but let’s not rush to judgement): Driven by team power – which you’ll need a Times subscription to read – looked at the emphasis on teams and team working in several MBA courses. It’s inevitably one of those articles that start with the words “The world of work is an increasingly …”, which must surely now rank as a cliché of business writing, although framing truisms in 500 words or less is the kind of challenge that mainstream journalism tends to set. (One possible explanation for the rise of blogging: the writer can use the number of words that are needed, rather than the number that fit the pre-defined space?)

It’s also one of those truisms that are, to be frank, eternal. Teamwork isn’t some new fangled blinding flash, and I’m sure we could unearth (no pun intended) a few archaeologists and anthropologists to back up that assertion. Somehow, I don’t think Avebury rose from the Wiltshire plains because a tribal leader fancied a monument and sent smoke signals out to a preferred supplier list of stone-working consultants. Teamwork was certainly around 300 years ago when Isaac Newton admitted its importance:

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

And there’s always that timeless electricians’ mantra: “many hands make light work”.

Teamwork is timeless because no man or woman is an island. Even the most anti-social, introverted or malodorous of us depend on others to some extent: unless you are entirely self-sufficient in food, heat, light, shelter, sanitation and so on, others are involved. I will always fondly recall one colleague inadvertently thinking out loud in response to the eternally irritating “There is no “I” in “teamwork” and saying “Yes, but there’s no “f” in “Co-operation” either, is there?”. She wasn’t thanked for her contribution.

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25 October 2011

ConnectingHR: a not uninteresting unconference

Posted by Ed under authentic leadership, behavioural change, communication, HR, leading performance, line managers, management, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition | Tags: #chru3, connectinghr, the spring project, Unconference |
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Creating Connections at work at #chru3 If you’re not yet familiar with unconferences in general, or Connecting HR in particular, I knew exactly how you felt until last Thursday. Informal gatherings where the attendees formulate the agenda and discuss topics of the greatest importance to them in self-selecting break-out groups, you can read more at http://www.connectinghr.org/ (although searching Twitter for #connectinghr or #chru3 – the hash tag for last week’s event – will add seasoning to the flavour: #chru people tweet like amiably over-caffeinated budgies at the drop of a smartphone).

But to truly taste the atmosphere, you might want to consider attending. I arrived last Thursday with very little idea of what to expect – I was half-anticipating something akin to #occupyHR and toyed with bringing a tent, although that would be to do a disservice to the day’s hosts at The Spring Project, based in a former warehouse in Vauxhall, South London. But I also arrived as far as possible with an open mind – always a good travel companion: if nothing else, it weighs so little to carry. (This came in useful during the Aikido session that had valuable lessons about mental perceptions and assumptions, even if arm-wrestling with someone you’ve only previously read on Twitter is an unusual way to actually meet them.)

Teas, coffees and travel anecdotes duly despatched (London Underground had what traditional HR might discretely note as ‘issues’ that morning), we loosely split into rotating groups for a four-stage ‘world café’ collective brainstorm around a) good things about work, b) bad things about work, c) changes we’d like to see and d) obstacles to them. Out of this process – where my inner calligrapher was as thrilled as my inner child to be encouraged to write on the paper table-cloths – emerged themes for the day’s break-out groups. (We were also encouraged to move freely between these groups.)

Looking back on the points that emerged during the day, I sense a mixture of ‘eternal issues’ that will probably always arise in HR debates and of some interesting and refreshing food for thought – although both felt grounded in daily experience rather than drawn from manuals or the sacred texts of the industry’s gurus. At no point did I feel like the Monty Python character attempting to return the legendary dead parrot: there was a honesty to the discussions that was very welcome.

Break-out group discussion at #chru3

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