Erin Meyer at HR Congress

I also really enjoyed the session by Erin Meyer at the HR Congress, based on her book, the Culture Map.

I think that's partly because I enjoy this sort of thing, and it links to my current focus on relationships and my forthcoming book, The Social Organization.

Also because, although I've used Trompennars' work (eg I had a well thumbed copy of Riding the Waves of Culture in Moscow) and refer to Hofstede's internet site every time I travel, I found Meyer's analysis quite insightful.

And also because  Meyer used the example of Russia several times, which is where I used to work, and also Japan, which I'm visiting next Summer. 

Eg here the cultural map scales for communicating and evaluating shown for Russia and Brazil above. Although related attributes, Russia as an average tendency towards high context, but also direct negative feedback.

Another interesting scale is trust which Meyer believes is moving from from cognitive to affective, largely because of the shift in axis to Asia. I agree this is happening but think it's more about increasing complexity and inability to manage through task vs relationship - in the West as well.

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Lynda Gratton at HR Congress

I'm speaking at, and attending the HR Congress in Amsterdam this week.

I enjoyed seeing Lynda Gratton speaking about the 100 year life. Given this extra time, it becomes more important to manage own own wellbeing and effectiveness, enabled through a greater focus on intangible assets: productivity (knowledge, peers and reputation), vitality (health, balanced living and regenerative relationships) and transformation (self knowledge and diverse networks).

It was interesting to see connections, relationships and networks, ie social capital come up in each of these asset types.

Lynda also talked about the sorts of changes this would bring about for companies' HR strategies.

Lynda Gratton's focus on vitality also made me think about my Christmas present to myself - an Apple Watch which I'm getting free care of my health insurer, Vitality. That's as long as I do enough exercise each day. Another great example of a response to our longer lives.

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Paul Sparrow at HR Congress

I'm speaking at, and attending the HR Congress in Amsterdam this week.

One of the most interesting sessions for me has been Paul Sparrow speaking on changing practices within HR, linked to two of his previous books, Leading HR, and Do We Need HR?

Do We Need HR, in particular, is one of my favourite HR books, though has little in reality with dispensing with the HR function. Instead, it's my favourite book on best fit HR, describing how HR might look different in various organisations depending upon their business strategy. It compares opportunities for best fit with innovation, customer centricity, lean management and external collaboration focused strategies.

In his keynote, Paul discussed the impact of increasingly collaborative environment.

In an afternoon workshop, we then discussed a handful of examples, eg Shell.

The new environment means that HR needs to focus more on risk, capability and governance, and on building trust. This can be supported by reliability, predictability and competence.

HR's need to focus on external collaboration means it might also need to:

• Create dedicated HR project resources that can be assigned to the more strategic activity triggered by working beyond your own organisation

• Partition the HR function into inward and outward facing structures

• Create strategic integrator roles that operate across internal and external businesses and bring together dedicated expertise under their leadership.

For more from me:

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing

• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD 

• Contact me to create more value for your business

• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com