HR to HR 2.0 and Human Capital (HCM)

Differentiation for Workforce Planning

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:51:00 +0000

In her session on workforce planning at Starbucks, Lacey All talked about the need to ensure resources are deployed against pivotal roles and key talent segments in order to remain flexible in responding to current and future business innovation demands,

Well, I’d understand it if you feel I’ve done the these of workforce differentiation to death, but I think it’s one of the most important issues in strategic people management today. As Row Henson from Oracle mentioned in her session on Measuring Performance (quoting Dave Ulrich) the value of top performers can be 12 times the performance of average employees. So I hope you’ll let me dwell on it a bit longer.

I recently wrote my 5th post on Dick Beatty’s Differentiated Workforce (this is my 6th).

In general, Dick’s presentation made me feel a lot more positive about his approach.

Rather than linking strategic / A roles to critical business processes, he focused much more on ‘capabilities’ as the basis for identifying talent groups. I thought this was much more positive because it means he is putting the overall shape of the organisation ahead of talent by itself. This is my approach as well – identifying and investing disproportionally in talent is often going to be an important aspect of HCM strategy, but not, in my view, as important as differentiating the organisation as a whole. [Note however, that although Dick uses the word ‘capabilities’ he says himself that he really means ‘core competencies’. I believe that 'true ‘organisational capabilities’ provide a much sounder base for HCM strategy so I tend to start with these.]
Dick also showed how capabilities and therefore strategic roles differ across organisations within a sector (Nordstrom and CostCo). This was an omission in Beatty’s book (at least I couldn’t see it) and one of my major concerns, as I couldn’t see how the approach was differentiating if all organisations within a sector had the same strategic roles!

However, I still have concerns, including:

I don’t believe differentiation is necessarily the right approach all of the time (eg organisations with a capability of inclusivity).
I don’t believe that differentiation always needs to focus on A roles and A people. Pivotal talent are another quite possible option for example. [Row Henson again (lifting from John Boudreau this time): "Who's the most pivotal person at a Walt Disney resort?" she asked. "I'd argue it's the man or woman who sweeps the streets at the end of the day. These won't be top performers in the classical sense of the word, but they are pivotal because, if the resort is dirty, customers won't want to return."]
I don’t agree that organisations which do differentiate as Dick Beatty suggests should deliberately search out C candidates for C roles. I’m with Jack Welch – you want to raise the calibre of the whole organisation – including A, B and C roles / people.
When you do have people working in C roles (that you’ve not yet made leave the organisation), I’d suggest you still need to focus on raising their capabilities and performance. I don’t agree that you should deny them feedback or as Row Henson suggested, have ‘a list of people not to develop’. I don’t believe that doing this would allow you to invest any more time or resources in supporting people in A roles / A people. It’s just going to mean putting even more time into looking after, correcting the mistakes etc of the C players who don’t know how they can improve.

So, organisations that want to differentiate themselves (and doing so is pretty fundamental to gaining competitive advantage through human capital), have to ask themselves a number of questions (* although of course they can also ask for my help! *), including:

How are they going to differentiate themselves, ie what organisational capabilities are they going to develop?
Which talent groups support this differentiation, and how can they best define these?
How can they best support each of of these groups differently?

See the following slide from Peter Cheese, ex-Accenture, from his presentation on talent management at the CIPD conference:

In dealing with the second bullet point above, it’s useful to know that talent can be defined in a number of different ways:

Key people
Key roles
Key people in key roles (Beatty)
Pivotal talent (Boudreau)
Scarce talent (from workforce planning)

And based upon a range of other factors, including individual talents’ demographics and perspectives (a true HCM strategy will differentiate according to their talents’ needs, rather than their own) – see another of Peter Cheese’s slides:

(Note that for Cheese, using Beatty’s approach isn’t pushing the envelope or leading edge, but is merely typical of what happens today (if done in a rather more sophisticated way).

What do you make of all that?

Are you differentiating your organisation through your workforce?

And are you differentiating it in the most optimal way?

Technorati Tags: Dick Beatty,Differentiated,workforce,Peter Cheese,segmentation,CIPD,Manchester

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Lacey All, Starbucks on Workforce Planning

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

I’m finishing off posting on the CIPD conference with some notes on future human capital / talent / workforce planning. But before I bring this all together, I want to do a short review of the session on workforce planning from Starbucks’ Lacey All. Partly because I thought it was an excellent presentation of a great case study (and Lacey hadn’t even had any coffee!), but mainly because workforce planning does fill a central role within human capital planning.

I think I4CP explained this role quite well in their recent post claiming that workforce planning Is the ‘missing link’ for HR – helping to combine the business strategy and HR strategy:

“If your bead on the future is looking blurry these days, you're not alone. The global recession has thrown off a lot of organizations' expectations and predictions. So, it's little wonder that many are now striving to do a much better job of strategic planning for the future, especially in the area of talent.”

And at the conference, Peter Howes from InfoHRM explained how workforce planning can assist organisations to better manage within this new economy:

Replaces a reactive approach (reduce headcount across the board, cut labour costs by x%) with more precise interventions
Decisions are based on clearer understanding of critical factors and relationships –in effect, a ‘risk audit’
Which roles or jobs have biggest business impact?
Which will be hardest to fill internally and externally in the future? Which have the steepest or longest learning curve?
Which skills and competencies will become increasingly or decreasingly valuable to future performance?
Which talent segments need to be protected as feeder pools?
Organisations can model alternative scenarios to compare long-term consequences for talent supply.

In her presentation, All explained that their approach to workforce planning doesn’t attempt to be the same thing for everyone, but consists of a number of activities ranging from operational to more strategic:

Retail forecast tools
Dashboard analytics
Ad-hoc analysis
Environmental scanning

Talent segments
Pivotal roles
Planning workshops
Action planning and progress monitoring.

The focus on retail here is about this being the area which will differentiate Starbucks’ brand and create a competitive advantage.

I thought the most interesting part of the session was the outline of Starbuck’s planning workshops.

In these sessions, leadership teams consider:

The environmental scanning reports shown above (what affects my workforce?)
The current state (where am I now?)
No change future state (where am I heading if everything remains the same?)
Scenario planning (what’s my ideas vision given different operating climates?)
Targeted future (what is my targeted or likely future?)
Action planning (how do I get there?)
Setting up progress monitoring (is my plan right?, am I on track?).

A key issue at the moment is understanding ghost turnover – and predicting how many people will leave post the recession.

Some of the external factors the teams look at include:

Demise of a Competitor
Unionization of Workforce
Distribution Optimization
Process Teams don’t have the right capabilities
Full Automation of Production Lines
Failure to open 5th Roasting Plant at 75 mm pounds
Store of the future.

Although workforce planning is often closely linked to workforce analytics (particularly when considering the current state / supply of the workforce), All stressed that lack of data (outside the US) doesn’t stop them doing workforce planning, and that the process is as much art as it is science.

The outputs of the planning workshops are solutions to close critical gaps in the future workforce.

All useful stuff – so why aren’t many organisations doing this (and why were so many people walking out during such an excellent presentation?).

Actually, the situation may not be that bad – I4CP notes that the use of workforce planning is trending upward. About 70% of the respondents to their survey said that they are doing some form of workforce planning in their organisations today, and 43% of those who are not doing it now plan on implementing this process in the future. But that doesn't mean that most companies are doing it well:

“There are three types of workforce planning: operational, tactical and strategic. While most organizations with WFP are highly engaged in short-term operational workforce planning - which includes actions such as headcount forecasting and staffing requisitions - relatively few are highly engaged in long-term strategic workforce planning, which includes actions such as business planning, needs assessments and scenario creation.”

If you want to gain more of the benefits that Starbucks are clearly getting, you may want to review:

My earlier post on Strategic Workforce Planning
My posts on InfoHRM’s 2009 conference
My next few posts which will touch more on the role of workforce planning within a broader human capital management strategy.

Technorati Tags: Workforce planning,WFP,Lacey All,Starbucks,InfoHRM,I4CP,missing link,CIPD,Manchester

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Richard Boyatzis on Talent Innovation

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:14:00 +0000

OK, last few posts to wrap up my posting from the CIPD conference (what will I post on without it?). And all these posts are going to focus on planning for the future. Some of them are about talent, some about workforce, and I’ll also be throwing human capital into the mix.

But I want to start this process by looking at the need to bring more innovation into the planning.

In the CIPD’s introduction to the session ‘Fighting back through Talent Innovation’, Claire McCartney summarised research finding that 26% of organisations have been forced to change their approach to talent management as a result of the downturn (so 74% have not?).

Some of the positive practices adopted include:

Developing more talent in-house (55%)
Focusing on essential development (45%)
Continuing to recruit key talent (43%)
Increased focus on employee retention (35%)
Reducing reliance on recruitment agencies (34%)
Talent management practices unaffected (30%)
Downsizing while preserving key talent (25%)
Initiating a recruitment freeze (23%)
Use of new media / technology to recruit (22%)
Recruiting talent discarded by competitors (11%)
Downsizing and having to let key talent go (just 3%).

The way these practices are being performed has also seen some interesting innovation:

Partner with other organisations
Increase your profile and brand
Keep talent warm for future
Where appropriate acquire talent from competitors
Set-up leadership exchange groups
Build talent assessment capabilities in-house
Focus on critical experiential based learning
Ask for innovative business suggestions by talent pools
Build a sense of community
Provide support for stretch assignments
Target employees for specific career paths
Maximise funding opportunities for skill development
Streamline and improve talent schemes
Increase focus on talent performance, engagement and retention.

There are some good ideas in here, although I’m surprised by the ones which are missing. For example, judging from a recent ITT I received, the CIPD still seems to think that organisations are focusing on an inclusive (everyone is talent) rather than exclusive approach to talent management. My recent experience suggests the opposite – that organisations are being more exclusive and defining talent groups more tightly (I’m not necessarily sure that’s always the right approach but that’s another thing – see my forthcoming posts on Dick Beatty – again).

You can read about other innovative suggestions throughout this blog.

The CIPD concludes that ROI coming under more scrutiny in an economic downturn means that cost-effective talent management becomes more not less important. This is supported by the session’s case studies, including Stephanie Oerton from National Express who notes that the downturn has provided opportunities to:

Get closer to the business
Discover talents within the team that may have not been discovered
Involve a wider range of people in development
Increase appetite for development from within the business
Develop stronger relationships with Business Leaders.

As far as this post is concerned, the important thing is that organisations are going to have to adapt innovatively again as things pick up next year (fingers crossed) – see this slide from Peter Cheese (ex-Accenture):

And organisations that are going to maximise the opportunities this growth will provide need to plan for this now.

Boyatzis on Talent Innovtion

You’ll have probably noticed that I called this post ‘Richard Boyatzis on Talent Innovation’ and I’ve not introduced Boyatzis yet.

Well, one thing I wanted to note, in connection to the ongoing need to innovate, is that we need to innovate our paradigms as well as our activities. It’s great to see the innovative practices I’ve described above, but there’s much more we can do. And it’s much easier to do this if we approach the opportunity with a different, innovated mindset.

And as I was walking briefly around the exhibition I cam across a new book from Mercer called Creating Value through People (I was attracted to it as this is the sub-title of my own book). It’s a series of interviews with various leaders and writers, and one of these is with Dr Richard Boyatzis (ah, finally!).

Explaining the concept of the ‘talent innovator’, Boyatzis notes:

“The reason we need leaders and managers is to co-ordinate the efforts of others and to use capital in an organisation to achieve the organisation’s objectives and mission. When you take that general concept, you realise that the responsibility of leaders is to utilise and create capital. There are lots of ways to describe that. But the ones I like the best focus on financial, physical, intellectual, human, and social capital.

Now, I think we would all agree that if executives spent all their money on current performance it would be irresponsible. Organisations have to be concerned with the future. So, we would have to think that the job of an executive is to get current performance and long-term sustainable performance. To do that requires using capital now but also investing it in the future. This applies to human capital, too. The problem is that most of the time when people think about managing talent they immediately go to, how do I motivate people? How do I get the maximum performance from people? That frames the problem in a very short-term context.

As a result, almost everybody who is trying to manage talent is actually liquidating it. What I mean is that they are expending most of their organisation’s human capital on current performance. Let me give you an example. One of my doctoral students is trying to come up with what I call a human resource profit and loss statement and a human resource balance sheet. The problem with existing measures like the balanced scorecard is that while they are moving in the right direction, they get it wrong because they look at almost everything in terms of financial measures. Human capital shouldn’t be measured in financial terms. It should be measured differently, in human capital terms. My point is that we should approach the management of talent with the notion that you should manage human capital so it is greater at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of the year because you’re investing in it.”

This strikes me as a very powerful argument for innovating our attitudes – putting long-term talent / human capital needs ahead of, or at least at an equal level of importance to short-term business process / customer / financial needs, and growing out of the recession by growing our talent and human capital. You’ll see more of this thinking in my suggestions for our talent / workforce / human capital plans.

(As an aside, you may also be able to see links between the points I’ve put in bold above to other things I’ve been blogging about recently.)

Technorati Tags: CIPD,Manchester,Claire McCartney,Stephanie Oerton,National Express,Richard Boyatzis,Talent inovation,Mercer

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CIPD Conference: Measures and Metrics

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:31:00 +0000

In her CIPD conference session on Measuring Performance, Row Henson from Oracle quoted Haig Nalbantian and Colleen O’Neill from Mercer as explaining:

“Visionary HR first must clarify what an organization’s work force needs to become, and then must build a blueprint of the necessary capabilities and actions.”

I totally support this, in fact I’ve just posted on pretty much exactly the same thing.

But Nalbantian goes on:

“These steps depend on an employer’s ability to find new information showing how HR initiatives do or do not fuel the organization’s objectives.”

No they don’t!

Yes, of course, having measures and metrics help present the case (don’t they Yuvarajah!) But in the main, organisations manage people so terribly badly (oh no? – what are your employees’ engagement levels like then?) that you don’t need information to see the opportunities forward. You need insight, passion, ambition, creativity, yes. But measures – not necessarily.

Henson encouraged participants to:

STOP saying: “I think… I feel”

START saying: “I know… I can prove”

SHIFT: From tangible to intangible asset accounting.

Mmmm. Well, I’ve got nothing against being able to prove things – when it’s possible. But quite a lot of the time, it’s not. And I think that we also need to influence our business colleagues to be yet more comfortable with thinking and feeling. We’re often dealing with ambiguity, and thoughts and feelings, as well as numbers, give us insights into what we’re dealing with. Don’t dismiss them.

As for intangible asset accounting, I think this is a red herring. I explain why in my book.

I’m in a minority view here, I know. According to Henson’s slide on data from the Corporate Leadership Council, 60% of HR executives say that better aligning metrics to their corporate strategy is their top priority, and 84% say that spend on HR metrics is going to grow over the next 5 years.

My minority perspective is why I didn’t go to any of the conference sessions on measurement. But it looks as if I did miss a few interesting things.

For example, I’ve always respected Anthony Hesketh’s views on HR (and he also wrote an endorsement for my book).

Hesketh’s new contribution to the field is a measure called Return on Invested Talent (ROIT). This is:

Operating Profit + Employee Costs + Depreciation + Amortisation

Employee Costs + Depreciation

I’m going to come back and write more about this later once I’ve had a chance to look in more detail at this (by the way Anthony, well done on your HROA Thought Leader of the Yearaward!).

So what else did I miss?

Well, it’s always impressive to see the sophistication of RBS’ measurement system:

The question of course (well, it’s my question, although I don’t think it was asked at the conference), is how well did the company’s measurement help them navigate this year’s crisis?, and the answer’s obviously not much!.

So my take-way is the need to align measures with a company’s strategy.

I think Enterprise Rent-A-Car has got the point. In her presentation, Donna Miller described Enterprise’s key metrics:

Cost per hire
Cost per source of hire
Hires per recruiter
120 day retention
Retention
By position
By location
By length of service
Engagement scores

She then explained how these have been generated from the organisation’s strategy, including the employee value proposition, the brand, the value of the HR department and improving business performance.

And in her presentation, Tricia Raymant showed how the Royal Mail has chosen:

Metrics (1. Headcount vs plan 2. Redundancy costs vs plan 3. No. redeployments 4. Time to redeploy 5. % vacancies filled internally vs externally 6. Time to fill vacancies 7. % critical vacancies 8. % critical roles with successors 9. Retention Rates 10. No. Staff hours contracted 11. No. overtime hours and costs)

which relate to:

Critical customer / business requirements (1. No more than 1% of critical roles are vacant at any one time. 2. Employees are redeployed within 60 working days. 3. Vacancies are filled by employees seeking redeployment wherever possible. 4. Vacancies are filled within 40 days 5. Overtime accounts for no more than 10% staff costs).

which relate to

Business challenges ( To reduce staff costs by 10%  To redeploy 20% of the workforce - To have the right people in the right place at the right time but to reduce overall staff costs).

And they are then able to report on metrics which support these business challenges:

Maybe not so sophisticated but hopefully more useful?

For an even more useful approach, see my post on my HCM Value Chain, wrapping up my current series on HR measurement (postponed by the InfoHRM and then the CIPD conference), hopefully very early on next month.

Other HR measurement posts from earlier in the series include:

Technorati Tags: Row Henson,Oracle,Anthony Hesketh,Lancaster,Greg Aiken,RBS,Donna Miller,Enterprise Rent-A-Car,Tricia Raymant,Royal Mail,Measuring,Metrics,Return on Investment,ROI,ROIT,Talent,HR

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The trials of independent working

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:28:00 +0000

I thought you deserve a break from my posts about the CPD conference (I’ve just got a few last ones to do). So…

I was talking to someone last night about the pros and cons of working independently.

Most of the time I love what I do, but I do sometimes yearn to be back in an organisation – just to extend the impact of my contribution, and quite frankly, to make life a little bit easier too.

Take IT – I’ve had so many problems with my laptop this year, and each one can easily write off a day to sort out.

My latest hassle is with my website and email hosting. Bluhalo, which designed the site (www.strategic-hcm.com, not this blog which is with Blogger / Google) are ‘transferring’ my service . They told me about a year ago and I told them who I wanted it transferred to (GoDaddy, who already host my Social Advantage site and email). Things have been a bit delayed (largely because I’ve had to pay them some extra money I didn’t think I should have needed to) and it now transpires, a few days before they are going to switch me off, that ‘transferring’ means just that – switching it off:

Dear Jon

Further to your recent conversations with Kelly, I am getting in touch to arrange the migration of your services with Bluhalo to your new hosting provider. I can see from your letter which accompanies your completed transfer form that you would like us to actually set up the website and emails on your new servers.

Unfortunately we are unable to do this but listed below is all the information that you will need in order to for you, your new hosting company or another third party to do this for you.

We host the domain name, email addresses and website for the strategic-hcm.com

Domain name

The domain name has been unlocked and is ready to transfer. You will need the following authorisation code for the transfer:

…

Email Addresses

We have the following email addresses set up on our servers:

…

Website

You can download a copy of your website directly from our servers using these details, in order that you can upload it to your new web hosting services:

…

Kind regards

Melanie

Bluhalo Ltd
The Hub
Fowler Avenue
Farnborough GU14 7JP
www.bluhalo.com

They call it migration, but I think they’re thinking of lemmings, rather than wildebeest here!

I’ve pointed it out to them that they’re the ones ‘transferring’ me, not the other way around (I’m not large enough for them apparently), but it’s not made any difference – they’ve not got the manpower to help me.

Great. So I’m cancelling my meetings for tomorrow, and will get to learn some more thrilling information about website hosting instead. I just hope you’ll still be able to contact me via email { jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com } come December!

Technorati Tags: Bluhalo,website,design,hosting,don't touch them with a barge pole!

More on developing a culture of…

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Now we know how to develop culture, there’s still one important question remaining – why should we want to?

Earlier this year, I participated in a debate with from Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons in Training Zone. Michael suggests that organisations shouldn’t create a coaching culture:

'We're going to create a coaching culture' is a commonly proclaimed goal, with some leader filled with visions of coaching reinventing life and work in that organisation.

But coaching alone is not always able to miraculously drive change, improve performance, increase happiness, make money and lift the level of engagement in an organisation. Coaching is a powerful tactic that is best used to support and achieve a specific business objective.

The focus on a 'coaching culture' runs the danger of confusing the means for the end, and it is a lack of context – why exactly do I need to use coaching? – that can undermine any attempts to get managers coaching. Commitment and engagement with coaching works best when there are two levels of context.

The first is the business context, and we've found that enhancing coaching skills works best when it's serving a specific business purpose – for instance, building team resilience before a corporate re-branding and re-organisation, increasing key customer retention or reducing the churn of front-line sales staff.

The second is a personal context, or more bluntly: how will this help me and my work? Getting managers to see how coaching can be not just another thing to add to the to-do list, but rather a way of actually reducing their own workload while increasing the focus on their own 'great work' builds the likelihood of it being a tool that’s used. Context allows managers to see coaching as a support and a solution – and not just the latest HR trend.”

To me, its just the reverse – in today’s fast changing world, it is only by creating a culture of [or more accurately, social capital in] coaching, innovation, leadership, or whatever it is, that an organisation has a chance to become and remain successful:

“Coaching for it's own sake - just because you think it's trendy, or because company X is doing it - is clearly not going to take you anywhere.

So in this sense, I support your desire to see a clear business focus and benefit for coaching activities.

However, I also think that coaching can have transformational outcomes which are often unknowable in advance.

This is the benefit that a coaching culture provides - it will help unleash everyone's, or at least talent's (depending on how extensively it's applied) potential.

Some of this may help meet current business goals. But it may also help go beyond these goals and help uncover new business opportunities (it's what I mean when I talk about creating value - ( http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2007/12/people-and-cogs-creating-value.html ).

Organisations may loose considerable potential advantages for creating value through their people if they dismiss the opportunity out of hand.”

The point is described in the slide from Abbey that’s shown above: people drive the business. More (of the right) talent equals more results.

I also like this quote taken from Sherman and Freas in Jane Turner’s presentation on coaching cultures:

“When you create a culture of coaching, the result may not be directly measurable in dollars. But we have yet to find a company that can’t benefit from more candour, less denial, richer communication, conscious development of talent and disciplined leaders who show compassion for people.”

Of course, as I explained in my last post, no organisation can do everything, so they need to pick and choose. Some nice-to-have’s like coaching may be left off the list in order to include other must-have’s like innovation (the choice being dependent on the organisation, its strategy, context etc). But once you’ve decided what’s going to make the difference, just do it. Don’t wait to pin down some specific needs, or until you’ve calculated a potential ROI. Just do it.

Make it happen.

Technorati Tags: Michael Bungay Stanier,Box of Crayons,Mark Adams,Abbey,Santander,Jane Turner,Newcastle Business School

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More from the CIPD conference – developing a culture of…

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:59:00 +0000

There were quite a few sessions at the conference about developing a culture of something, eg of:

Coaching (Jane Turner, Newcastle Business School)
High performance (David Smith, ex-ASDA)
Homogeneity in a global context (Mark Adams, Abbey / Santander)
Innovation (Jaideep Prabhu, University of Cambridge)
Integrity (Roger Steare, Cass Business School)
Leadership (Anete Jajkowska, Microsoft)
Resilience (Rebecca McIntosh and Claire Jelley, also at the University of Cambridge, but internal this time).

However, there wasn’t any linking between sessions these even thought the actions organisations need to take to develop each one of these cultures are largely the same thing!

Basically, there are two or three key steps:

1. Decide what / how you want to be

Organisations can’t do everything, so the key question is which of the capabilities from the above list are most important for you? Having a clear BHAG or mojo will make this easier for you.

Describe the required capability in detail – what behaviours and actions will you expect to see when this capability is in place? This becomes what McIntosh and Jelley referred to as their North Star.

This is, of course, where things between each of the culture types are a bit different, and where some knowledge of the particular type of culture, and what attributes / behaviours support it, is required.

For a culture of innovation for example, Jaideep Prabhu suggests that organisations need three particular attitudes:

Future market focus
Willingness to cannibalise
Tolerance for risk.

Once these three things are in place, innovation should follow.

Actually, I think there’s probably a bit more too it than this ( read my post on Hal Gregersen’s presentation, and listen to the last Talking HR show where I discussed developing innovative cultures with MOK from the Innovation Beehive).

2. Decide on the actions which are going to lead to the required attitudes (and them do them)

For innovation, Prabhu suggests the following:

Product champions
Asymmetric incentives
Internal markets.

Once again, I think it’s a little more complicated that this! In fact, it’s the actions Prabhu doesn’t mention, that are common to the development of all these different types of culture that are the most important.

So, what are these?

Hard issues

Well, there are a few ‘hard’ issues, such as getting your ducks in a row, ie linking all of your HR and management activities to the required capability, and then monitoring these activities (see Microsoft’s system model, and people scorecard):

You might even want to produce a few T-shirts?

Soft issues

But the soft areas are the harder ones (if you see what I mean).

David Smith did a good job of describing some of these in connection with ASDA’s journey:

Hire for attitude
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Listening
Engaging style of management and leadership
Remove your underperfomers, push your talent
Recognition
Fun / buzz and a sense of community.

But I think Roger Steare captured what’s at the heart of changing these soft issues even more accurately. For him, good behaviour and culture is when:

People stop and think
People talk about shared values
People unite around a common purpose
People act fairly for the common good.

Out of these, it’s talking (- particularly about what’s important - see Emmanuel Gobillot’s ‘narratives’) which is at the hear of culture change. There was a good post on this in Harvard Business / Peter Bregman’s blog How We Work, this Summer. This put culture change down to the way we tell stories:

"You change a culture with stories. Right now your stories are about how hard you work people. Like the woman you forced to work on her wedding day. You may not be proud of it, but it's the story you tell. That story conveys your culture simply and reliably. And I'm certain you're not the only one who tells it. You can be sure the bride tells it. And all her friends. If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.

I told him not to change the performance review system, the rewards packages, the training programs. Don't change anything. Not yet anyway. For now, just change the stories. For a while there will be a disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture. And that disconnect will create tension. Tension that can be harnessed to create mechanisms to support the new stories.”

It emphasises, I think, that much of what we mean when we talk about culture change is actually social capital (which I define as the value of the connections, relationships and conversations taking place between people in an organisation).

And which brings us straight back to the importance of Connectivity again!

Technorati Tags: Culture,coaching,high performance,global,innovation,integrity,leadership,Jane Turner,Newcastle Business School,David Smith,ASDA,Mark Adams,Abbey,Santander,Jaideep Prabhu,Roger Steare,Anete Jajkowska,Microsoft,Rebecca McIntosh,Claire Jelley,Peter Bregman,CIPD,Manchester

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Social media in HR - training

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:57:00 +0000

So what do you do if you want to drive up connectivity in your organisation?

Well you may want to run some training for your HR team. How about a day covering at least some of the following:

Set-up

Introductions and connections

Introducing and reviewing the technologies

Interactive session (demonstrating the main publicly available web 2.0 and social networking / social media tools with an opportunity for people with wireless laptops, iphones and blackberries, cameras and video cameras to participate)

Participants will be then encouraged to blog, tweet etc through the rest of the workshop

Enterprise 2.0 and the Social Business

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
Broader opportunities and requirements – the Social Business
HR’s and IT’s roles in the Social Business – why this is a big thing for HR
Case studies
Discussing opportunities for adding and creating value through collaboration

HR 2.0 – the potential benefits (and legal / other difficulties)

Opportunities for using social media within the HR function - social recruitment, onboarding, social learning, career development etc
Case studies
Comparing employer brands from a social perspective

Action planning

Organisational

Analysing how your employees are using social media
Options for introducing social technologies
Developing a social media policy
Measuring impact and ROI

Individual

Personal use of social media tools

Web 2.0 – using the tools

A final interactive session using social media to review the use of public and corporate social media tools and to use the tools to capture the main learning points from the workshop

This workshop is available now for you to provide in-house (in the UK or elsewhere). If you’re interested in attending an open programme on the above (probably only in London, UK), let me know.

For the open programme, I’d also encourage participants to join a social media community set up specifically for the particular conduct of this workshop, in order to facilitate further support and collaboration with other participants.

As background, you may also be interested in:

Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business blogs:

HR 2.0 blogs and podcasts:

Communication
- Neville Hobson
- FIR.

Knowledge
- Gurteen Knowledge Log.

Learning

Recruitment

Web 2.0 blogs:

I hate doing these types of lists. What have I left out?

Technorati Tags: HR,recruitment,learning,social media,web 2.0,social networking,training,development,course,workshop,England,UK,CIPD

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CIPD conference summary: Connectivity

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:30:00 +0000

Jackie Orme didn’t include this as a theme, but it was certainly one for me. And I think it builds upon the previous three: transparency, authenticity and sustainability. And behind this is the fact that we live in a social world – and this came through strongly too

In ‘Creating a Resilient Culture’, Rebecca McIntosh and Claire Jelley from the University of Cambridge talked about an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world
In ‘Leadershift’, Emmanuel Gobillot suggested that leadership needs to be connected
In ‘The Future of Work and Organisations’, Richard Worsley from the Tomorrow Project noted that knowledge is a social activity
In ‘Harnessing the Power of Social Media’, Nick Shackleton-Jones explained that learning is largely social too (that information comes with emotional tags)
And in ‘Coaching to build Innovative Mindsets’, Nick Jankel from wecreate positioned social collaboration as a basis for innovation.

Social connecting also came up in presentations from:

Peter Cheese, ex-Accenture, who referred to nGenera research noting that while only low relationship management competencies are required in a sustaining culture, high levels are needed for transformation
Callum Petrie from Philips Electronics, where connecting with employees is seen as a basis for performance (see slide)
Kathryn Pritchard and Judy Noonan from iris, for similar reasons
Jacky Simmons from TUI, where interrelating is positioned as the centrepiece of an approach to developing organisational resilience. Interrelating consists of:
- Connecting across the organisation through the development of strong networks
- Collaborating by developing shared plans, cooperating and sharing knowledge.

And in his presentation on ASDA, David Smith talked about creating fun / buzz & a sense of community

Work made fun gets done
Energy is attitude
Buzz is infectious
Getting more from people by engaging the whole person.

In addition, according to Mark Adams from Santander, collaboration between HR and business represents two thirds of the increase in the effectiveness of talent management.

But probably the most powerful argument for improving connectivity was provided by Andrew Kakabadse from Cranfield in his presentation on the divisions between members of top teams.

Kakabadse’s research suggests that banks knew about the credit problems 15 months before the financial meltdown, but that division, denial and paralysis had become the cultural norm. More broadly, he suggests that Boards often share few penetrating insights and have little shared view of differentiation and competitive advantage.

If this is the case, how likely will it be that employees will all share one common view?

So what can organisations do to develop greater connectivity and improve collaboration? I’ve already posted on the role of social media, but there are many other opportunities too. In his session on organisation design, Andrew Campbell from Ashridge suggested that organisations need to guard against these blockages on collaboration:

Unclear objectives
Differing objectives or incentives
Competition for money, people, promotion, praise
Unclear authorities
Transfer prices
Physical or cultural distances
Interfering bosses
Control freeks or secrecy.

And in her workshop on ‘Facilitating OD Interventions’, Sylvia Baumgartner suggested that we need to influence group dynamics, particularly as work becomes increasingly situational and less routine. Appropriate OD interventions include:

Diagnostic activities
Team-building activities
Survey feedback activities
Education and training activities
Structuring activities
Process Consultation activities
Third-party mediation activities
Competency development
Coaching and counselling
Life and Career Planning activities
Planning and Goal Setting activities
Strategic Management activities
Organisational Transformation activities
Organisational Effectiveness
TQM (Total Quality Management)
Conversations…..

All of the above issues and activities are things that I deal with on this and my other blog, Social Advantage.

It’s why I was rather critical of the session on Next Generation HR. The rise of connectivity is leading to much bigger changes that those identified there.

These include the social business (enabling organisations to connect with their people) and social HR / HR 2.0 (the move to facilitating rather than managing HR outcomes).

And it’s also why I was delighted with Shaa Wasmund’s description of me in her tweet:

Technorati Tags: Rebecca McIntosh,Claire Jelley,Emmanuel Gobillot,Richard Worsley,Nick Shackleton-Jones,Nick Jankel,Callum Petrie,Philips,Mark Adams,Kathryn Pritchard,Judy Noonan,Jacky Simmons,TUI,Andrew Kakabadse,Andrew Campbell,Sylvia Baumgartner,collaboration,social

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CIPD conference summary: Sustainability

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Sustainability is the last of Jackie’s key themes and follows on directly from the last theme / last post (Morrisons’ point that Everyone’s got talent = sustainable performance).

At the conference, it came up several times. Rebecca McIntosh and Claire Jelley from the University of Cambridge referred to Adam Werbach’s definition of sustainability as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

It was also addressed by Siobhan Sheridan and colleagues from Defra, and David Benson from Oxfam.

At Defra, the key actions were:

Getting the basics right
Using resource flexibly
Making policy that works in a consistent way
Focussing on customers
Engaging staff,

For Oxfam, it centred on the annual talent process, consisting of workforce planning, succession planning and the identification of high potentials.

But the session which probably gave it the highest priority was the one from the CIPD on their Next Generation HR report. Although I didn’t think that much of this, I do completely support the research’s focus on longer-term business sustainability. Indeed, I’ve been arguing since the very beginning of the recession that organisations can’t afford to allow themselves to become too focused on the short-term.

And I do like the way the research suggests this focus on sustainable performance means that we need to understand HR leadership differently:

Operational Excellence is a pre-requisite to everything else. For instance, there is no point developing world class insights into talent management if this is not backed up with excellent processes and delivery. In some organisations, as this implies, there has been a focus on the thinking leadership elements of the HR agenda at the expense of delivery. [Yes, and in some organisations, it’s the reverse – ie good delivery but without enough thinking.]

Organisational Insight and Influence is all about the function trading on its position at the heart of the business, and being able to see the organisation clearly as a result. HR functions do not therefore simply serve the business, but run a commentary on its current health and effectiveness, and on its fitness for the future. [I like this – a good example of HR creating value.]

Some HR functions are also able to play a powerful Organisational Commentary and Guardianship role by looking beyond short term business drivers to the implications of decisions in the medium term. In adopting more balanced positions that take into account the needs of wider stakeholders, they are looking beyond simply the wishes of the current CEO, or the senior team. [To be this is a necessary part of organisational insight and influence. HR needs to have a medium to long-term view of the organisation in order to comment independently now.]

In the past, HR tended to overplay its role as the voice of the employee. Now it is possible that many HR functions overplay their role as partners of the current management regime. [I don’t believe we ever did overdo the employee champion role – it’s just that it wasn’t sufficiently balanced with the business management one. These aren’t alternatives, both are required. But the addition which is required now and in the future is an additional,equal focus on human capital / organisational capability.]

The CIPD suggest that HR functions can drive the medium term sustainability of the business by taking actions like developing a balanced remuneration strategy; challenging decisions that might undermine the long term integrity of the brand; developing processes that challenge inappropriate behaviour at all levels in the business; and defining future leaders differently.

I think we can do more than this. The future isn’t just about balancing these competing demands, its about offering a new, more sustainable basis for competitive advantage – one that puts people first, and really does treat people as an organisation’s most important asset. Yes, it’s human capital management time!

Technorati Tags: Rebecca McIntosh,Claire Jelley,University of Cambridge,Siobhan Sheridan,Defra,David Benson,Oxfam,Sustainability,Next Generation HR,CIPD,Manchester

See my previous posts on Transparency and Authenticity.

See my other conference posts.

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CIPD conference summary: Authenticity

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Authenticity was also at the heart of many of the presentations.

Rebecca McIntosh and Claire Jelley, working for Indi Seehra at the University of Cambridge explained that authenticity is about substance, being knowledge-led, inner satisfaction, serving others, gratification from sustainability, multi-focus and outcome objectives. It’s not about style charisma, ego, self-interest or even greed, instant gratification, singe focus or output objectives.

My favourite presentation in this area was given by Normal Pickavance from Wm Morrison. Pickavance explained that for Morrisons, authenticity is about dealing with reality as it really is. It’s not about the ‘Best companies to work for’ criteria!

And for him, it something that marks the end of an era – the ‘fast company era’, with its associated ‘fast company mindset’ (in which talent is seen as scarce – and can be, and needs to be singled out; in which talent can be bought; and in which talent should and does command a massive premium in rewards) – also see my post on the global reset and differentiation / inclusivity.

At Morrisons, authenticity is built upon the following four pillars:

Authenticity begins with your own people
Grow your own people your own unique way
Top performance comes when everyone works together
Everyone’s got talent = sustainable performance.

Other organisations seeking to act authentically need to:

Be clear about who they are (linking and aligning core capabilities, operations, culture and competence to create a sustainable point of difference)
Understand what makes them different (which Helen Rosethorn from Bernard Hodes referred to as their cultural strengths and weaknesses, and Allan Leighton, former CEO at ASDA used to call “the stuff other buggers don’t do”!)
Be proud of what they do
Consistently align employee and customer experience (being true to themselves)
Communicate extensively.

Technorati Tags: Rebecca McIntosh,Claire Jelley,Indi Seehra,University of Cambridge,Normal Pickavance,Wm Morrison,Morrisons,Jackie Orme,CIPD,Manchester

See my previous post on Transparency.

See my other conference posts.

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CIPD conference summary: Transparency

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:53:00 +0000

I think Jackie Orme’s final tweet on the conference was probably quite accurate, and that in addition, the three themes she identifies provide a reasonable summary of the conference as a whole.

So I’m going to review these areas further as my summary of the event. I’m putting transparency first, as I think many organisation’s focus on authenticity is a reaction to a more transparent environment, rather than a deep desire to be more honest with people (a view that is supported by Helen Rosethorn’s comment that authenticity in today’s socially networked and transparent world is laid bare). Incidentally, I don’t think the difference in these perspectives is that important as long as the commitment to action is the same.

The need for transparency was something that was at the heart of many of the presentations, and was at least referred to in many more.

So, Sarah Redshaw described how Unilever had maintained engagement though change by communicating in an honest, compelling and transparent way about the brutal truth of their situation just over one year ago. And Martyn Worsley talked about the role that open and transparent communication with all employees played in the merger of Bank of New York and Mellon some time before.

The point is that employees expect it, and if they don’t get it, they’re probably now going to find out about whatever it is anyway. And then you just look ridiculous. Plus it reduces trust, engagement, alignment, collaboration - everything you want in a knowledge based organisation or environment.

It’s why I do think Shaa was right in singling it out as the biggest and most important change in leadership. And I’ll come back to this.

Technorati Tags: Transparency,Sarah Redshaw,Alan Walters,Unilever,Martyn Worsley,Bank New York,Mellon,Jackie Orme,CIPD,Manchester

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CIPD Conference 2009 – Initial Reflections

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:18:00 +0000

These are my CIPD conference posts (so far):

I hope you enjoy the posts, and the conference (whether you attended in person or through the tweets / posts).

I’m still going to put up a summary of the conference, but I’ve got no doubt about my main take-away: social media’s here and it’s not going away.

OK, social media may not have had quite the profile I’d have liked in Next Generation HR but it was very clearly present in Emmanuel Gobillot’s, Nick Shackleton-Jones’ and Shaa Wasmund’s sessions.

And iIn their session, Christine Bamford and Paul Schanzer from the National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare (NHS Wales) even referred to their system for innovative mentoring (MeSpace) based on MySpace.

Of course social media was present throughout the conference thanks to ‘the gang’.

As an aside, I was touched to have my own use of social media referred to by several of the speakers too:

References to my tweets and this blog as well as the only partly accurate accusation that I don’t have life! (thank you Emmanuel!)
A reference to my live blogging of the final keynote (thanks Shaa)
Thanks for taking the conference to the masses (I’m sure Vicky Wright really meant to thank me and the gang for this!).

I think the implication of all this is that HR’s got to get much more familiar with social media. Have a look at the quiz Nick Shackleton-Jones used (pictured, and also available here). Then think about what technologies you should be more acquainted with if you’re going to influence your current and future workforce in the new era of total transparency.

Scoring the quiz:

0-1 point – Baby Boomer
2-6 points – Generation Jones
6- 12 points – Generation X
12 points or over – Generation Y

(I got 21 which has shot up from about 6 soon after Penelope Trunk did her post – so it doesn’t take that long to get it sorted.)

Technorati Tags: CIPD,conference,Manchester,Christine Bamford,Paul Schanzer,National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare,NLIAH,Care to Lead,blog,Twitter,social media

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CIPD09: A New Leadership Paradigm (Part 2)

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Live blog from the CIPD 2009 conference final panel keynote:

CIPD09: A New Leadership Paradigm

And it’s a wrap!

Also see part 1 of this post: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2009/11/cipd09-new-leadership-paradigm.html

Technorati Tags: Christopher Kelly,Steve Easterbrook,Shaa Wasmund,John Humphrys,Leadership,CIPD,Manchester

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CIPD09: Sharon Doherty on Beyond Business Partnering

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:16:00 +0000

Last time I saw Sharon Doherty from Laing O’Rouke present, I didn’t manage to post on her presentation. So in this session, I’m correcting the omission.

Sharon has done the same as Kevin White and conducted a mini survey for us talking for a few other HR Directors. My summary of the key points includes:

Individual becomes individual, team and organisational effectiveness – Lynda Gratton, LBS
Need for adaptability - Philip Stiles, Cambridge
Standard becomes bespoke (eg meeting needs of diverse global workforce with four generations of employees in the workforce) – Stephen Dando, Thomson Reuters
Investing in HR’s own capability - Stephen Dando, Thomson Reuters
Developing financial capability and business understanding - Anne Minto, Centrica
Need to deliver a unique contribution without flamboyant language - Claire Thomas, GSK
Understand interdependency and think about end-to-end process and working together - Hugh Mitchell, Shell
Standardise the relationships – have all you HR BPs doing the same thing - Ronald Schellekens, Vodafone.

Sharon’s summary of this is that HR departments aren’t adding strategic value (and that this is good news for consultants).

Her suggestion is that companies need to work in 5 zones:

Core HR – individual people work
Human capital including team work (I think this is social capital?)
Organisational effectiveness – company-wide work
External work
Executive work.

Sharon also talked about the really interesting work she’s been doing in different companies including Lang O’Rourke. Most interesting for me, given my posts on leadership and communityship today, is the team aspect of HR work (in her Zone 2) at BAA Terminal 5 where the company took responsibility for employee engagement of other companies (60% of these said they liked working for T5)!

Sharon asked ‘Why can’t other companies do all this?’.

The answer is that of course they can. I liked Sharon’s presentation but I don’t agree with her view of consultants – we’re not in competition. For some things, it will make sense to use consultants, for others it won’t. Wise HR teams will understand which.

So some organisations will use consultants to help them operate in all 5 zones. I don’t see any problems in this. And of course, when organisations choose to work with me, I do what I can to help them build their skills through this process.

Or if companies want to do everything themselves, they can use consultants to help them build these skills (the Human Capital Strategist certificate course and other workshops I deliver do this).

Technorati Tags: Sharon Doherty,BAA,T5,Terminal 5,Laing O'Rourke,CIPD,Manchester

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CIPD09: Leading the HR function

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:44:00 +0000

I was hoping to see Warner Burke this morning, but he seems to have disappeared off the programme, so instead I’m with Kevin White from the Home Office and Stephen Lehane from Alliance Boots talking about HR leadership.

White has conducted his own mini-survey of 70 current and future leaders in civil service HR.

Some of the quotes from the survey relating to how HR leadership is perceived today include:

You have to have the balls
A sense of humour is essential
Business first, HR second
Psycho-babble misinterpreted as knowledge
Saying ‘no’ whilst offering options
A high IQ is helpful
Trying to please too much
Inspirational and passionate
Ignorance translated into chaos
All mouth and no trousers.

You’ll know from my previous posts that I have concerns over this “business first, HR second” thing. But I thought White expressed it nicely: We earn the right to set at the table through our expertise, but we need to get better at understanding the wider organisation to understand how to apply HR solutions.

Other thoughts:

Senior leaders of HR may be better coming from outside of the function, but you need some structure around this
HR makes great number 2s to their CEOs (people who are determined to be #1 may not be flexible enough (it’s not about you).

Lehane suggests the following attributes:

Positive dissatisfaction
Leading for what you care about
Big relationships
Understanding the ‘real system’
Building demand
Active engagement
Avoid HR
Deliver the basics
Enrol your Personal Support team.

Relationships are of course the area I’m suggesting all leaders need to focus on. Lehane is asking about how do you make your relationships bigger and deeper? “Think about your worst relationship and work on it. You’ve got to invest in it to develop your ability to get things done.”

His point on building demand links to this as well. HR needs to support things bur it needs to stand for things and lead things as well. It needs to be bold and confident. It shouldn’t be about selling products. “If you need to work on getting buy-in, you’re not sufficiently embedded in your organisation, you don’t really understand what’s going on.”

Technorati Tags: Kevin White,Home Office,Stephen Lehane,Alliance Boots,HR,leadership CIPD,Manchester

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CIPD09: A New Leadership Paradigm

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:12:00 +0000

I enjoyed day 2 of the CIPD Conference more than day 1 (I met some people who thought the reverse, so of course it’s a personal thing, partly depending upon which sessions you attend, and a whole heap of other things as well). I particularly enjoyed Nick Baylis on ‘the Rough Guide to Happiness’ and Sarah Redshaw from Unilever on ‘Building Transformation through Engagement’. I’ve not blogged on these sessions, but you can see plenty of tweets from me and others on Twitter, using the hashtag #CIPD09 (if you don’t know what this means, you really should you know).

The highlight from today should be the end of day keynote, ‘a New Leadership Paradigm’. The outline certainly looks interesting (and just seeing John Humphrys live should be good):

Public respect for leaders has hit an all time low. The exposed inadequacy of those in leadership positions has brought current thinking on leadership and the established models into question.

Today, it seems that there is a substantial lack of ‘real’ and successful leaders equipped with both the resilience and capability to deal with the complexity and pressures of the ever changing global market. So are we now at a cross roads? Is this an ideal opportunity to challenge the current view of what it takes to be a good leader and to establish what behaviours and competences will be needed to lead organisations and societies into our uncertain future?

Join us to debate:

Why and how have traditional models failed?
How can we learn from the past and build on its successes?
How can we re-establish leadership credibility?
What skills and attributes will successful leaders of the future need?

I’ll be live blogging from the session, but here are a few thoughts to warm-things up.

Firstly, I think it is a really big and important question. I do think existing leadership is failing. Look at Hay’s stats from yesterday, or simply the end results (the recession we’re now in). And we know that leadership accounts for a significant part of this (Jim Collins’ point that leaders can destroy organisations on their own).

I agree that resilience and capability are part of what needs to be fixed. But I think attitudes need changing too. We need to look again at what we mean by leadership and change the way that leaders lead.

And we’ve had a few pointers during the conference, particularly from Jim Collins on Level 5 leadership, and the need for leaders to act through others to create greatness; and Emmanuel Gobillot on the connected leader in his session on Leadershift.

Leaders may have a particular role but they achieve success through their community.

It seems to be a view that’s taking off.

I was talking about this with Jonathan Austin at the Best Companies exhibition stand yesterday too. He had just attended a session with Edgar Schein where Schein had been talking about leaders as ‘humble engineers’ who need to work through others to make their organisations work. And I’ve already posted on Social Advantage on Henry Mintzberg’s concept of Communityship.

Emphasising that companies are not collectives of human resources, but communities of human beings, Mintzberg suggests that traditional views of leadership isolate people in leadership positions, thereby undermining a sense of community in organisations. He believes leadership and communityship go hand-in-hand: "A community leader is personally engaged in order to engage others, so that anyone and everyone can exercise initiative".

And it’s by developing this sense of community that individuals become bound to each other and start to want to focus on developing the productivity of their organisation as a whole, rather than acting purely out of self-interest.

That’d be the basis of my answer if I was on the stage today. And it’s also one of the things I write about at my other blog, Social Advantage, and you might want to check over there.

Join me for the live blog if you can!

Technorati Tags: CIPD,Manchester,New Paradigm,Leadership,John Humphrys,Jim Collins,Level 5,Emmanuel Gobillot,Leadershift,Edgar Schein,Humble Engineer,Henry Mintzberg,Communityship,Jonathan Austin,best Companies

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Using social media at CIPD09

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:19:00 +0000

My favourite session yesterday was Nick Shackleton-Jones (@shackletonjones) on the use of social media supporting online learning at the BBC. I was going to blog on this, but Rob Moss from Personnel Today got their first, so see his summary on this.

Instead, I thought I’d write about the use of social media at the CIPD conference itself.

There have been quite a few of us blogging and tweeting, and in many ways, this has led to the development of a small community, sharing experiences and learning with everyone else through social media, but also face-to-face between ourselves. At times, it’s felt like a conference within a conference.

So, thanks for a great conference everybody!

Martin Couzins (@martincouzins) and Rob Moss (@robmoss) plus Kat Baker and Louisa Peacock from Personnel Today / XpertHR (@PersonnelToday / @XpertHR / @HRSpace), all busy in the Press Office:

Charlie Duff (@charlie_elise) from HR Zone (@HRZone) :

Adrienne Fox (@foxlondon)writing for HR Magazine (US):

Jennifer Liston-Smith (@listonsmith) writing for the BPS:

Mike Morrison from RapidBI (@rapidbi) on the right, also with Nick Spindler from Nationwide:

(Check our Mike’s notes from the conference at cipd2008.blogspot.com)

Steve Bridger (@stevebridger) from CIPD Communities (@CIPDcommunities):

Last night, we met up at the CIPD’s tweet-up.

Julia (Twitter username pending!):

Mike (@rapidbi) with Klothilde (@kganzer):

Steve and David (sharing @RightwayCWS) with Irsa (username pending)

The CIPD’s Natalia (@NAlexandrou or @CIPD_Events) with Charlie (@charlie_elise or @HRZone) and Steve (@stevebridger or @CIPDcommunities):

Well done to the CIPD for raising the role of social media this year. There’s still a way to go, but it’s been a very good start.

A few other non-Twitter peeps (I won’t say ‘muggles’ again!).

Perry Timms from the BIG Lottery Fund before his session ‘Communicating with Impact’:

Former colleague, Alison Crossley:

The Elsevier stand – my book’s just about visible on the back shelf:

Technorati Tags: Social media,social networking,web 2.0,HR,learning,CIPD,Manchester,Nick Shackleton-Jones,BBC

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CIPD09: Nick Baylis on Happiness

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Everyone’s favourite session today seemed to be Nick Bayliss on the Rough Guide to Happiness. I only attended half the session, so I thought I’d post the tweet stream for you (made slightly less easy by the fact I was spelling Nick’s name wrong):

rapidbi: RT @joningham: Nick Bayliss Technology gets in the way of bonding. tweeters build trust online which builds in real world #CIPD09

1 day ago from Gravity · Reply · View Tweet

joningham: Nick Bayliss Technology gets in the way of bonding. Yes, but there's another side to this, isn't there you lovely tweeters! #CIPD09

1 day ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

joningham: Nick Bayliss still on touching - people who do contact sports have better lives. #CIPD09. Hugging as a basis for Next Generation HR?

1 day ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

joningham: Nick Bayliss we're huddling up to each other for comfort because something out there scares us - get tangoing! #CIPD09

1 day ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

CIPD_Events: RT @Jackie_Orme keep hearing about how brilliant Nick Baylis was in the Rough Guide to Happiness session. Am gutted I missed it!! #CIPD #HR

1 day ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

alisonrbcm: RT @HRZone: Nick Baylis: automatic pilot can be dangerous #CIPD - yep are you listening to your inner compass

1 day ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

alisonrbcm: Baylis: We need to change our relationship with life from the inside and challenge ourselves to be happy and successful #CIPD #CIPD09 woop

1 day ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

ngcoaching: RT @HRZone: Baylis: follow your passions in your personal life and find success in business. #CIPD #CIPD09

1 day ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Baylis: 'Dance life in the close embrace and never let anything get in the way of that' #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

charlie_elise: Baylis: 'Dance life in the close embrace and never let anything get in the way of that' #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Baylis - final thought: Trust yourself to cope and listen to the SAS explain you need a tolerance for uncertainty. #CIPD09 #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

charlie_elise: Baylis - final thought: Trust yourself to cope and listen to the SAS explain you need a tolerance for uncertainty. #CIPD09 #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Baylis: We need to change our relationship with life from the inside and challenge ourselves to be happy and successful #CIPD #CIPD09

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

charlie_elise: Baylis: We need to change our relationship with life from the inside and challenge ourselves to be happy and successful #CIPD #CIPD09

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Baylis: follow your passions in your personal life and find success in business. #CIPD #CIPD09

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Nick Baylis taking questions from the floor now: people want to know how to get a session with him... #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

charlie_elise: Nick Baylis taking questions from the floor now: people want to know how to get a session with him... #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: Nick Baylis: automatic pilot can be dangerous. Investigate your trigger moments and what's autopiloting you in the wrong direction #CIPD

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

HRZone: The Rough Guide to Happiness: rediscover lost passions you left behind to be more successful now, says Dr Nick Baylis #CIPD #CIPD09 #HR

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

charlie_elise: The Rough Guide to Happiness: rediscover lost passions you left behind to be more successful now, says Dr Nick Baylis #CIPD #CIPD09 #HR

1 day ago from HootSuite · Reply · View Tweet

Don’t see the connection between Twitter and happiness? Take a look at this http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2009/01/25/how-twitter-can-make-you-a-better-and-happier-person.

Technorati Tags: Nick Baylis,Rough Guide,Happiness,CIPD,Manchester

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CIPD09: Beyond engagement

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:38:00 +0000

This session is on going beyond employee engagement.

Robert Browton from Hay has been presenting some of their research. We all know that people have been working harder to beat the recession and Hay’s surveys suggest that 36% of people have increased the length of their working week.

The good news is that 84% of people say their teams are willing to support each other and 85% say that they are committed to helping their organisation survive.

But there’s more bad news than good. 68% say of people say there is no reward for the additional effort they are putting in, 63% feel their organisation doesn’t appreciate the effort they’re putting in and 57% believe their staff have been treated as a low-value commodity.

Because of this, 59% of people are considering leaving, actively looking or have accepted a job offer. And of those not thinking of leaving right now, 87% say its due to a lack of vacancies, 92% think it’s just too risky to start a new job.

So a lot of people have already gone in spirit, and as soon as they can, they may be gone in body too.

One main reason why people are disengaged are the barriers their organisations set up that stop them performing effectively (unfortunately we didn’t get much more than this).

We then moved on to Clare Marriott from Rentokil Pest Control (filling in for Mary Edmunds from Barclays) which seeks to engage its staff (colleagues) around its mission, vision and spirit (service, relationships and teamwork) – developed through focus groups earlier this year in response to the company’s problems last year.

Your Voice Counts is Rentokil’s colleague survey and links to their customer survey, Our Customers’’ Voice Counts which uses the Net Promoter Score.

Linked to Hay’s point about organisational barriers, the colleague survey also asks questions like I have the tools I need to do my job, do have the authority I need to do my job etc.

So, interesting stats, good case study of successful engagement through use of an engagement survey, but beyond engagement? Mmm. I’m trying to keep positive today so I’ll not comment. You decide (and do let me know)!

You can see more of my recent posts on engagement here: ‘Are engagement surveys a waste of time'?’

And for those of you going to the session on, or interested in the Government’s Engagement Review (David MacLeod and Nita Clarke), there’s this post and some comments from one of their previous presentations on my Moon Shots community forum too.

Technorati Tags: Engagement,Hay Insight,Robert Browton,Rentokil Pest Control,Clare Marriott

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CIPD09: Next Generation HR?

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:33:00 +0000

A quick summary

This session provided a preview of the CIPD’s new flagship research project, Next Generation HR, which aims to prompt HR to start thinking about and debating what the profession needs to look like in the future.

The speakers were Lee Seas from CIPD’s recently acquired consultancy Bridge, Andrea Cartwright from Nationwide, Therese Procter from Tesco and Alex Wilson from BT (pictured).

We know that, despite Jim Collins’ exhortations, businesses are becoming ever more focused on the short-term. And HR has had to act ‘lean and mean’ to keep its credibility during the recession. However, there is also the sense of a seismic change or inflexion point in the opportunity for HR to contribute to the development of trust and loyalty etc.

In response to these changes, the research suggests:

HR needs to shift from being internally focused to having business and sustainable organisational performance at its core
To do this it needs to build a culture which balances short-term risk management and longer-term organisational health and agility with authenticity.
This means the type of HR leadership we need also has to change, and will need to be based less on process than it typically is now.

The full research will be published in January, and you’ll be able to read my reactions here.

In the meantime:

Going negative?

Rather than live blogging here, I decided to contribute to Personnel Today’s live chat during the the presentation of the research.

Last night I was told that my contributions there were a bit negative.

Well, I didn’t mean them to be, and I’m sorry if I’ve upset anyone, or if this means that I’m not invited back to future conferences as CIPD’s press blogger, or even better as a speaker!

I am pleased that the CIPD is trying to show the profession the way forward. I also agree with many of the research’s conclusions, such as the need for insight driven HR. I’m pleased to be at the conference, and in general, I had a good day.

But I didn’t think the presentation was that wonderful. A presentation and a report are two different things, and when presenting, it’s not always useful to follow the structure of the report. It would also have been useful to have allowed time for questions and to have finished on time.

More importantly, I don’t think Sears’ presentation, or the case studies (which were fine in their own right) described the required “seismic shift” in the profession. Calling something “next generation” suggests a very different set of attributes and I didn’t get the sense of that much change. I’d have liked to have seen more ambition in what’s supposed to be some “flagship” research.

Anyway, the CIPD has said it wants to start a debate on the research and I want to play my part in this. Debate isn’t the same as uncritical reporting. Having a view about what you agree with and what you don’t is core to the Credible Activist role, and to being authentic, both of which are discussed within the report.

Incidentally, if I had wanted to be negative, there’s a number of other things I could have commented on, such as my professional institution paying £3m of funds it has obtained largely from its members for a consultancy which is going to compete with, guess what, yes its members – or at least the large proportion of them who act as consultants (eg me).

I’ve not discussed this issue however, as I do want to stay positive about things – at last until something I perceive negatively is clearly in my focus. Then I don’t have much of a choice but to discuss this too.

Some opportunities for real innovation

Human Capital Management

Given the name of this blog, and my ongoing posting, you won’t be surprised that I think HCM provides one substantially different way forward. Alex Wilson emphasised the need for HR to be ‘business people’ first but I don’t agree with this vision of our future.

There’s a ‘third way’ which isn’t about focusing on HR process, and doesn’t lead us to becoming a generic business function (although one which is likely to live in Finance’s shadow), which is to focus on human capital.

I believe our main need is to understand the opportunities to create new capabilities in our organisations, and to show our colleagues in the rest of the business how these capabilities can provide the basis for transformed performance and competitive advantage.

To gain these benefits, organisations need to put people first. And this means HR people need to be ‘people people’, or better, ‘human capital people’, as I don’t mean to suggest a return to being ‘touchy feely’ or focusing on ‘tea and sympathy’. I just think our biggest opportunity to contribute comes from developing a deep insight about the way that we can influence our employees’ attitudes and behaviours.

Yes, of course, we need to understand the business. Absolutely. But our biggest contribution comes from being different to other functions rather than the same.

More information: Strategic HCM blog, jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

The Social Business

I was talking to some of the CIPD and other folk last night about what I think is the biggest shift impacting our businesses. This is what some people are calling the social business. And at the moment, most of these people are working in IT.

Five or so years ago, some of our IT colleagues started talking about Enterprise 2.0, or the application of web 2.0 tools within our organisations (see my post on the CIPD’s report on this). But it’s also broader than this, it’s about the cultural and behavioural changes that using web 2.0 requires and enables. These IT people are now getting to the point that they’re starting to realise that actually, the key challenges in enterprise 2.0 aren’t about the technology. They’re about changing the culture, shifting peoples’ attitudes and generating new behaviours.

So, over the last couple of month’s there have been a couple of conferences on Enterprise 2.0, in US and Europe. And because IT people tend to blog and tweet more extensively than HR people do, it’s been quite easy to follow these conferences from afar. And the sense I’ve got of these conferences is of a couple of hundred IT people talking together about culture change! And there’s been little to no HR contribution to this. I’ve submitted a proposal to present at the next E2.0 conference in Boston, but as it’ll be mainly IT people voting on this, I’m not that hopeful of being chosen.

So wouldn’t it be wonderful to talk about this at the CIPD’s conference!

To an extent, this is what Emmanuel Gobillot did, but I’d have liked to have seen more about the practical application of his insights to organisations (this is what I post on at my other blog: Social Advantage). And I’d have liked to have seen it at the centre of the CIPD’s Next Generation HR presentation too (instead, as one of the people on PT’s live chat pointed out, there was no mention of social media / social aspects of organisations at all).

And how does HR contribute (or lead! – why not?) the social business? Again, it’s not by being a better business person. It’s by becoming an organisational sociologist or anthropologist. And becoming fluent in social media tools too!

More information: this recent article at HR Zone, Social Advantage blog, jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

What else?

Are these ideas innovative? Different? Seismically so?

I believe so, and I think there are lots more opportunities like these (human capital and the social business are just the areas of what I see as new generation HR that I’ve chosen to blog on, not the only areas there are, or that I consult upon).

What about:

Behavioural HR - using the insights of neuroscience to change HR’s, managers’ and employees’ decision making processes and activities?
Externally focused HR – playing in SHaron Doherty’s zone 4?
Green HR - developing a tie-in with ethics and CSR (to be fair, the CIPD’s presentation did include quite a lot of discussion on integrity)?
HR 2.0 - the use of social media tools within HR?
Imagination based HR
Evidence (measurements and analytics) based HR
Strengths-based HR – a focus on talents and appreciation
etc.

There are lots of opportunities, and I think next generation HR departments are going to be those that select from this longer list to decide how they’ve going to operate within their own organisations in order to produce the maximum impact that they can. For some of these, it might be something based upon Sustainable Organisational Performance as in the CIPD research (although I think this idea needs some further development first). And others, it might be some of the ideas I’ve written about above, or something else!

What’s Next Generation HR going to involve for you?

More

Find further conference reports at

http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/cipd09

http://twitter.com/joningham

And come back on Friday 20 November for a summary of the whole conference.

Technorati Tags: CIPD,Next Generation HR,Lee Sears,Bridge,Emmanuel Gobillot

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CIPD09: Emmanuel Gobilott on Leadership

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:46:00 +0000

Emmanuel Gobillot started his presentation with ‘Shift Happens’ – the second conference speaker I’ve seen in two weeks to do this. Personally, I wouldn’t use it (too many people like me who’ve seen it too many times), but the video did set the context for Emmanuel’s speech quite nicely. And I’d guess most people in this audience won’t have seen it anyway.

Also, Emmanuel has mentioned me three times in his speech, so I’m not going to be too critical am I? Actually, I wouldn’t be critical anyway – I think Leadershift provides a very apt description of the changes I’m seeing in the world.

The presentation wasn’t a practical one, but focused on a necessary mindset change. And a shift in the way that we lead.

The shift is based on these four challenges:

Demographic – what happens when you’re working with people who have nothing in common with you?
Expertise – business models are adapting (eg through mass customisation, crowdsourcing, mass participation, mass collaboration)
Attention – where do we focus? – a need to create your own information space (including my blog apparently)
Democratic – we’re changing the way we feel about our companies as fast as we change our clothes.

The impact of these changes is that your experience, expertise, efforts and power are now DEAD.

But you still need to gain the engagement, accountability and commitment of your staff? How? Well, unfortunately I’ve run out of time (lunch is calling) – I’ll come back and finish this post later.

Do call back – or visit my Social Advantage blog for some reasonably aligned thoughts on leadershift.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY MORNING: TOO MUCH RED WINE LAST NIGHT! I’LL HAVE TO FINISH THIS OFF LATER. MAYBE TONIGHT, MAYBE AT THE WEEKEND. DEFINITELY BY MONDAY!

Technorati Tags: Emmanuel Gobillot,Leadershift,Connected Organsiation,CIPD

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Welcome to CIPD09: Jim Collins on the Quest for Greatness

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:20:00 +0000

This year’s CIPD conference is kicking off with a keynote from Jim Collins.

Since his previous books, Collins has been challenged on whether companies can really be built to last. This seems particularly unlikely given the decline and collapse in many previously leading financial and industrial companies over the last year.

But there are examples of enduring greatness (P&G, Johnson & Johnson, GE etc).

Collins still believes that, whatever its history, a company does need to decline. Products and services may become obsolete but that doesn’t mean that the companies that make / supply them need to become obsolete and irrelevant. And its future – whether it prevails or fails, endures or dies - is largely in its own hands. Companies decline not because of broader changes in the world or competition but because of what do to themselves.

In Good to Great and Built to Last, Collins looked at great companies. He still believes that the starting point for any truly great organisation is to get the right people and then do – who and then what. And that good is the enemy of great. And great comes from conscious choice and discipline. According to Collins, this isn’t a perspective, but an empirical fact.

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins looked at the process of decline. There is a 5 stage process:

Hubris born of success
Undisciplined pursuit of more
Denial of risk and peril
Grasping for salvation
capitulation to irrelevance and death.

In the first 2 stages, companies look the same from outside, so how do you know if you’re in one of these stages? Note you can get all the way to the end of this process and come back and be great – even if you stumble, the future’s still in your hands. (Collins’ next book will look at what stops an organisation doing something great from spinning out of control.)

The answer is not to think of yourself as great (the minute you do, you’re not).

Getting to great / avoiding the fall

The main action you can take to avoid decline is to take responsibility for your results, rather than taking personal credit for good times but blaming external events for the bad. Both decline and ascent are self inflicted.

You also need to ensure that you have a set of values and a purpose beyond just making money. This is the hedgehog concept that I think goes beyond Collins’ BHAG concept. It refers to a combination of being passionate about; being the best in the world and economic demination (see my posts on ‘mojo’).

You need to execute well - most companies fall not because they fail to take advantage of new innovations but because they fail to execute.

And don’t forget about Level 5 leadership. The main attribute here is humility, built on ambition for the organisation rather than themselves, and the determination to do what is needed to succeed. And note that great leaders can’t make a company great on their own – they need to get the best people into the key seats – and it’s this team that make the company great. But poor leaders can ruin a company completely on their own!

You need to keep great leaders onboard – it takes at least seven years to become great,

Finally put people first. Before any financials are discussed, talk about how many key seats you have on the bus – and how many of these are filled with the right people. Have the numbers.

Oh, and don’t worry too much about mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, or motivating people (the right people are self motivating) – these have no correlation with great performance.

More specifically:

Conduct a self-diagnosis (see Collins’ website)
Track seats and people in these seats
Build a personal Board of Directors – choose people for their character (I like this idea)
Turn off electronic gadgets – disciplined thought needs time to think (at least3 days of white space every 2 weeks)
Double your questions to statements ratio (focus on being interested vs being interesting)
Help your organisation build a Council to focus on the hedgehog circles above
Do a not-do-to-list (stop doing vs start doing) – do we add this an action to our to-do-lists?
Replace job titles with responsibilities
Re-articulate and re-commit to your values you will not compromise
Set your BHAGs 15-25 years into the future.

Collins left us with the challenge to “be useful”! I hope you found this blog / this post useful – please comment below if you do!

Find further conference reports at

http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/cipd09

http://twitter.com/joningham

Come back on Friday 20 November for a summary of the whole conference.

Technorati Tags: Jim Collins,CIPD,Good to Great,Mighty Fall

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HR Conferences

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:54:00 +0000

October and November are always a busy time with conferences. In fact, this whole year has been packed full of them.

I’ve been to most of these conferences to speak about HR, HCM, talent management, the social business and social media etc. And my speaking engagements now now account for a sizeable proportion of my business income. They also help get me travelling round the world.

But whenever I attend a conference to speak, I always try to stay for as much of the event as I can. It’s always useful to hear other people talking about the same issues, and I like the networking opportunities too. And I always feel it’s a little arrogant just to turn up, do my bit, and depart. But then that’s just me – I don’t mean any disrespect to those of you who do this. We all have to juggle our commitments.

And of course, staying longer at conferences gives me the opportunity to blog. In fact I’ve recently attended a couple of conferences just to do this – including the InfoHRM one last week, and the CIPD’s annual conference that starts today.

But the main reason I attend conferences when I can is so I can offer the accumulation of all this insight (supported by case studies etc) to my clients.

I was challenged at the ITU conference I attended right at the start of this month whether theory was as important as implementation. Well, yes I do. Clearly both are important, and I’m not going to knock the need for effective implementation – particularly because I’ve based my career on being able to manage and deliver projects well.

But I do feel that we need to be a lot smarter at planning, ensuring that this is supported by what we (the global HR community – practitioners, academics and consultants; psychologists; sociologists etc) know about people and the way their attitudes and behaviours can be influenced and shaped to deliver organisational performance.

Take Dick Beatty (from the InfoHRM conference) for instance. I think there are both some pros and cons to his approach. Organisations need to understand - firstly the sort of approach he recommends, and secondly the benefits, challenges and options around this. If they don’t know all this, no amount of ability to execute is going to give them what they need.

So this is the real reason I attend conferences (and read books, blogs etc). It’s too ensure I can offer knowledge and insight, not just from my own thinking (particularly on HCM and HR2.0), but from other great thought leaders too. It’s this insight, together with the practical experience to implement effectively, that helps my clients create value and gain competitive advantage through their people.

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HR & social media workshops

info@strategic-hcm.com (Jon Ingham) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:42:00 +0000

I’m doing quite a few workshops on HR’s use of social media over the next few months.

One session I’ve just agreed on is going to be with the HR Society (not till March though).

I’m going to be looking at the 3 parts of the agenda I believe are important:

The Social business – what this is, and why it’s a great opportunity for HR
Social HR – how HR can use social media tools to support recruitment, learning etc.
Social media practice – an experiential session ensuring all participants have some personal understanding of how they might use the tools themselves.

If you’re a member, do ensure you’ll come along, and if not join! – or ask me to do a session just for you and your organisation etc.

Technorati Tags: Social media,web 2.0,social networking,social business,enterprise 2.0,workshop,training,development,HR,HR 2.0,HR Society

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