People Centricity vs Business Support

If you read this blog regularly you'll know I believe that people are / need to be the centre of business strategy. That we need to create value through people and offer new opportunities to business. Not just use people to support operational / customer / financial objectives.

I've got an article on this in HR Zone:

https://www.hrzone.com/lead/strategy/supporting-the-business-isnt-strategic-hr-people-centricity-is

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Book Review: Nine Lies about Work

In my last book review, I suggested I was already sold before starting reading the book. I should admit that this time I was feeling fairly negative at the same point. That’s partly because I’ve never been that completely sold by the author Martin Buckingham’s work on strengths (which I think are useful but don't mean we can completely ignore weaknesses) or Gallup’s Q12 measures of engagement (which I think often take organisations in the wrong direction, since they deliberately avoid defining engagement as a psychological state, which I think is fairly essential in taking action to improve it).

In addition, Buckingham is, himself, directly responsible for one of the most popular debatable perspectives on management - that “people leave managers”. I call it a myth, or even an adage, as it’s become something that many people simply trot out without thinking about it - because if you do think about it, it’s clearly not always the case. And an increasing amount of research challenges it as well. Managers are important, but so to are organisations. A good manager in a well run company will create more engagement than a bad manager in the same organisation. But they’ll probably create more engagement than a good manager in a poor company too (‘lie’ #1: people care which company they work for - yes, of course they do).
 

Note, however, that I don’t call Buckingham’s claim a lie. Buckingham states he chose this word for what he sees as erroneous beliefs because “they are pushed at us so hard, almost as if they’re being used to steer us away from the world as it truly is”. Well, for me, the prime example of this is “people leave managers” but I still don’t think the word lie is either appropriate, or useful, even for that.

This is firstly because the world of work is complex, and different things work for different organisations and different people. Particularly as “there are some things that are real simply because we all agree they’re real”. Just because one set of data says one thing doesn’t necessarily mean something else is wrong. Eg Buckingham has his data from Gallup, his own company and more recently, ADP. And his co-author Ashley Goodall has his data from Cisco - and I think both he and his company are doing some brilliant work. But going back to my last book review, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reviews other research which directly opposes Buckingham and Goodall’s data on the importance of feedback, potential vs talent, cultural variability (vs ‘people leave managers’ / culture not being important), and the role of strengths. I could provide plenty more support for the nine supposed lies as well.

But secondly, having different data saying different things certainly doesn’t indicate a  malevolent intent. So, particularly in today’s world with all the accusations of lies between Trump and CNN, between leavers and remainers in the Brexit conflict, etc, I think we (educated and progressive practitioners in the future of work) need to be really careful about calling other people liars and ideas we don’t agree with lies. Actually, there really are often 'alternative facts'.

 
Putting all that aside, there are still a lot of things which irritate me about the book. But there are some real highlights too.

Firstly, I really like the suggestions on the importance of both Me and We, which align with my own focus on both human and social capital. This is particularly important today as there is more focus on teams, and in fact the authors suggest that “in companies with over 150 employees, 82% of people work in teams and 72% work in more than one team”. However, it’s not clear whether these are real teams or simply functional groups. Eg they suggest the big thing about teams is that it allows people to express their individuality but I’d suggest you really need communities for this.

I also particularly enjoyed the book's suggestions on love (lie #8: work-life balance matters most). I still didn’t agree with a lot of the points but I found them interesting provocations. But for me, and as I suggest in The Social Organization, the opportunity for love is to love our colleagues, not to love our work. Work can be positive, but so is life!, and balance or integration are important. Loving work can be positive, for the individual as well as organisation but too much love of it can be just as negative as positive. I also find it odd that the authors criticise 20% time as, along with communities, this is a really important opportunity to create environments where people may find more opportunities to love what they do. But I did like this: “Leading and following are not abstractions. They are human interactions: human relationships. And their currency is the currency of all human relationships - the currency of all emotional bonds, or trust, and of love.”

A problem particularly associated with We is the impact of bias (lie #6: people can reliably rate other people). So I agree that we need to be careful about the idiosyncratic rater effect in performance management (in the same way that Buckingham’s book probably says more about him than the nine areas, and I guess this review says more about me.) However, I can’t understand the logic of asking managers what they would do rather than what they think about the person, since these actions will still be based on biased interpretations about the person. See my comments on the authors’ HBR article describing their performance management work at Deloitte and do let me know if I’m missing something here - I don’t think I am but I’m amazed this got into HBR if not.

Another problem is that there’s often less good data available about We then Me. So I disagree with Buckingham about this too. Bad data isn’t as useful as good data but can still reduce the level of uncertainty about the decisions we need to make. Multiple feedback sources may still be biased but are still more useful than feedback from one individual. And validity is more important than reliability. We often have lots of reliable operational data but often this doesn’t provide valid measures of what we’re focusing on. Asking people what action they will take about their people is an example. So is assessing a leader based upon the followership within their team (eg this is likely to favour men vs women). And so is assuming that people being on at least 5 teams is a positive (they may be engaged by it, but as was pointed out in an HBR session recently they will not necessarily be good at it, and this is also a major cause of organisational over commitment). Actually, Buckingham himself makes this argument in connection with IQ and performance - it’s a reliable measure but isn’t a valid indication of career success.

Moving on, I’m not against strengths or spikiness (lie #4: the best people are well-rounded) and agree excellence is often idiosyncratic. But a lot of organisational activities are very different to playing football for the Dallas Cowboys. Work is complex, more integrated and also often intangible so it’s not always possible to put someone in a role where their weaknesses don’t apply. It’s also interesting that whilst Buckingham promotes individual spikiness, he doesn’t seem to understand organisational spikiness, ie that spiky companies will appeal strongly to some people, hopefully the ones they’re targeting, and that a natural consequence of this is that they will turn some people off. So the fact that Bridgewater with its long list of principles sees a high turnover rate isn’t necessarily a problem (though they may need to improve the effectiveness of their selection activities). I think Cisco acted in a similar way in its spiky boards and councils era.

The above comments on complexity apply particularly strongly to leadership (lie #9: leadership is a thing). Exceptional leaders act in unique ways but most  good leaders do a lot of similar things well, including paying attention to their people and helping them use their strengths. So leaders do need fairly broad ranging skills - weaknesses can become a serious liability otherwise. I think Elon Musk, referred to in the book as a good example of spiky leadership, is really a great example of why breadth is important being someone with huge strengths, but also some fairly catastrophic weaknesses. But I do agree a lot of leadership development is rather rubbish.

I also agree potential is a difficult aspect of people management, but it is also an important one so just because it is difficult does not mean we should ignore it. I do however suggest that potential should always be assessed formally, eg through an assessment centre, not left to managers’ subjective opinions. High potential programs should also include clear entrance and exit criteria and mechanisms. And they should be broad and flexible enough to avoid separation of hi-pos and low-pos, especially given the importance of We, eg see my suggestions on talent slicing. Buckingham notes that no one ever talks about potential and suggests ‘momentum’ instead. Trust me Marcus, nobody ever does or ever will talk about people momentum! (at least I really hope not).

I’ve got more limited concerns about lie #2: best plans win and #3: the best companies cascade goals too but I’ve already gone on long enough. And I’ve already provided my comments on lie #5: people need feedback on one of the authors' recent HBR articles: 

"There are some great ideas in this, eg I agree with the suggestion that excellence is spiky. But I agree with Christopher that there are some fairly dumb ones too. In particular the source of truth theory doesn't apply - if people think your presentation is boring they don't need to be right for it to be useful for you to know it. The theory of learning doesn't stop it being useful to know how you're doing. And the theory of excellence just means you need to decide for yourself what you're going to work on. Plus none of it counts if you decide to ask for feedback rather than just being given it. Most feedback does more damage than it does good, but that means we need to learn how to do it properly, not to stop doing it. And it doesn't stop giving people the attention they need either."

To conclude, and you may not be expecting me to write this, but you should read this book. It’s full of complete nonsense but the fundamental idea behind it, which is that we need to check our beliefs, and what data we have to support or challenge them, is absolutely sound, and is also really important to do. Agree or not, Buckingham’s nine points will help you do this. Just don’t call the things you disagree with lies.

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#ATD2016 Talent and HR Planning

So one last post from ATD ICE, or at least from Denver airport.  I'd actually forgotten I'd committed to participants in my own session that I'd explain the above slide, which I didn't get to cover in the 75 minutes we had together (and only really had in my slideset to respond to the agenda I'd submitted to get included in the programme).  And although it's not really part of the evaluation agenda we discussed, after explaining and demonstrating the  framework, it seemed a shame not to fully explain its potential.

But apologies - if you didn't attend the presentation / workshop then the following probably won't make much sense, unless you've seen me elsewhere or are a regular reader of the blog etc.

So basically there are 8 different elements to HR planning which should be included on the value matrix plotting out a people and organisation strategy.  This doesn't mean there needs to be eight separate planning processes, just that each of these eight different approaches should be included somewhere within one integrated activity to create the plan.

Part of my reason for using it is that I worry about too many organisations either not completing each different type of plan, or completing each stage but not having the effectively co-ordinated.   AXA thinking that workforce planning was an appropriate response to their digital transformation is a good example.  There should be one activity, and the sequence is also important:

1. Adding value - connecting HR to the business agenda
2. Creating value - providing additional opportunities through people
3. Talent planning - this can't be done until AV and CV are completed as talent groups will depend upon these two forms of planning
4. Workforce planning - longer-term, sustainability oriented planning
5. Succession planning - also value for money unless the objective is to raise the bar (successors are always better than their predecessors)
6. Value for money - other improvements in activities
7. HR process planning - tying all the activities resulting from the previous six steps together
8. HR function planning - ensuring HR has the people, relationships, capabilities and technologies etc to deliver the above.

Each of these need objectives and measures too, though I sometimes gather all the different sub-plans together and then do the measures for the whole (as long as you can remember where the objectives came from - remember the secret sauce of evaluation is being clear about what you're trying to do.

Hope that sort of made sense and do check out my other ATD posts before you leave as well:

• An alternative to Kirkpatrick evaluation
• Simon Sinek on social leadership
• The purpose effect
• Lead like a girl
• Looming productivity crisis

Jon.

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HR Plans for 2016

Still need to do your planning for 2016?  You may interested in reading this white paper I wrote for HRZone and CoreHR:

What are your plans to be more effective in your HR role in 2016?

Focus on these four strategies, based in the reality of the working environment, to become more efficient and effective throughout 2016.

Curated and written by independent workplace expert and commentator Jon Ingham, this piece looks in detail at core things that HR need to focus on in 2016 and provides insight into how to make sure you are doing these things well - like finding the right talent and making it count.

If you're looking to become more effective in 2016 and ensure you're focusing on the right things at the right time, this is a must read.

Don't delay - get up to speed with what's important in 2016 today.

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CEB #ReimagineHR - Workforce of the Future

The third area addressed at Reimagine HR was the workforce of the future.

This addressed firstly the changing preferences of employees, for example the growing demand for work life balance or at least increased flexibility rather than just compensation.  People increasingly want to work on demand - putting in time when they need or want it.  It’s why Uber drivers prefer this way of working to having a traditional taxi - they work when they want to, when they’ve got time and need some money.  They have flexibility over their life.  They don’t want to work according to a company’s time requirements, to be beholden to them and under their control.

And this is something CEB finds from everybody - not just millennials.  Employers have to respond to this pull from employees.

I liked Rio Tinto Australia’s policy switch of making managers justify why flexible working would not be appropriate in a certain position rather than requiring an employee to have to make a case to ask for it.

This change should work well against a big shift in the way businesses require work to be done.  (The big challenge for me will be finding a way to fit them both together.)

This is the development of spot markets for talent or the packetisation of skills in which we start to focus on skills rather than individuals and applying these skills in more discreet ways.

The change is enabled by technology and Jean gave the example of EffectiveTeams.com which can be used during a conference call to flag up the background of all participants so that everyone can help utilise the skills and insights of everybody on the call.

The shift will lead to a further increase in the contract / contingent workforce and elance.com was suggested as a model for this type of arrangement.  HR has to change as well as the value it can provide shifts into spotting exactly somebody’s talent and inserting this precisely into the appropriate work streams.  So I think the answer to 'are we there yet?' has to be a resounding no.  HR's only just started to change and there's a long, long way to go.

Jean and Brian referred to this shift as a really liberating idea, and I agree it could be.  But only if it’s used to match more closely with the changing way that people want to do their work.  More likely I’m afraid will be its use to increase the control of the employer, reducing the opportunity for the employee or worker.  (My recent post about zero hour contracts relates to this as well.)

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Why HR must focus on the future(s)

HRZone have launched a great new site this week and to support it, I was asked to input something future focused - the result is an article explaining why we do need to focus on the future, or futures, as I think there will be, or should be, multiple versions of this, and a suggestion for why navel gazing, not analytics, is a necessary part of this.

Take a look.

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Fleming Europe - Gamification in HR

 

On most topics in HR I'm pretty sure what I believe, and although I do sometimes shift on this slightly, my learning tends to be more about how I argue my position, and case studies, pro and con, etc. 

However there are a few other topics I find I touch a lot but don't feel as confident in my perspectives.  One of these areas is gamification.

I know that some companies do find benefits from these approaches but I know there are a lot of nonsense being promoted too.  Eg "most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels" is firstly just rather bizarre, and secondly, complete tosh.

Gamification is more than pointsification for a start.  But as to exactly what it is, I want to be more sure than I currently am.  So next week I'm off to Paris for Fleming Europe's Gamification in HR 2014 Summit.

I'm looking forward to some good debates as there's a pretty amazing list of speakers presenting, representing a broad diversity of roles:

• Mario Herger, Founder and Partner, Enterprise Gamification Austria
• Willy Christian Kriz, Chairman, SAGSAGA, Austria
• Tom Chatfield, Author of ’How to Thrive in the Digital Age', United Kingdom
• Phaedra Boinodiris, Global Serious Games and Gamification Program Manager, IBM; Founder of WomenGamers.com
• Roman Rackwitz, Deputy Chair, International Gamification, Germany
• Tim Ackermann, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition, PAREXEL International, Germany
• Déborah Lasry, COO - Services, Brand Communications and Quality, BNP Paribas, France
• Anja Andersen, Employer Branding Leader, Maersk, Denmark
• Laura Hugonnet, Competencies and Training Project Leader, Suez Environnement, France
• Fredrik Tukk, Head of Communication, Marketing and Branding, Maersk Drilling, Denmark
• Noemi Biro, Talent Attraction, Recruitment and Employer Branding Leader, PWC, Hungary
• Eric Gueronniere, Head of Competencies Development and Training, Suez Environnement, France
• Magnus Kobke, Head of the Cargo Dynasty Project, Transport Sector Educucation Trust, Denmark
• Martina Mangelsdorf, Founder and Chief Engagement Officer (formerly Head of Talent Management and Staffing at Novartis), GAIA Insights, Switzerland
• Pascal Picault, Director of Formaposte, La Poste Group, France
• John Pugh, Director for Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
• Tuba Surucu, Vice President, Training and Development Support Services, Yapi Kredi Bank, Turkey
• Helene Michel, Senior Professor, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
• Christian Harpelund, Learning Architect, Grundfos, Denmark
• An Coppens, Chief Game Changer and Gamification Design Expert, Gamification Nation, United Kingdom

It's a three day long event (based on three levels!) so by the end of the event I should have a clearer focus on what I think.  I'll be blogging from the event too, so please join me to comment on my posts and we can learn about this still fairly new, and potentially important, aspect of HR together.

Or if you want to join me in Paris, you can book for the event here.  I'll even throw in a couple of points for you!

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Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf

Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf

#E20S - Social HCM?

 

   There’s a new term in town – social HCM.  Or so it would seem….

It might just be coincidence of course, but I recently received a press release about a UK based system called Fairsail, linked to the USA’s HR Technology conference last week.  Of course many HCM systems are already quite socialised (see this post) and Saba branded itself the people collaboration system for a while, but this is the first time I’ve seen one describing itself as a Social HCM system.

Then I got a Facebook invite to discuss Social HCM with Bjoern Negelmann who runs the European Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris and which has led onto a Google + Hangout discussion I was supposed to talk at on Wednesday, but unfortunately didn’t manage to make (actually it’s a Hangout On Air which means you can watch the archive on Google / YouTube too).

So what is this thing – social HCM? Well you can see Bjoern’s thoughts here.  As usual, I have a rather different take.  One of my beliefs about HR – taken from Dave Ulrich – is that we need to focus much more on outcomes than we do on activities.  This 1. makes us more strategic as we avoid investing in activity for activity’s sake; 2. makes us more credible as people who deliver things are always viewed more highly than people who do things; 3. gives us a chance to take accountability for the outcomes we produce; and 4. gives us more opportunity to create value by taking these outcomes to our business colleagues as things we can deliver which will help the business improve, rather than just talking about how we can support the business to do what it already needs to do (ie moving from adding to creating value).

It’s why I define HCM as managing people to create human capital – activity to provide an outcome.

So what’s social HCM?

There are probably three possibilities.  The first is doing HCM – or probably more realistically HR – in a social way (activity).  As Bjoern suggests, this might be about being more open, co-creating, collaborative etc.  These are great approaches but this still leaves the door open for following these approaches for their own sake.  Also I’m not convinced that all organisations need to use them.  And I expect that those who believe most organisations are going to become highly open, co-creating, collaborative are being overly optimistic.  I can’t see it happening, and don’t necessarily think it needs to anyway.

The second possibility is focusing on creating human capital through social approaches (a mix of activity and outcome).  For example trying to raise employee engagement by creating a more collaborative environment, as most people – though not everyone – would agree this is one of the major engagement drivers for employees around the world.  This is good too, but is really just an aspect of HCM – I’m not sure there’s enough to justify a new name for it.

And the final option is about creating social human capital (outcome) – which you can just call social capital really – so social capital management (SCM) then, ie the management of people to accumulate social capital.  The problem with this is that you can’t really do this – ie manage people to create this outcome.  You have to lead and enable them instead.  (Actually the same thing applies to HCM but the requirement is even more pronounced with social capital – and the dissonance associated with calling it SCM therefore that much greater too).

It’s the third of these options which excites me, and I’d suggest organisations, their HR functions and Enterprise 2.0 practitioners need to think about.

 

Also see my posts from the E2.0 Summit last year:

• #E20S Developing social strategy 2
• #E20S Developing social strategy 1
• Tweeting Netiquette

 

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Technorati Tags: Fairsail,Bjoern Negelmann,Enterprise 2.0,Summit,Paris,social,HR,HCM

HR from the Inside Out (sorry, ahem, Outside In)

  I'm missing Dave Ulrich in London next week, and also at the Singapore Human Capital Summit I blogged at last year.  But it's not long till I catch up with him at the Middle East HR Summit in Dubai, and I have also been reading his latest book: HR from the Outside In, providing more detail on his newest HR competency framework.

I'm going to be posting on the framework again shortly, but I can't let this Outside In thing go unremarked on (again - since I have remarked in it before).

I just don't see why Ulrich has got so hooked on this.  OK, customer centricity is all the rage these days, but the talent centricity has never been getting so much attention either.  And it's this which needs to be the future of HR for me.

Plus I just don't think Ulrich's analysis works.

He suggests we should do placements, promotion, training, rewards, performance management, leadership, communication and culture development all from an outside in perspective, so selecting the employees our customers would want, involving customers in providing training etc.  Fine, as far as it goes - but the best innovations don't come from customers.  The opportunity for an organisation is to understand customer needs, and then to interpret them - to build, extend or challenge them.  If you simply define your business by what your customers want, you'll never do any better than your smart competitors (because they'll be doing just the same as you).  It's the spin you put on your customers' needs which is important, not just the needs themselves.

Ulrich also ties himself up in knots with his analysis of the six paradoxes facing HR:

Each of these, other than Outside / Inside apparently, are about HR copes with both ends of each dimension - strategic AND administrative, business AND people etc.  So why outside TO inside?  That's just a choice, not a paradox.  It should be outside AND inside at least (and actually that's all I'm suggesting - I'm not saying don't focus on your customers' needs, just that what's happening inside is at least equally important.)

But the best illustration of why HR's approach should be Inside Out comes from the book's case studies.  BAE Systems, MOL Group, Singapore Housing Development Board and Novartis - they're all great case studies, but the source of energy for each one was internal - not external at all.  Ie the HR teams in these organisations took account of the external environment but what makes them good case studies is the insightful, unique strategy developed by the organisation.  None of them would have been helped by input from an average customer.

I can only think the cases were consultancy projects done by some of Ulrich's team at RBL and he hasn't read them properly!

Anyway, apart from all this, I think it's a good book, and will undoubtedly set the tone for HR's development over the next few years.  So I'm going to come back to it again soon.

 

 

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Technorati Tags: Customer, Dave Ulrich, Outside In, Inside Out, paradox