Core Values - Moving from Laminated to Lived

I also had this article published on Workstars blog earlier this year.

These are the five suggestions I make for improving the use of Values in an organisation:

1. Use the values to integrate management and HR processes
2. Embed values in development centres
3. Gain senior level sponsorship
4. Consider the key moments of truth in the organisation and to ensure these reinforce the values
5. Make the act of recognition a social activity. 

Details are on the Workstars blog.

I'll be having another couple of articles up there soon too.  So do check out the blog and the recognition system too.

Workstars is a sponsor of my Strategic HCM blog and so you’ll be reading more about them here over the rest of the year.  But in brief:

Workstars' mission is to make your business a better place to work, and crucially, get your business working better. 

Workstars are innovating beyond the very tired, self serving $47 billion reward industry. We are focussed on the future, and the future of employee recognition is social.

A true cloud based business that wraps people services around the market leading employee recognition application, where every line of code is shared by every client, very large or very small.

The first global SME and Enterprise provider to master a free to launch model. Our significant application investment continues to expand our business. We work with HR and when it comes to employee recognition, we are a plug and play innovator.

Workstars bring enterprise level infrastructure and thinking, designed to make managers great and boost engagement across any business.

Also see:

• The benefits of employee voice at work
• The art and science of workplace communication
• Humanising HR using digital technology

#HRTechEurope Human-Centric HR Technology

 

   My other current interest, other than integrated talent management, is human centricity (see this post on the recent ConnectingHR unconference).

So I had this article published in the HR Technology Europe conference guide:

 

“One hypothesis that I will be testing out is whether Europe’s generally more progressive approaches to HR (versus the hire and fire culture in the US) results in a different focus for HR technology use.

I believe there are three different ways that organisations can gain value from HR technology. The first, and I think least significant, of these is through the provision of a single (or at least a clearly defined) system of record. This type of technology gives HR robust and accurate data about the people the organisation employees and means that HR can start to take more sensible decisions about the workforce.

The second way that HR technology provides value is by informing the decisions of line managers and business leaders. This value is provided by talent or human capital systems, particularly the new integrated platforms, that allow managers to interrogate data for themselves, to gain better understanding, and as a result of this, better leverage, of the people they employ. I think this is where most HR technology professionals, at least in the US, have been most focused over the last five years.

But the third way that HR technology provides value, which I think often provides the greatest benefit, is by enhancing the productivity and performance of individual employees. This is where office systems have long been focused but it is where some HR systems have acted too. For example, well over a decade ago I was involved in setting up a self-scheduling system for a train operating company. Because this allowed individual employees to enhance their own productivity, it had a much more significant impact on the performance of this business than anything we could have done to give managers more oversight of the way that shifts were being set.

The opportunity to provide HR technology for the workforce is currently being enhanced in two main ways:

1. Firstly, there is the very rapidly increasing ubiquitousness of mobile devices which are starting to be used by HR system vendors for their applications, and provide a very real opportunity to give employees much more input and control over the way that they work.
2. Then there is the similarly exponential increase in the use of social media tools, often used by people on their mobile devices, to connect people together and offering a new opportunity to significantly impact the performance of organisational networks, communities and teams.

 

Why I think this is interesting is that the key to these latter opportunities is an understanding of the people in a particular organisation, and the way they work. This is about HR technology becoming more people-centric in order to find those key needs that technology can support. It is also an almost direct contradiction to much of what is said about HR technology and the need for this to be more business-centric (see for example, this recent article at TLNT, ‘Why HR Technology needs to focus on being more business-centric’).

It will be interesting to see whether this different, people-centric technology approach comes out through the HR Tech Europe conference at all.”

 

Well, I can’t say it was a huge theme, but again, maybe that’s due to the general lower stage of maturity.  My hope is that the new HR technology conference will help Europe catch up a bit more quickly, and maybe evolve to a different, more human-centric, approach as well.

 

Also see:

• #HRTechEurope Integrated Talent Management Technology
• #HRTechEurope – iTalent competition
• #HRTechEurope – emcee summary
• #HRTechEurope – CedarCrestone survey

 

Technorati Tags: HRTechEurope,human,business,centric,HR,technology,conference

 

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#CHRU3 #ConnectingHR Unconference: Human-Centric Recruiting

 

    I skipped most of our unconference yesterday – partly because I had a couple of meetings and really wanted to attend the Workplace Trends conference too.  And partly because ConnectingHR is a community, and the community is now running the unconferences, which is the way it should be.  This is still one of my favourite events, but I don’t have to be there now.

But I do still feel a strong attachment to the event (and even more so the community) so I wanted to blog something about it, even though I wasn’t there.  I asked a few people about what the main themes, issues, conclusions, agreements had been, and got a few snippets about different things, but nothing that bloggable.  Martin Couzins summed it up well – blogging from unconferences is really difficult because the whole day is so random and varied (that’s why I did a storify from HREvolution a few weeks back).

But the session that got people’s greatest engagement was clearly the one where the Spring brought in graduates who’d be unemployed for the last year to talk about their experience at the sharp end of the HR / Recruiting stick.  You can see Martin’s interview with one of them here.  The issue was clearly that recruiting is a bit of a one-way deal.  HR gets to sit back, choose who it wants, treat candidates as it wants to, and unless the get a job, the grads don’t get much back in return – certainly very little feedback which might actually help them get a job elsewhere.

Then there was a group session later on suggesting that we need for H for Human in the term HR (also see the picture from the tablecloth used during the world cafe session).  Michael Carty has blogged on this here.  That’s the key for me – it’s about respect and mutuality, and it applies across the whole area of HR, not just recruitment.

 

Human-Centric Workplace Design

It’s even largely what we were talking about at Workforce Trends, though I prefer human-centric to user-centric design.

It was obviously another good day, and in a way I regret attending Workplace Trends – don’t get me wrong: there was lots of great insight there, but there’s only so much a traditional conference format can achieve.

The good news is that we’re looking at getting Workplace, HR plus IT, OD, Communication and all the other professional functions together for an unconference next year – what this – and that – space.

 

Human-Centric HR Technology

Also look at for a post on human-centric use of HR technology, supporting the HR Technology Europe conference on 2nd and 3rd November.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,ConnectingHR,unconfernce,CHRU3,human,humanity,graduate,recruitment

 

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What’s your HCM POV?

 

  I think one of the most interesting inputs at the HCI Summit I covered recently was from Gary Hamel emphasising the importance of ideology – knowing what you believe about something in order to be able to support it through the design of your organisation and its processes and practices etc (or alternatively to deliberately not support it if your own ideology is out of alignment with that of your employer!).

I also talked about ideology during my HR 2.0 webinar recently, and am going to use it as a central focus to my Strategic HR session that I’m running today.

So I thought it was interesting to come across an update from Dave Ulrich’s RBL noting the importance of having a leadership point of view (see picture).  This is exactly the point that I’m going to be making – HR leaders in particular need to have a well developed POV / ideology about HR / HCM.  (I’m not so keen on RBL’s ‘brand’ concept.)

I think this POV idea is central to our Dave’s ‘credible activist’ competency, but it goes beyond this too.  It’s about understanding the range of options open to HR practitioners to do HR differently, and designing an HR architecture which is right for a particular organisation, rather than being based on practices which are being used elsewhere (see my post on Dan Pink at the HCI summit if you need a place to start).

Sorry HR, but your best practices normally just aren’t!

 

I’ll be running more sessions on Strategic HR in the UK later in the year – see here.

 

Technorati Tags: Dave Ulrich,leadership,people,management,point of view,brand,Gary Hamel,ideology,belief

 

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Welcome to CIPD09: Jim Collins on the Quest for Greatness

 

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:

1. Hubris born of success
2. Undisciplined pursuit of more
3. Denial of risk and peril
4. Grasping for salvation
5. 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:

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

 

 

One of the best case studies of using values to develop mojo that I’ve come across recently is from Netflix, which I’ve also just posted on at the Moon Shots community ning.

Netflix’s culture is clearly based around their values – and I like the way that these clearly do reflect their mojo and organisational capability (even if they’ve chosen to only articulate these through their values).

For me, the company’s mojo (the type of company they are) is about being:

• Manic about high performance
• A pro-team with stunning colleagues
• Creative-inventive.

 

And I’d suggest its organisational capabilities (the things they do really well, that help them compete) are:

• Providing employees with freedom
• Avoiding complexity.

 

 

Importantly, I think, the values are expressed as the behaviours that are particularly valued in fellow employees (“values are what we value”). And they’re not dressed up as things that everyone is supposed to internalise and make part of who they are.  I just think this makes it easier to talk about them and clarify the organisation’s expectations.

And the values aren’t just nice sounding statements - they’re also central to recruitment; performance management (“the keeper test”); reward (“adequate performance gets a generous severance package”); development (“we don’t try to do it”); promotion (“if manager would promote employee to keep them if employee were thinking of leaving, manage should promote now, and not wait”); exit (“Netflix doesn’t have to be for life”) and other HR processes.  I particularly like the fact that their values are central to their recruitment processes, to ensure they only take people on if they do live the company’s values (and they don’t therefore need to ask anyone to change these).

And in addition, the values are clearly seen as important – in that people will question others if they act inconsistently with the values.

But I still think the company’s mojo and capabilities provide a better description for understanding what the company is about, and providing a basis for aligning its HR processes in the way I’ve described above.

 

 

While I’m addressing the presentation, I should also mention that I do have some issues with the company’s approach.

For example, they suggest that having 10 people interview each candidate is a ‘bad’ process – something they want to avoid to minimise complexity.

Well, maybe.  I mean, while having even 2 or 3 people interview the same candidate can be a bad process if there’s no agreed job description, communication between interviewers etc, having 10 people interview can be a good process as well – Google is a prime example.  And given that recruiting high performers is such a critical aspect of Netflix’s strategy, I would suggest that they shouldn’t dismiss the approach as easily as they seem to have done.

(Perhaps it’s because they know they can fire the wrong employees easily enough – although this is going to be expensive, and isn’t going to help them form productive teams.)

 

In addition, I can see that the company might regret its decision not to use variable pay. Providing a base which reflects and outperforms the market makes sense, but what about the person who is significantly ‘overpaid’ – what incentive do they have to perform as well as they can?

 

 

But in the main, I think it’s a fantastic example of so many things I support – particularly a really clear mojo, and the development of best fit (vs simply best practice) HR processes that support this positioning.

 

 

For more information, go over to Moon Shots and take a look there too.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Values,mojo,organisational capability,organisational capabilities,Moon Shots for Management,Netflix

 

 

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Values and mojos

 

I wrote in my last but one post that I’d follow up on my review of Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s description of Procter & Gamble’s value-led strategy with some more notes on the role of values in supporting organisational mojo.

Firstly, I should explain that I’m not generally a fan of organisational values (see this post).

This may surprise you?

After all, I post fairly regularly on the need for organisations to be clear about how they’re going to operate (their mojo) and then to compete on the way that they’ve structured themselves around this (their organisational capabilities).

I just find it difficult to feel positively about the role of values in supporting mojo and organisational capability.

This is partly about my own experience.  None of the best change processes I’ve been involved in – as an employee, a line manager, an HR Director or a consultant – have involved them.  And some of the very superficial and ineffective change exercises that I’ve been involved in (not, I hasten to say, as a change leader) have placed a new set of values at the very centre of the change.

I also don’t like the idea that people should be asked to change their own values to fit with an organisations.  Again, this perspective comes largely from my own introspection and the fact that I’ve never really changed my own values to fit with an organisation’s – at least not as a result of any intentional strategy of, and deliberate actions taken by, an organisation.

However, I do recognise the benefit of values within recruitment – to ensure that people are only recruited when they have the values that the organisation wants them to exhibit.

In addition, I have changed my values when I’ve seen the benefits of, and been engaged by, an organisation’s values.  That is, they’ve not asked me to change my values – but I’ve been personally compelled to do so.

Of course, I’d argue that what really compelled me to change was the organisation’s mojo, its organisational capabilities and its culture – not it’s values.  But I suppose values can have a role in helping to articulate what the organisation’s mojo / capabilities / culture are about.  This is going to help organisational leaders, and employees, ensure that their actions are aligned with their mojo, and as long as this is the way that values are used, then doing this is only going to help.

In my next couple of posts, I’m going to look at some case studies that may shine some further light on this…

 

 

Image: Mojo in an episode of the X-Men animated series

Technorati Tags: Values,mojo

 

 

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Proctor & Gamble: competing on mojo

 

    Rosabeth Moss Kanter has some great posts on her Harvard Business School Change Master blog, supporting her new book ‘SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good‘.

Firstly, in 21st Century Workplaces, Moss Kanter writes about Super-corporations (like Procter & Gamble) which aim to become employers of choice by ensuring their people are happily employed, using their skills, with a sufficient feeling of security to plan the future, and a minimum of stressful overload:

“Hitting that sweet spot - keeping people employed in good jobs - is a goal of the vanguard companies I describe in my new book, SuperCorp. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and others are trying to create innovation and profits through values and principles that enable them to have a positive social impact. They are thinking their way out of twentieth-century assumptions (e.g., that a job must be performed in a facility at specific times and assigned by a boss who observes performance) to create twenty-first century dynamic workplaces.”

 

Secondly, Moss Kanter writes more specifically about P&G's New Values-Based Strategy (in a post that looks like it was once called ‘Fall like a Lehman, Rise like a ???’).  She explains that P&G’s new CEO, Bob McDonald, is redoubling the company’s emphasis on its culture and values, linked to its 171 year-old purpose, in order to better execute a “stunning new business strategy to jump-start growth”:

“It begins in a startling, almost counterintuitive way — with company values and sense of purpose.  Invoke the heart and care about human needs, the strategy seems to say, and the money will follow.

 

This sounds a lot like my / Marshall Goldmsith’s concept of organisational mojo* that I discussed in my last post.  Assuming that I’m right to make this link, then the key in building mojo is that leaders understand the rising importance of values, which Moss Kanter explains is:

“For the new generation of employees, for finding innovations in underserved markets, and for getting respect from the public and favorable treatment from government.”

 

I’m going to review the role of values in supporting organisational mojo over the next couple of posts.

 

 

* = I recognise that Goldsmith is going to popularise this term, but I did start to write about it first!

See for example:

31 May 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/05/need-for-internal-purpose.html

24 June 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/06/power-of-mojo.html

8 July July 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/07/search-for-greening.html

5 March 2009: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2009/03/social-advantage.html.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Rosabeth Moss Kanter,Change Master,SuperCorp,Vanguard Companies,Innovation,Profits,Growth,Social Good,Procter & Gamble,values

 

 

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