- 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
.
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
#HRTechConf Day 2 notes
#HRTechConf Day 1 notes
- 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
.
Monday, 3 October 2011
John Boudreau transforming HR at #HRTechConf
Boudreau has been encouraging us to think more like scientists – to get between the ears of our leaders. We need to ask are we using the evidence that exists in our organisations, in the scientific world ie evidence that already exists, and how do we look beyond the evidence to influence decision making.
1. We need to move from having lots of information to putting this information to use. Rather than giving our leaders lots of information and hoping they’ll invent a system to use it.
2. We need to retool HR by learning from the dilemmas facing other disciplines. And we need to learn the business models or our organisations, not just the businesses themselves.
And we need to push back a bit (create value) – not just agree to reduce time to fill requisitions, surpluses and shortages but to identify how to optimise these.
For example, we need to learn from Supply Chain Management how we can improve the supply chain of talent. This is what IBM did bringing in their second top person in SCM to design their approach for talent – including a governance model for skills etc.
3. We need to segment our talent eg Starbucks segmentation into five groups including ‘I work to live, not live to work’ (the surfer dude) – sorry my picture didn’t take, and this one from Ben Brooks is the only one I’ve seen (please let me know if you’ve got a better one!):
We need to understand things like the theory of constraints – asking better questions to inform decision making.
4. We need to get better at using risk management as the basis for workforce planning, rather than seeing it as just stopping something bad from happening. There are links between uncertainty, risk and opportunity. We need to use tools like portfolio analysis. And we need to plan for a largely unknown system rather than using the job titles etc which exist today.
5. We also need to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts eg that our systems integrate with each other. Less best of the art systems and more that fit together and deliver what we need (see the Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management)
Eg Shanda Games, based in China which is the fastest groing online gaming system in the work has built its HR architecture as a massively multi-player online game with a 100 level staffing system to help people see progress.
Well, I don’t know Abhishek: there’s not a lot of new stuff in there (I certainly think it’s time Boudreau moves on from his “there’s only one Mickey Mouse” spiel).
I did like the Shanda example, and would have preferred a whole session focused on that.
But my bigger concern is with this whole scientist thing. If Boudreau was talking about social science rather than physical science then perhaps I wouldn’t be so worried. But I don’t think he is.
And actually, I don’t even think that social science takes us far enough. Let me be blunt. HR’s an art.
OK, it’s a science as well, but the magical stuff that makes organisations wonderful places to work doesn’t have anything to do with Boudreau’s five needs.
If you look at any of the case studies I’ve featured in my blog, eg Mahindra & Mahindra which I wrote about last week, or Zappos, where I’ll be on Thursday, none of these have anything do to with science.
Let’s just grow up, understand that HR is different from other business disciplines, and start to act differently, not just the same, as our business colleagues.
That, to me, is transformative HR!
Sunday, 2 October 2011
#HRevolution notes
My posts from the previous HRevolution:
- Love in HR (and at #HRevolution)
- What will HR’s evolution be? Liz Gottung at Kimber...
- #HREvolution, Nobscot and Exit Interviews
And don’t forget about ConnectingHR!
- 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
.
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Singapore Human Capital Summit – Summary
Well yes… But:
1. I think this need to understanding the context applies to every country, and actually every different organisation. Asia is different from Europe, America and elsewhere, but it’s not THAT different – at least I’ve not heard anything during these two days, or during my previous two day workshop in KL, that convinces me it is.
By the way, I have by the way done a decent amount of work here, though most of it was before the recession (or from an Asian perspective, the slow-down).
2. I think what is different is HOW business is done, rather than WHAT it involves. And here, I actually feel more at home with business in Asia than I do in the West. For example, I love the way that the Singapore Stock Exchange is so focused on encouraging their registered businesses to improve Board diversity to improve corporate governance and valuations. Just not something you’d see in the West.
3. Most of what I do is about helping HR teams innovate. Success is doing this is about being able to think differently. I believe it can actually be useful not to be close to the way that things are currently done. And I’m not convinced that enough Asian businesses are thinking transformationally enough, to cope with the environment they’re in (just like Western businesses in fact).
My posts:
- Learning from India
- Innovative Asian People Strategies
- Vineet Nayar on the perfect storm
- Leadership strategies in Asia
- Collaborative Leadership in Asia
- 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
.
Learning from India
We kicked off with Peetr describing some of his research.
The one thing which I think came out most strongly was the importance of having a social purpose.
Ed Miliband may now recognise that “we need a more ethical capitalism in which we recognise that business has real responsibilities. Business is not just about making money.” (though he doesn’t seem to be getting much support for these views) but in India that’s long been the way things are done.
Social purpose drives the business and making money certainly won’t be what you want to lead with. This approach pays off – employees will be more motivated when they see and believe there is a social purpose.
We then had a presentation from Rajeev Dubey, President at Mahindra & Mahindra.
M&M are creating Tomorrow’s Company. This is a business transformation created from a cultural transformation (creating value) – about moving people from the subtext to the headlines, and aligning behaviours in support of the triple bottom line.
The transformation requires a mix a logic and intuition, in which people are in the flow – and can go deep into any situation, and trust through authenticity.
M&M run fireside chats to connect young employees with senior execs (these are also streamed virtually).
And they provide ESOPs but these are employee social (vs share) options –facilitating employee volunteerism in social activities.
I thought this was a great presentation – absolutely the way that companies should be run.
Technorati Tags: Peter Cappelli,Rajeev Dubey,Mahindra & Mahindra,India,Asia,talent,strategy,Singapore,human capital,summit
- 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
.
Innovative Asian People Strategies
“Across Asia, unprecedented rates of growth and levels of change are making strong demands on the strategic ability of organisations to innovate and on their creativity. Building organisations that thrive, and developing the talent pool to lead them are challenges at the heart of business strategies.
We’ve developed new insights into these challenegs through our research in Asia. this paints a picture of a regional HR profession that can overtake current global best practice to deliver uniquely Asian HR strategies that are truly growth-orientated.”
It’s a bit of a fluffy statement, but also quite profound, if true.
Given this, one of the sessions at the Singapore Human Capital Summit I was most looking forward to was the one on innovative Asian people strategies. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much innovation in evidence as I would have liked, although a couple of the case studies were reasonably interesting.
So Sumeet Salwan, VP HR, SE Asia at Unilver described the scale and growth that Unilever is facing, and also emphasized that it is having the right people, and a performance culture, not technology etc, which is critical to business success.
Summeet gave a nice example of workforce planning leading to a better understanding of the sorts of actions which would be needed to generate this success.
And I agree with Sumeet that Unilever deserves credit for understanding that this required some significant investment and big actions, not just “focusing a little more and working a little harder”. So Unilver has invested 45m (SGD?) in a new ‘4 acres’ leadership campus in Singapore.
I also liked the presentation from Hamidah Naziadin at CIMB. She has been working at this major regional bank for 20 years (starting off doing all the payroll etc herself). The company has also seen huge growth and challenges including mergers, Unions etc, and was also the one organisation to note that it now uses social media to support orientation etc.
I liked CIMB’s focus on ‘carefrontation’ – being a type of open confrontation based on respect for the individual, which struck me as a very appropriate Asian approach..
I was also interested that at the same time I was tweeting about this, someone else at the conference tweeted about the perspective of an employee in another Asian company suggesting that the Western concept of straight talk is simply an excuse to be rude – something which I think is often true. So I like the idea of carefrontation, but is it that innovative?
Is there really more innovation taking place in Asia than in the West? I’d have loved to have read through all the entries to the Asian Human Capital Awards, and certainly the winners of this – HCL and Manila Water were quite innovative. But I’m not sure there’s as much HR innovation going on in Asia as the CIPD suggest – or that needs to happen of course…
This is certainly a region of immense challenge, I’m quite certain of this. And the conference was full of data points emphasising the huge numbers of people who need to be recruited and developed as leaders etc (Walmart Asia suggest they’ll need to interview 1 million people over the next 5 years). They do need innovation, but I’m not currently convinced that many more of them will be able to follow in HCL’s footprints (meaning finding a unique strategy which differentiates them – not just copying Employees First, Customers Second – which I’m not convinced will work) than will be able to do so in the West…
(Without the right help of course!)
Technorati Tags: Innovation,Asia,HR,Hamidah Naziadin,CIMB,carefrontation,Sumeet Salwan,Unilever,Singapore,human capital,summit
- 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
.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Vineet Nayar on the perfect storm
I wasn’t let down and think Vineet’s input has been the most insightful piece around Asian business / HR so far, talking about the current ‘perfect storm’ and suggesting that given the returning economic crisis in Europe, that the West is looking more seriously at the East than ever before (which is I guess why I’m here for the first time too).
Do take a look at his speech:
(To be uploaded)
I stop the video at about 10 minutes as Vineet started to get more deeply into HCLT’s experience – not that this was any less insightful but simply because I’ve already covered it previously – see:
- http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2010/07/vineet-nayar-employees-first.html
- http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-upside-down-ceo.html
As the Singapore Minister for Manpower explained, Asian organisations are responding to economic turbulence by developing their own innovative, effective and impactful human capital solutions rather than by translating solutions from the West (why would the East want to copy the practices that have got the West into this economic mess?).
HCLT’s experience is a good example of this – Employee First Customers Second “isn’t a people strategy identified to support the business, but a business strategy built around having employees build high performance and generate value for customers” (ie it’s creating vs just adding value).
Technorati Tags: Vineet Nayar,HCL,Employee First,Customers Second,Sinagpore,Human Capital,Summit,Asian,A,ward,perfect storm,East,HR
- 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
.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Leadership strategies in Asia
As you can see, it’s a big event (and very red!).
I missed the first couple of sessions, which was a shame, but I had a few other people to meet. But I got here in time for ‘Research on Asia – The Shift’, with Lynda Gratton and some local business leaders as panellists. I’d been looking forward to this, to better understand some of the key differences in HR in Asia, but the session focused largely on generic issues in the shift:
There was this though, showing some of the key differences:
In general though, most of what I’ve heard so far applies as much in the West as it does here.
For example, there’s the same misconceptions about Gen Y - that they have a sense of purpose, want flexibility and more life than work, that sort of thing (I know for a fact that most Western, and am fairly sure that many Asian, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers want these things too).
One speaker, for example, noted that Gen Y believe in more life and less work (so do I by the way). However, one of the other speakers suggested that there was no longer any work-life balance as people spend so much time at work – so perhaps not everyone had quite got Linda’s message (actually this may be one of the few factors which really does apply more in the East).
And there’s the same move to a more collaborative, democratic way of working. And I did think that this was a really interesting thing to see. I’m going to post over at Social Advantage a bit later on.
Dare I say that there’s also, unfortunately, the same over-reliance on the use of panels during conferences. But in general, today’s looking like a really stimulating day.
Anyway, its wonderful to be back here again – I always find Singapore a very stimulating place (probably no coincidence I started my blog here all that time ago).
More from the summit later / tomorrow.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Change, OD and the Borg
People were talking about the need for persuasion and how they could best get people to move where the organisation wanted them. I leapt in then because I’ve become increasingly convinced that this is not the way that change management works.
Particularly in the OD world, we understand, or should understand, that this isn’t the right way things to do things. That as soon as you try to move someone, to persuade them to a point of view, you’ve lost the plot.
I call it the Borg model of change – you know, “you will be assimilated!”. Fine if you want to take your place in the cube, but not what most of us are after.
What we need to do instead is to involve people in deciding where to go. Then there’s no need for assimilating people, and the change (OD) process is going to be much more successful too.
I’ll be blogging a lot more about change management next month (connected to some work I’m doing at the moment).
- 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
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
