Who should be the CIPD’s new CEO?

 

   So the CIPD are searching for a replacement for Jackie Orme.  Or rather a recruitment consultancy are doing the search for them, which seems a rather redundant exercise give that the successful candidate has to (or certainly should) already have a prominent role in the HR community in order to act as a figure head for the profession.  Therefore we already know who they are, or at least we know who the candidates should be.

This is my suggestion for the top 10 (in the order I thought of them):

 

	Duncan Brown.  One of the most insightful people to have passed through the CIPD, with more recent experience at IES, PwC and Hewitt.  Sensibly intelligent and articulate, with a great understanding of the new reward agenda.  Time for the CIPD to take on bankers’ bonuses?  Too right!
	John Philpott. If the CIPD wants to fill the role with an internal candidates, and they should really shouldn’t they, then John Philpott, the CIPD’s Chief Economist is the clear front runner.  Loads of informed insight, respect across the HR community and clout with government.  What’s not to like?
	Peter Cheese.  Highly experience and credible consultant, ex Accenture now kicking his heels at the ILM.  Author of a couple of fairly sensible books on strategic HR management and measurement including the Talent Powered Organisation.  Would measuring HR’s contribution get the profession into shape?
	Ann Almeida.  Prefer a practitioner to a consultant?  Yes, probably.  There are a number of senior HR leaders who good do the job – probably from the FTSE100 as they’d carry respect in smaller organisations whilst the reverse isn’t always true (often unfairly).  However, my nomination would be for Ann Almeida at HSBC - probably the deepest thinking HR practitioner I’ve met.
	Neil Morrison.  I’m only half joking here – maybe not even that – what about Neil Morrison?  Board level HR Director at Random House, social media superstar and greatly talented wit.  Not overly into the CIPD which I think is a good thing.  But of course, a big supporter of Connecting HR, which is better still.
	Lembit Opik. A real joker in the pack would be Liberal Democrat politican and general celebrity Lembit Opik.  Ex HR, ex MP with the capability to bring a cheeky grin to all HR professionals.
	Julian Birkinshaw. Moving into academia, I’ve needed to have a think.  My favourite UK academic for a long-time has been Lynda Gratton at London Business School, but I’m less into her newer stuff, despite the fact that it’s increasingly closer to my main agenda these days.  So my nomination goes to a non-HR professor who I think speaks the greatest sense about HR: Julian Birkinshaw, also at LBS.  Time to reinvent HR!
	Ruth Spellman. What have we got left?  I guess HR types with experience of running other professional institutes must be a good bet. What about poaching Ruth Spellman, ex CEO of CMI and IIP UK before she joins WEA next month?
	China Gorman. Or what about China Gorman, ex SHRM hard hitter, heavily engaged in social media too. The American take-over might not go down well with some, but better this than a full take-over of the institute by SHRM!
	Gwyn Burr. Errm, I’m running out of ideas now, but, well, I suppose the final opportunity would be a business person who is known as a progressive talent manager.  I’m not a particular fan of the businessisation of HR, but it could go down well across the profession.  A compromise might be someone doing both HR and a business job eg Gwyn Burr, Customer Service and Colleague Director at Sainsbury’s, or possibly Lucy Adams, Business Operations Director (and former Director of People) at the BBC. Actually, I do like this idea, so there you go: Gwyn Burr is my recommendation for the job.

Who else would you suggest?

 

A few reflections:

• I’ve not worried about the job these people are currently doing, or how much they’re currently being paid etc.  Such is the freedom of the blogger vs the recruitment agent!
• It’s not a very diverse list, and hopefully that’s something that the recruitment agency can improve on.
• I’ve been a bit ambivalent about HR Magazine’s list of Most Influentials in the past (though obviously a bit less so now that I’m on it!) but based upon the above they do seem to have hit the spot – I had a look through their lists (1,2,3,4) when I got a bit stuck with my #10 and it’s interesting to see most of the people I’ve listed are on their lists already.
• But no, I’m not putting myself forward – though I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fun – see my next post on this!

 

And a PS: I’ve never exchanged more than a couple of words with Jackie, and I don’t agree with all her views on HR, or all of what she’s done at the CIPD, but it’s horrible to hear about anyone, particularly someone still relatively early in their career, having cancer, and I wish her the very best for a full and speedy recovery.

 

Technorati Tags: Jackie Orme,CIPD,Chief Executive,CEO,HR,search,recruitment,Duncan Brown,John Philpott,Peter Cheese,Ann Almeida,Neil Morrison,Julian Birkinshaw,Ruth Spellman,China Gorman,Gwyn Burr

 

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More HR and social media in Asia

 

   I’ll also be discussing some of these points about social business / enterprise 2.0, but more specifically social HR, and very practically, the social media tools involved in these approaches, within an Asian context during March:

• Kuala Lumpur 16 & 17 March
• Singapore 29 & 20 March

 

I’m sure it’ll be another interesting session, particularly given that the use of social media in Asia is so different to the the UK (I’ve posted on this previously, and also note the differences in social media week – all about change and collaboration in the UK, all about finding love on Facebook in Singapore!).

Anyway, if you’re in Asia I’ll hope you’ll to join me (or at least follow the twitter stream during the four days).

You can find out more from Long Trends Tel: 65-91912218; Fax: 65-64048964; Email: enquiry@long-trends.com.

 

Technorati Tags: Social media,HR,Facebook,Linkedin,twitter,Asia,Malaysia,Sinagpore,course,training,workshop

 

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Enterprise 2.0 Summit / Social Business Immersive

 

   I’m attending / blogging from / presenting at some great conferences over the next few months.  Next week, I’ll be an ‘ambassador’ for the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris and will be posting on some of the sessions there, mainly over at Social Advantage.

The social technology theme continues the following week with Social Media Week - London where I’ll be presenting on social business with Like Minds:

“Taking care of your people is taking care of business. Developing and managing a ‘social’ workforce is critical for your future success.”

 

Hope to see you at one of these events, and if not, do follow their progress here.

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise,2.0,social,media,business,events,conference,week,2012

 

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Social Learning (Un) Conference

 

   On Thursday 8th March I’ll be back focusing on learning as the Chair at the Social Learning Conference.  Despite its name, this is also going to be an Unconference.

If you want to come along, you can book here.  Please say hello if you do.

 

Technorati Tags: Crexia,Social Learning,conference,unconference

 

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#LT12UK - Where’s the D in #CIPD?

 

   Last week I also presented on a session at Learning Technologies on the role of L&D within or separate to HR.  I’ve already posted to explain how this resulted from a tweet from Paul Jagger at IBM suggesting that L&D should be freed up from HR, which I strongly disagreed with.

In my session, I argued that L&D needs to form part of HR as both are focusing on the same outcomes and are developing their activities in the same sorts of ways (informal, social, mobile, gamified etc). I also argued that L&D shouldn’t just become part of the business because we need prioritise, not de-emphasise, the strategic creation of human capital across the whole organisation – not just meet short-term needs in different parts of a business.

40% of the audience voted that L&D should be part of HR, and given that this was an L&D conference, and that we didn’t count abstentions, I thought that I did quite well!

 

   However, Paul made a really well argued, data based case for L&D remaining, and in fact becoming even more, separate.  For example, although there’s a logic in brining the P and D together in CIPD, there’s not much evidence of D in the institute’s qualification structure.

And I particularly liked these tag clouds, taken from 100 jobs advertised on Changeboard between July and December 2011, showing the difference between HR jobs and L&D jobs – and I think Paul is right to point out the lack of overlap between these two (and also the absence of the word ‘strategic’ from the HR tags).

HR:

 

 

L&D:

 

Actually, I think both of these fail to be strategic, and perhaps what both Paul and I were arguing for, despite disagreeing on whether HR and L&D should be split vertically from each other, was more horizontal separation from the strategic and the tactical aspects of both (sub-)professions.  Perhaps Lawler was onto something suggesting a split between HR Business Partnering and Organisational Effectiveness?

 

Slide credits: Paul Jagger (thanks!)

Technorati Tags: Paul Jagger,Learning,Technologies,conference,IBM,HR,CIPD

 

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What is now business critical on the HR Director’s agenda?

 

   We’ll be following up on the issues raised in the HR Directors Business Summit unconference, and discussed in the final unpanel, at the organisers’ new community forum, HR InSights.

However, I thought my summary as chair at the beginning of day two covered both days of the unconference quite well.  The three main issues for me were:

• Performance.  Of the business, and of the HR function too (eg in Ed Lawler’s presentation, and also demonstrated in the HR with Distinction awards).
• Leadership development.  In business (particularly given the passion expressed in the unpanel about ‘toxicity at the top’) and in other areas, particularly sports (eg in Sir Clive Woodward’s presentation on coaching in rugby and basketball which suggested some interesting opportunities for business coaching too).
• Planning and analytics.  Eg I liked the way that David Clutterbuck suggested that we need to be analytical in order to remain caring for our people.

 

I also suggested that ‘social’ should be a key theme for HR, even if we hadn’t mentioned it on day 1, and would come through more strongly during day 2 - which of course it did - particularly given the unconference on the agenda.

And actually it came out in other presentions – eg Penny Ferguson’s keynote on leadership which had nothing obvious to do with being more social.  However, I think this quote is exactly what it’s about:

“We need to get to know the people and get them to open up.  You can’t be a leader unless you know the people you’re leading.”

 

-   Yes, and of course, they need to know each other as well.

 

However, in at least one way, social had already come through as a key theme in the agenda.  I noticed this looking at the hosted lunch sign-up lists after checking on the unconference grid board on the way back to my hotel after the awards dinner on day 1.

There were two lunches on performance (performance through coaching, high performance culture) – both full; three lunches on leadership (inclusive leadership, new directions in leadership development, the living leader) – all full; two lunches on planning and analytics (strategic talent planning, learning and analytics) – both full; but also one lunch on social media and the workplace – also full.  Other lunches were much less well booked up eg the one on pensions auto enrolment was completely empty still (this may be more about how people want to spend their lunchtimes than any real indication of interest, but I think it still says something about the importance of social and the other three issues I’ve listed above).

 

It was interesting, given this, that the three issues people suggested during / straight after the unpanel that they thought were missing were:

• HR innovation (I accept this omission, though I thought there was much more focus on the need for HR innovation vs just using common sense than there was in at least one previous year).
• Youth unemployment (this was also a big omission, as it tends to be in most conferences, though we have addressed it in the ConnectingHR unconference).
• Analytics...

 

Analytics was Peter Cheese’s suggestion and I can see why Peter thought it was less prominent than perhaps it should have been.  For example, look at Ed Lawler’s slides on the importance (and current ineffectiveness) of HR measurement:

 

 

But as I had said in my chairing, I do think analytics had come through as a key theme, and it could have been stressed more if people had been that interested in it.  However, it was interesting that although metrics were suggested as one topic for discussion in the unconference, nobody seemed interesting in discussing it, and we had to fold that particular group (falling, perhaps, for the pensions auto enrolment problem?).

I also thought that this may be another good opportunity to raise my own perspective that yes, measurement is important, but let’s not get too carried away!  The pig doesn’t get any fatter by measuring it – it’s what we do with our measures that counts!

This is another of Lawler’s slides:

 

It looks bad doesn’t it – 40% of CFOs have no understanding of the return on their company’s HR investments.  And this might indicate that HR really hasn’t got a good handle on HR measures and analytics.

But I don’t think it does.  I think it reflects the fact that most of HR’s outcomes are intangible – they can’t be accurately calculated.  From this perspective, the 40% isn’t a problem but a natural consequence of this type of role.

I’m not saying that HR measures, analytics, or approaches like the HR scorecard (which I think is the most appropriate basis for HR measurement) can’t help, but even then, I think ‘know’ is a bit strong.  We can certainly develop insight into this, but we’ll never be able to ‘know’, in detail, exactly what we’ve managed to achieve. 

Return isn’t the issue.  Let’s just accept this and move on – we’ve got bigger challenges to tackle - toxicity and the top; HR innovation and youth unemployment would be better places to start!

 

Picture credit: Rafaella Goodby 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,measurement,analytics,return,ROI,leadership,performance,social,media,toxicity

 

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Innovating the HR Conference (#HRevent)

 

    So you probably know that I’ve been one of the people behind the introduction of unconferences into HR in the UK.  I love these events and am really interested to see how they develop – perhaps with more small groups like ConnectingHR arranging organically to get together and learn from each other, and with the traditional conferences, outside those operating in relatively specialist areas, retreating into a smaller and smaller role – or whether the traditional conference providers get smart and update their models to make conferences less formal, more social and therefore more appealing, meaning that people might not see so much need to do things for themselves.

World Trade Group, organisers of the annual HR Directors Business Summit (plus the Pan European HR Summit, and the first CHRO Summit in the US later this year) are, I think, leading the field in looking at how the traditional model might change.  So on Wednesday last week, I chaired the second day of the HR Directors Business Summit which integrated unconferencing into the formal conference.

This isn’t a completely new idea, so for example, HR Technology US and HRevolution were run together last year, and even included a couple of HRevolution sessions on the last day of HR Technology.  But there was no real cross-over between the two (and actually, though I love HRevolution, it’d not really an unconference).

At the HR Director's Business Summit, we’d already decided to do a proper integration:

• Completing the unconference grid during the first day of the conference
• Running unconference sessions (discussions, not presentations, based on issues delegates wanted to discuss)
• Using the final conference panel session to feedback on, and get further input into, the discussions in the unconference.

 

On the morning of the unconference day, we made a further change to this, deciding to make the panel into an ‘unpanel’, in which we’d start by sitting up on the stage, feeding back on the unconference, and then move into the delegate seating area, facilitating the broader discussion from within the crowd.  (Reinforcing the point that this isn’t a completely new idea, although I thought I was making the term up, a Google search on ‘unpanel’ throws up 38,200 results!)

In general, I think it went really well, though there were a lot of things I learnt, and I’d do differently if and when I do the same thing again.  But the energy and involvement in the unpanel (at least during the last 5 minutes) were like nothing you’d get in a traditional panel, and I hope that even though it was messy, people will have appreciated the authenticity!  And by participating in the conversation, I honestly think that people will have learnt a lot more as well.

Comments?

 

We also had a twitter display up to generate inputs from beyond the confines of the auditorium (around the conference hashtag, #hrevent) - here are some of the tweets:

 

Thanks to:

• Stephen Pobjoy, conference producer at World Trade Group
• My unpanel members:
  • David Clutterbuck, Professor, Oxford Brookes and Sheffield Hallam
  • Harvey Francis, Executive VP, HR, IT and Communications, Skanska
  • Donna Miller, European HR Director, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car
  • Lisa Winnard, HR Director, Sesame Bankhall Group
• The blogsquad for the tweeting:
  • Rob Jones
  • Gareth Jones
  • Mervyn Dinnen
• All the delegates who took a risk and came along, particularly those who acted as sponsors for the discussions
• ConnectingHR, the members of which acted as a fairly large proportion of the above.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,Directors Business Summit,unconference,unpanel,David Clutterbuck,Harvey Francis,Donna Miller,Lisa Winnard

 

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Ed Lawer on HR (presenting at the HR Directors Business Summit, part 2)

 

    HR has been trying to become a better business partner for some time in order to help deal with the challenges I listed in part 1 of this post.  And we do seem to think we’ve made some progress:

 

However Lawler’s team have also looked at what HR actually does, rather than just what it thinks it does, and this isn’t such good news – particularly, supporting the conclusions of the recent CHRO study, in the UK and rest of Europe (though actually the UK has the best results for HR acting as a full partner in business strategy rather than just taking an input role):

 

This is important because it’s the strategic business partner role that provides by far the greatest input to business success.

 

In improving on these results, HR’s structural model has been one of the major change in organisations.  The major problem has been HR functions going native – only thinking about their line of business, not the corporate as a whole.

Organisations are trying different things eg double hatting but this generally ends up with everyone feeling schizophrenic – above and beyond their sanity.

A better solution may be to give HR a wider set of issues, eg this example from a US company – helping to deliver a terrific EVP etc.

 

There are also actions we can take to upgrade HR’s capabilities and structure:

 

Ie, to achieve these benefits we may need to break HR out from the function responsible for Organisation Effectiveness – allowing this higher function to be strategic and analytic – as otherwise it always gets taken over by transactional work.

I think there was some great analysis in this presentation (I often use some of the data in my workshops but haven’t seen the 2010 results before) and I’m partly pursuaded by the conclusions – in fact I referred to and supported these in my own book.  I do believe in the need to focus both strategy and structure on organisation effectiveness:

“Strategic contributor to business strategy development and implementation based on considerations of human capital, organisational effectiveness, and readiness.  Developing HR practices as strategic differentiators.”

 

However, I’m not totally convinced we need to separate HR from the OE function.

If I was ever to go back into corporate ‘people management’, this OE one is the one I’d want to have, but I’d ideally like to retain responsibility for the HR function too, so that I don’t have to do everything through influence but also have some of the most direct levels for improving organisational effectiveness under my own control.

Your thoughts?

 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,USC,CEO,HR,Organisation,effectiveness,capability

 

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Ed Lawler on Change (presenting at the HR Directors Business Summit, part 1)

 

   So I’m back here again. The main highlight today is Ed Lawer on one of his rare trips to the UK.

We start on the need to build changeable rather than simply great, but stable, organisations. This is the difference between new normal and old normal - change and accountability. We’ll never go back to the days of fixed job descriptions.

Companies don’t generate competitive advantage out of the ability to execute but from the ability to change and adapt on an ongoing basis.  They need to be able to adjust to a series of competitive advantages which are always changing.

This, for Lawler, is why 80% of changes fail – it is because they are trying to change an organisation which is built to resist change.  And we’ve moved from an era of episodic change to one of continuous change – we won’t be re-entering an era of stability.  The world is not built this way, and we’re not changing in this way.

 

Episodic Change Change capability lacking – rented when needed Focus on efficiency over innovation Stability = effectiveness Change = enemy Performance reflects change patterns Decision making centralised Resource allocation through budgets

Continuous Change Change capability embedded in organisation design Focus on ambidexterity Change = effectiveness Stability = enemy Performance reflects change pattern Decision making shared / decentralised Resources allocated through accountabilities

 

Built for stability may provide short periods of good financial results but it won’t last.  This is a major role for the HR function to take responsibility for this adaptability and it needs to impact on the reward systems it designs, the interfaces it has, etc.  We need to put people in touch with their stakeholders: customers, regulators etc – so they can see it, have to deal with it etc.

 

 

HR needs to create, not just be at the table.  This isn’t just about taking the business strategy and translating it into HR practices and organisation design.  The strategic piece is entering discussion with human capital and business data showing which additional capabilities can be developed given human capital issues (this is what I call creating value).

 

Technorati Tags: Ed Lawler,built to,change,management,agility

 

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Integrating Human Capital and Workforce Planning

 

   If you get IHRIM’s Workforce Solutions Review, do take a look at this article in the new December 2011 / January 2012 edition.  This is the exec summary:

“The increasing use of strategic workforce planning is a welcome development in the HR profession. However, to enable effective people management, organizations need to undertake six different forms of planning, focusing respectively on human capital; talent; human resources; workforce; succession and HR processes.

It is only by including a focus on human capital and talent that workforce planning can be truly strategic–that is, concerned with competitive advantage in the private sector, or transforming services and significantly improving the way customer and other stakeholder needs are met in the public and voluntary sectors.

These six processes also need to be supported by three enablers: focusing on the future state; creating multiple scenarios and the appropriate use of measurement and creativity.

This embedding of workforce planning is particularly important when operating in today’s turbulent economic environment.”

 

Technorati Tags: IHRIM,WSR,Workforce Solutions Review,workforce,human capital,HCM,HR,planning

 

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