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April 16, 2012

On being wrong

by LesCross — Categories: Uncategorized — Leave a comment

What does it feel like to be wrong?

This is an excellent video asking us to challenge our assumptions about what it means to be wrong.

The question, after watching it, is – ‘how can you use that in business – and what might you do differently in daily life’?

As far as business is concerned it often means having to go against the corporate culture and perhaps be seen as either a maveric, or as being weak or unsure. For yourself it means challenging your own thinking, beliefs and lessons you live by.

None of that is comfortable, of course. But reality isn’t trying to make anyone feel better, as far as I know.

March 17, 2010

Transforming Human Resources

by admin — Categories: Communication, Human Resources, Transformation — Tags: Change, Communication, HR, managers, National Trust, strategic, strategy, Tina Lewis — Leave a comment

I had a meeting yesterday with Tina Lewis, Head of People at the National Trust. She shared her vision and accomplishments over the last two years and what she has brought about in that time is truly remarkable. Here are some of the key points.

She has one over-arching business objective: To change their under-performing HR service centre to one which supports managers in ‘going local’ in order to add value to the organisation.

Managers simply weren’t getting value from HR, which was spending most of its time fire-fighting common issues and repeating behaviour across the organisation.

There was a credible team of ‘flying doctors’ in HR, but they were not being sufficiently strategic. They were providing value, but not adding it.

The approach she took, with the Board’s blessing, was to move from a functional to a strategic approach by:

Getting the basics right

Undertaking research to determine benchmarks and appropriate SLAs

Decide on the shape the new service should take

Implement the change

Get success and learning to grow further

The research comprised both external benchmarking and included interviews with other third sector organisations, and internal research with interviews with key clients and line managers. The real key here was the openness with which she conducted all the communication. At all stages she was open and honest with staff, welcoming feedback and course-corrections which moved them towards the ultimate goals.

In order to carry this through she had to make sure that everyone understood the implications of ‘going local’, to consult and advise, to align closely with the clients and crucially, to enable managers to achieve through their people.

Of course, occasional mistakes were made, but the openness of the communication removed the potential for blame and turned it into an opportunity to support and then learn, as long as the flow was towards managers on the front-line becoming more empowered to deal with people issues themselves.

The process has gone from ‘hand-holding’ (where the HR to staff ratio was about 1:65) to one in which there are only a few regional business partners (with a ratio of about 1:450) together with a few remote caseworkers.

Three of her key change management guidelines were that they should have:

A demanding timeline

That 80% perfect was good enough and that they develop while delivering and

That there were very clear delivery standards

So what have been the outcomes after two years?

Clients are happier and there are fewer complaints
HR now get actively invited to the table
The team are now much more motivated
Costs and ratios have improved
They are starting to see the emergence of staff brave enough to challenge the status quo
The realisation of the primary objective – that they are starting to add real value

Many thanks to Tina for taking the time to share her vision, strategy and achievements.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

March 16, 2010

Ten essential skills for the Super-manager

by admin — Categories: Skills, Super Managers — Tags: Change, Communication, Manager, super-manager — Leave a comment

Do you have the essential skills needed to be a Super-manager? Organisations today need their managers to be more than managers. They need to be people managers. Here are ten of the most important skills for the super-manager:

1. Super-managers possess the qualities of ‘Emotional Intelligence‘, particularly that they are interested in their staff, able to respond to them appropriately when things go wrong and to coach them to achieve their potential. Of course this is not always easy. Budget, time and human resource constraints can get in the way. But finding a way through is the mark of a good people manager.

2. Super-managers make time to get to know their staff, particularly to discover talents which are not readily discernible in the workplace. Employee’s personal activities can provide a wealth of knowledge about their attributes which are not demonstrated or used in their usual job roles.

3. Super-managers listen actively. They take the time to reflect and summarise what has been said in order to get to the root of problems. Openness to communication is vital.

4. Super-managers don’t pre-judge. They are open to new ideas and solutions to problems. For example, a similar-sounding idea might not have worked before, but now it’s time might have come. They remember that work and jobs change rapidly – it might be time for a new-old approach.

5. They involve all staff in decision making, especially their ‘super-employees’ (the ones trusted enough to receive delegated tasks). Staff want to be involved. When they jointly own the thinking they become more motivated to ensure that the decision is successful.

6. Super-managers are approachable. They never patronise. They are genuinely interested in their staff. While it takes time to listen well it is time is well spent in terms of the commitment of their staff. Staff need to trust their managers and see their honesty and believe in their integrity.

7. Super-managers deal with poor performers. While it may not be easy to do, super-managers are clear about performing to the required standards. They are specific about what needs to be changed, and they give sufficient time, resource and defined outcomes in order to see results. If poor performers do not improve, they will need to be replaced.

8. Super-managers are willing to admit mistakes. They are only human and it is OK to make mistakes. It is the actions which are taken subsequently which help to define whether you have a learning culture or a blame culture.

9. Super-managers are prepared to let their staff make mistakes and encourage them to learn from these mistakes. They use mistakes as an opportunity to learn. They may use Kolb’s learning cycle to help feedback to staff so that they can identify their own areas of what went well and not so well. They make work a place where everyone is learning.

10. Super-managers coach, train and develop their staff continuously to face the current and future personal and business challenges. At every stage of the employees and the organisation’s life-cycle there are new challenges to be faced and met. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and we need to improve our thinking and practices. And all of us are better than any of us.

Super-managers not only have to display these qualities, they also need to be continually developing them. By doing so they will find their work more fulfilling, as will their staff. And they will be able to actively add value to their organisations in the future by showing that they have the resources to adapt and the skills to meet the business and people challenges to come.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

March 6, 2010

In ten years time, today will be the good old days

by admin — Categories: Change, Culture, Technology — Tags: Change, creativity, Future, Technology — Leave a comment

Here are three videos which illustrate how the world is changing and some of the challenges we face as individuals and which our organisations must face in order to survive. The first “Shift Happens” gives us a historical and futuristic perspective.

The second gives a glimpse of how far some technological changes have come, and will go further still.

The last video is an amusing but very informative talk by Sir Ken Robinson. He suggests we are educating our children out of the ability to be creative – a skill which will be desperately needed for a future which will become increasingly complex.

March 6, 2010

The surprising science of motivation

by admin — Categories: Culture, Motivation — Tags: creativity, Dan Pink, Motivation, new approach, reward — Leave a comment

Here is Dan Pink’s great TED talk on the kind of motivation needed to solve creative problems in the 21st Century:

March 5, 2010

In business, or just in a business?

by admin — Categories: Super Managers — Tags: added value, aligning, alignment, corporate objectives, recession, roi, strategic, strategy, talent management, training — Leave a comment

We are currently sitting at the bottom of a recession. Focus is increasingly being brought on to business practices in order to remove as much waste as possible just to survive. The smartest organisations are using this pruning not just to survive, however. They are trying to create new ways of working to take them out of the recession and to stand them in good stead once they come out the other side – turning necessity into a virtue. This applies as much talent management as it does throughout the whole organisation.

One of the temptations of course is to simply shed ‘unproductive’ roles. This can work if the organisation has become very flabby, or if the slack in somebody else’s role can be taken up by giving them some of the responsibilities from the redundant role. Some firms in the eighties went too far though and suffered anorexia industrialis – shedding so much employee weight that the ones left could not carry the load and the system finally failed. Some of those firms realised too late that you can’t just give someone additional responsibility without training that person to do the job – and of course the training budgets had also been slashed. For them the end came quickly but painfully.

But of course, any training that you do must add value. This means it must be evaluated. And more often than not the training will be have to be justified by its ROI before it even begins. But this article by Dan Tobin suggests that measuring ROI is largely a waste of time – there are too many complicating factors to achieve a meaningful figure, and that ROI is the wrong focus. The real focus should be on designing training and measuring results not on ROI, but on the achievement of strategic objectives.

Suitably strategically focused line managers will need to align their operational priorities accordingly. The ability to do so will undoubtedly mark out the top performing managers and organisations and ultimately which of both are still in business at the end of the recession.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net