Walter Mitty and HR Transformation

I've recently had this post published on the ASTD / ATD's gloabl HRD blog - HR Artistry on a Global Canvas - again supporting this November's Art of HR Conference.

As well as describing the 'canvas' which enables HR to be more artful, consisting of ambition, bravery and creativity, I take Walter Mitty's similar A, B, C and suggest that I often like to think of the creation of a new, artful HR as a bit like the transformation from Walter, the office worker, into Walter, the adventurous, brave, and creative skateboarding global traveler / astronaut!

This isn't about being more strategic or having a seat at the table etc, it's just about grabbing opportunity with both hands and not letting go.

And if you want to Walterise your HR function, come along to the Art of HR taking place in Dubrovnik in November.  Or you can join in the conversation about artistry in our Linkedin group.

• 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

Anthony Hilton as HR's Most Influential?

I met up yesterday with Arvind Hickman, Editor of HR Magazine, to talk about the Art of HR conference I’m organising, and will be chairing, and at which he’ll be  speaking at as well.  Arvind mentioned he was keen for further promotion of this year’s HR Most Influential (HRMI) programme which sets out to identify influential thinkers and I’m happy to support!

In fact I’ve already made my suggestion for Anthony Hilton’s City Column at the Evening Standard.

I should explain that this year Arvind is looking for suggestions of written work which supports a thinker’s thought leadership.  Now I often challenge the magazine’s methodology and will do so again now - most HR people aren’t influenced via written work but by face to face, small group and one-on-one conversation.  (That’s why I’m not blogging here so heavily anymore but am putting much more time into running training sessions and getting in front of people at small group events.)

You may disagree with me, and of course, you are reading this here.  But you’re the exception.  Certainly in my experience most senior HR people don’t read books, magazines or blogs (perhaps just mine), don’t go to conferences (perhaps just Art of HR hopefully!) and in fact vastly underinvest in their own capability development.  I shared this view with a group of suppliers in a panel for the Learning and Performance Institute (LPI)'s Learning Directors Network meeting yesterday afternoon and most people there seemed to have had similar experience of practitioners in Learning & Development at least.

I think it’s a problem.  As was suggested yesterday afternoon, we’ve got to a situation where many in the workforce - business leaders and line managers in particular - are putting more effort into their own learning than HR people whereas it ought to be the other way around.  But for as long as this remains a situation, influential HR thinkers need to find different ways to communicate their ideas.  (Of course this isn’t going to stop places like Ashridge writing books assuming that HRDs will read them, or even from developing research on influence, like the HMRI survey, around written thought leadership, even if this isn’t really how influence takes place.)

However this year’s methodology is what it is and that’s why I’ve nominated Anthony Hilton.  This is down to two or perhaps three things.  First up is that although Hilton isn't an HR journalist, he writes what I think is some great work on HR topics, amongst other things (and which I tend to agree with.)

My second reason for suggesting Hilton is about the place where he publishes his writing.  If HRDs don’t read blogs or HR publications (I would have written ‘HR Magazine excepted’ but actually even they didn’t come off that well in the LPI research we looked at in the afternoon) then we need to take HR thought leadership to HRDs, and the Standard is about the best place you’re going to find many of them.  I suspect that because of this Hilton has more influence than just about anyone else I could think of (Lucy Kellaway came to mind briefly but most I don't think most HRDs read the FT either.)
 

Then finally is that, although I do like to read the Standard, I'm not a fan of the paper’s London-centric, Boris Johnsonite agenda as I think this panders too much to residents of the city and forgets about the views of those of us who are regular but temporary visitors (and who probably get to spend longer reading the newspaper.)  So I’m particularly impressed that even within this editorial context, Hilton makes such well articulated, highly appropriate and important challenges to poorly designed elements of reward and other aspects of employment which are generally found most commonly within the City (excessive bankers’ bonuses and CEOs’ pay awards etc.)

In conclusion, I hope I've influenced you to read of some of Hilton’s posts.  And if you don’t get a chance to pick up a copy of the Standard, or if you worry like me about the environmental damage all of these freebie newspapers are having, then you can read them here as well.

And I do hope you will have a think about who you personally find influential.  What book, article or piece of academic work has influenced you this year?  And once you’ve thought of something, do let HR Magazine know.
 

Finally, if you didn’t find it easy to think of several influential thought leaders then you’re not opening yourself to enough new ideas.  I suggest you need to change this right now.  HR is racing along into a completely new way of operating (S curve) and we need to question ourselves and learn new things faster than we’ve ever done before.  We all need to be identifying the influential thought leaders and then following their work - which is why, despite my reservations, I do think HRMI is a useful piece of research.

• 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

 

New strategic HR website / blog

As some of you will know, I've been blogging here for seven years this month, and am firmly committed to continuing to do so, if not quite to the same rate I did in the past.

However, I also recognise that although I think there is some great content on here, not all of it is easily accessible, for example a lot of it is hidden in blog posts connected to an event or something else which was going on that appeared interesting at the time, but isn't that relevant for today.

I'm therefore starting up a new site, at joningham.com, and am republishing, slightly edited, some of what I think is my best blogging work, in a more ordered sequence, and without all of the other extraneous information.

You can see this blog / 'advice column' at http://www.joningham.com/advice and can subscribe to the feed at http://www.joningham.com/1/feed.

I'll be posting daily for at least the next six months and then we'll see where that, and this blog, go.

PS I know the site still needs a bit of tidying up and that'll be done soon too.

• 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

Google Glass / Augmented Employment

Yesterday I got to try on Google Glass at their new London Basecamp.  It was an interesting experience but I escaped with my £1000 unspent.

On a personal basis I don't think I was ever likely to buy a Glass at the moment.  I'm not a geek and generally don't buy-in to new technology until it's fairly well established, the bugs have been ironed out and the functionality enhanced.  It's pretty clear that although Glass is a transformational piece of technology, it's still at a very early point in it's development.  I'll probably wait until I can get full augmented reality rather than the tiny little rectangle above my field of vision, more apps ('Glassware' apparently) eg the ability to identify people through Google + as I'm walking down the street, and higher quality sound and pictures.  Or at least until I can get something like the current functionality at say a tenth of the current Explorer price.  As a glasses wearer there's also the additional costs of prescription frames and John Sumser's experience hasn't helped motivate me to go down this route.

On a broader basis I'm still very interested in what this type of technology may be able to do for business and potentially for HR.  I don't think it will have much of a role in recruitment and certainly not in selection interviewing, though if a recruiter wanted to use one, particularly in a technology oriented sector / role, allowing them to scan through a CV or take a video of the interview, I wouldn't see this as a particular problem as long as they explain this is what they're doing too.  Sourcing may provide a much greater opportunity, but only once the functionality has been quite a bit enhanced.

Learning probably provides a more significant opportunity.  Informal learning has taken great strides forward with the development of Google and other search engines, and with the ability to use these tools via mobile devices.  Google Glass is going to take this to another level yet again.  I increasingly see learning as not just putting stuff into my own head but ensuring I can get the information that I need, whether through the right connections and relationships or my 'external brains' (Evernote and this blog.)  The capability Google Glass will provide us to find and store or reference information is going to be profound - remember Neo learning to fly a helicopter? - well that scenario is coming one step closer today.  It's also going to require a major cultural and behavioural challenge to ensure that people are focusing their learning and not just tiring themselves out through massive cognitive overload.  (There are also the difficult policy issues like do you still ban Glass wearers from accessing Facebook! - no, not really, though I'm sure some companies will try.)

Performance management or at least performance support is probably going to be a bigger opportunity again.  Knowledge workers, and others, should be able to do better knowledge work and this includes HR too.  To some extent the ability to get easier access to HR data and analytics is going to continue the development of HR to become more data and evidence based.  More importantly, to me, might be the opportunity to improve relationships with and between other people.  Picture for example a team meeting where all team members are glassed up and can see the agenda and action notes appearing before their ideas.  That might keep things on track and everyone much more focused on what they need to do as well as their own roles in supporting the team in doing it.

I'm sure there'll be more opportunities we'll discover as we progress with using Glass too.  So although I didn't make a purchase yesterday I'm now even more convinced that this as the future of personal technology.  Walking along looking down towards my iphone, whilst still an amazing step forward from what we used to be able to do even ten years ago, is clearly not an optimal was of receiving and exchanging information.  To be able to get the same details whilst looking at what I'm looking at whilst I'm walking, driving or whatever else I'm doing is clearly the way to go.  I can't see putting all of this on my wrist is going to be a massive improvement from carrying a phone around so I don't think the iwatch and its kind is going to be much of a step change development.  Google Glass is, even if this is bound to be superseded by contact lenses or something at some point.

Our employees are going to be using this.  Maybe not this year but certainly within the next five years everyone is going to be wearing Glass or something like it.  Human augmentation is here.  This is the big issue for HR, not what we can use it for within our own function and activities.  If everyone is wearing Glass what does this mean for our organisations and the way they work?

Currently, I'm still not sure I have much of an answer to this question.  But I do know it's an important question to ask.  HR needs to get on top of this technology and start thinking about how things are going to change.  So you might not want to bother checking your bank balance, but if you're in HR, and in the UK, you need to get yourself down to the London Basecamp and try Glass out.  And I'd be interested in how you get on.

• 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

#ECTalent - Darren Chlds: Putting himself on the line

Darren Childs, CEO of UKTV at the Economist Talent Management Summit 2014

Well due to the French air traffic control strikes I missed the sessions I really wanted to see but we've had a couple of good sessions on diversity (Jean Marting arguing that businesses needing to progress people from unusual sources and a panel providing lots of examples about this not happening.)

And now we've got Darren Childs, CEO of UKTV talking about corporate culture.  He spends half his time on this as it's the biggest indicator of success.  His view is that any company that focuses on building a command and control structure rather than engaging staff will be out of business within the next ten years.

When did you last put yourself on the line - being prepared to jeopardise your own position for the good of the position of your people and your company.

Leaders need to be prepared to be judged.

Eg participating (unofficially) in the Sunday Times Best Employers survey - asking employees about whether Darren is an inspirational leader.

Results suggested that the business wouldn't be able to reach it's potential, or even stay in business there was so much destruction going on.

So he started speed dating the whole company.

In just two years they've increased from 24% to 81% of employees now agree the company is led based on strong values.

And in 2013 and 14 they won the Best Companies award.

Their business is about creating culture so they ned a culture in which people can create - an ideas culture in which people are motivated to come forward with ideas.  And that people can develop their potential without a fear of rejection.  Their mantra is 'imagine more'.

They've been doing some interesting things with workplace design - eg their 'Eden' room is fitted out with park benches.  And they have big kitchens where they can talk to all of their staff about what's important.

They have a behaviour about generating ideas linked to their values and they recognise this - staff make a short video about people they want to nominate which are aired in front of the whole company.

There are smaller programmes too eg any manager can give any emploee a chocolate bar containing a small gift eg a lie in the next day or they can go home early on a Friday afternoon or get a whole duvet day.

The second essential step is bringing these ideas to life.  They have an innovation pot and anyone including the cleaners can apply for money to bring their ideas alive.

Most important is a culture that is supportive not cynical.  This is his biggest role as CEO.  His measure is that people will tell him they are doing their best work in their careers.  His role is faciltator not conductor.  Other people take centre stage - he builds the stage for them.

When he interviews staff about two thirds of the time is spent on their alignment to the company's values and culture.

They also support staff in things like surfing lessons if this will support their potential.  And they support work in the community.

He doesn't mind skeptics but he actively manages cynics out of the company.  Eg the people who don't turn up for their meetings in the over sized kitchens.

• 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

The New Global Currency

I'm looking forward to the Economist's 2014’s Talent Management Summit on Thursday.

        

My main focus as a consultant is helping HR respond to changes in the world of work so the sessions I’m most eager to see are the earlier ones on the new Global Currency, and the later ones on the New Work Order.  (That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to the ones on Boardroom Conversations and Redefining Leadership too!)

I’m going to devote this post to the New Global Currency and I’ll be blogging here on all the other later sessions, as well as these earlier ones, at the conference.

So what is this new global currency we’re talking about?  (Hint: it's not Bitcoin.)

Well this is what the marketing literature suggests:

“Most companies publicly state that their people are their most valuable asset. So why aren’t talent and leadership strategies keeping pace with today’s fast-changing world?

•  What strategies will keep you ahead of the global skills race and defend your talent from potential competitive raids?

•  Why are companies still struggling with building an effective global leadership pipeline?

•  What are the best operating models for high performing, adaptive, global, mobile leadership teams?

Attendees will hear first-hand perspectives of corporate executives and thought leaders on how businesses can leverage their talent and leadership currency to compete in the face of such sweeping change.”

So the new global currency is talent and leadership - people, and we’ll be finding out how to accumulate this new type of cash!

Well I must admit I’m in two or three minds about equating people with money.  On one hand I agree that people need to be more clearly recognised as the new source of competitive success and that the old school of thought that ‘(old style) cash is king’ has had its day.

On the other hand I don’t think that being talked about as currency will be that engaging for many employees, which is a problem given that engagement is certainly a key part of realigning talent and leadership strategies with the new work order.

I face the same problem with my brand - Strategic HCM or Strategic Human Capital Management, i.e. the management of people to create human capital.  However I always explain that human capital is what people provide, it’s not jargon for the people themselves.  I think it’s important to call people people.

Thirdly, thinking of people as or like money isn’t going to be helpful even if we don’t refer to them as such.  There are some critical differences between talent and old style cash - the main one being that cash is scarce and talent is abundant.

Cash needs managing with a scarcity mentality - it can generate amazing returns but unless it’s spent carefully, it gets flittered away.  (That’s why companies are still sitting on a record amount of cash despite the improving economy.)

Talent benefits from an abundance mentality as it can also deliver amazing returns but not if it gets hoarded.  The more we use talent (the more we practice), the more the quantity and quality of talent we get back.

Therefore a key concern to me, that relates to the Economist’s initial question about why HR isn’t keeping pace, is that most surveys of potential suggest most people are using just a small fraction (generally about 20 to 30%) of their potential in their jobs.  If we could free up the remaining 70% we’d get more work done, but we’d also accumulate more new global currency in the process.

So how do we move on? - how do we manage people - talent, leaders - in ways which enable not constrain; engender passion not boredom, and support collaboration not petty politics and turf warfares?

Arvinder Dhesi (Korn Ferry), Gary Elliott (Diageo), Tracy Robbins (IHG) and Rita Vanhauwenhuyse (BP) - as speakers in this session at the conference: answers please!

And readers - I hope you might be at the conference to listen to Arvinder, Gary, Tracy and Rita first hand and if you are, please do say hello!

And if not, please do check out my blog posts on or after Thursday.

And regardless of which of these you do, please do take some action - we want to see a completely new agenda next year, not an even more urgent rehash of the question asked this year.  In fact my dream topic for 2015 would be Outsourcing Finance - as obviously with people being king, we won’t need so much focus on that traditionally more important function!

The king’s no longer what it was.  Long live the king!

• 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

Art and Science of HR

 

I posted here last year that I thought the CIPD were - and are - making a mistake in linking HR too closely to decision science.  There are aspects of science which we can learn from and use to improve what we do, and the more transactional, operational elements of HR are often pure science too.   But the strategic, future oriented elements of HR are, at least should be, more heavily based on art.

Note that I'm not suggesting it's all science, just that it's probably more art, and I'm concerned that others are exaggerating the science perspective leaving art far behind.  So I'm really just trying to rebalance the commentary around science and ensure art gets a look-in too.


One of the ways I'm trying to do this is through the Art of HR global conference taking place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 13 to 16 November 2014.


And I'm also trying to stimulate some conversation about what we mean by HR's artful role in this Linkedin group which I'd encourage you to join if you're interested.


One perspective on art and science I'd like to share was developed at my US colleagues at Buck / ACS (now Xerox) whilst I was working there as Director for Human Capital Consulting for Europe part-time seven or eight years ago.  Using house building as a metaphor we suggested:
 

"Science represents the heavy lifter. In building terms, this would be the general contractor, the builder or the plumber. In the world of business, this translates to the taskmaster—the person responsible for structure, tasks and milestones.

Art represents the architect or the interior designer. In terms of your change man- agement team, this is a person, typically very well connected throughout the organization, who gathers feedback, asks “why” and is outstanding at motivating peo- ple to do things, because of his or her relationships. 

Scientists are the drivers of the change, while artists are the navigators who cycle in and out, asking the questions that keep things on track. They’re the people who make sure that everyone isn’t so intent on the destination that no one realizes the car is out of gas."

 

Our change management model pictured above included the top half representing science and the bottom half representing art. 

"The science side is the tactical side, driven by outstanding time managers who are detail-, schedule- and task-oriented.  The art side ensures that perspective and feedback get back into the system so that the outcome works for the company and accomplishes the ultimate goal." 


Then the bit I really liked looked at how art and science need to link together but with one or the other leading at different stages in a project:

If all you're doing is science, you're missing out on a large piece, and potentially the most important aspects, of any change or HR project.

If you've got any other thoughts, please do join the Linkedin group and if you can, come along to the Dubrovnik conference in November.


Also see: Thoughts on the Art of 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

#GWC14 - The games HR people should play

I was initially looking forward to this session because it’s got the word HR in the title.  But actually I didn’t learn that much about HR applications for gamification.  (Still, it was great to meet Isidro – ‘the HR gamer’).

However what I really took away from this session was a bit more, a new insight, actually a completely new insight into the connections between games and gamification (something which has once again been a little bit blurred here in Barcelona just as it was in Paris.)

If you’ve read my previous gamification posts you’ll have seen my suggestion for the gaming and gamification process shown above ie that we should start with a gamification process that may or may not end up with a game, and if appropriate with choosing and designing the type of game that’s going to be involved.

Isidro seems to see it differently.

I’ll explain:

For Isidro, gamification is an act of humility – as it’s difficult to be able to say product or service is not reaching its full potential.   Or that we need to increase engagement.

Gamification is useful as there’s a crisis of attention, engagement and meaning (this also applies to marketing and outside the organization)

Isidro plays Pizel Dungeon – where the monsters are more aggressive in the early morning.  This led him to think about whether you can apply the same sort of thinking to e-learning.

His work equivalent of this is Learning Dungeon – setting people challenges using higher level skills and higher requirements.

So the anser is yes, you can apply game mechanics to help engagement and learning.

However two types of obstacles which makes HR functions reluctant to apply gamification.  The first is budget and the second is risk – gamification changes people and the changes you achieve may clash with the corporate culture eg if you don’t really want to empower people.

However, what we really want to create are pervasive games / pervasive gamification which means there are certain features that allow players to go beyond the magic circle and apply the same ways of thinking to their real world.

The purpose of the game above was that Isidro wanted to use games to test the mechanics he wanted to apply in gamification.   They all involve simple mechanics – but how would he apply these mechanics in his own company? – in the business, not just in a game?

Take the Gift Trap game – a simple social empathy game. 

Isidro’s equivalent here is Gift Tasks – the opportunity to become a jedi using the mechanics of gifting.

But this type of mechanics can also be used to help people think about who might be the best person to support a particular customer, ie based upon supporting the drives of :

• Relatedness – group knowledge
• Competence – social certification
• Autonomy - accountability

Or Timeline which is a skill competition game involving a set of cards and you have to order the cards in time order.  The mechanic here is hidden rules.

This translates to Fuzzy Line which is about how people make strategic decisions – whether they want to improve technology, cut the staff, invest in talent programme etc.  And you need to order cards in a prioritized manner.

This builds collaboration skills, the ability to clarify priorities, and develop meaning and information.

Also it makes the rules clear enough to use in communication with the rest of the company.  If a manager knows what activities are priorities, they become part of the decision making process.

Another simple example is example is What If based on the mechanic of the quest.

So the key is that gamification is not game based learning.  But you can test strategies and mechanics at a smaller scale (in a serious game) before scaling up (to the business).

These approaches work because they are based on pull strategies – letting people approach the management rather than pushing things to them; simple implementation; visible results and risk.  And because they build relatedness and competence, trigger more autonomy among players, and help provide meaning.

However two types of obstables which makes HR functions reluctant to apply gamification.  The first is budget and the second is risk – gamification changes people and the changes you achieve may clash with the corporate culture eg if you don’t really want to break down managers’ power and empower all of your people.  Are companies ready?

Apparently there is a database of 1500 games – so review this and choose the best game to apply for your situation.  Focus on the user (although I liked the previous day’s suggestion we call them the player rather than the user)

Ie, my process can be used two ways – from left to right as a way to identify the game (if appropriate) but also right to left, identifying opportunities for gamification based upon all of the possible games.

Neat.  And I wouldn’t knock it’s postential.  But I’d still suggest the more strategic approach based on understanding your people and business needs is going to be the best way forward most of the time.

It does suggest however that we’d benefit from a better appreciation of gaming than most HR practitioners currently have.

See you in the MMORPG?

• 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