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Helping you create Next Generation HR

Monday, November 30, 2009 by Franklin Bros

 

   In my last post, I described my ‘ideal’ process for human capital / talent / workforce / HR planning.  I also explained that the actual process I would hope to use with a client would depend upon their particular situation: strategy, context, challenges and opportunities etc.

I think it also depends upon their views about Next Generation HR, which I’d define as the way in which they believe HR can best create value for their organisation.

As I explained in my review of the CIPD’s session on Next Generation HR, I think there’s a variety of options available to organisations here.  To me, Next Generation HR is about continuing the movement towards best fit, so whereas the current generation of HR practice is about all moving together towards one view about effective HR practice, the next generation will be more differentiated – and more focused on the particular ways that HR can add and create most value in your particular organisation.

So I’ve put up a quiz on my blog to get more input on which of these you think will be the basis for Next Generation HR for you and your organisation.  These are the results so far:

 

Option Response

Sustainable Organisational Performance (from the CIPD’s Next Gen HR research)

  2 (28%)

Human Capital Management (accumulating human capital)

  4 (57%)

The Social Business (accumulating social capital, including through the use of social media)

  2 (28%)

Behavioural HR - using the insights of neuroscience to change HR’s, managers’ and employees’ decision making processes and activities

  2 (28%)

Externally focused HR - developing a role outside the organisation

  1 (14%)

Green HR- developing a tie-in with ethics and CSR

  1 (14%)

HR 2.0 - the use of social media tools within HR (social recruitment, social learning etc)

  1 (14%)

Imagination based HR

  0 (0%)

Evidence (measurements and analytics) based HR

  3 (42%)

Strengths Based HR - a focus on talents and appreciation etc.

  2 (28%)

Other

  1 (14%)

 

I’m obviously pleased to see HCM taking an early lead, but disappointed to see imagination based HR, one of my personal favourites, falling behind already!.  However, I’m after your views here – you’ve probably had enough of mine.

So please do select your personal favourite option(s) from the list – and if you’re voting for the ‘other’ category, perhaps add a comment to this post and let me know what you think I’ve missed.

 

Human Capital Planning

Reviewing which of these options make best sense for you is part of my Human Capital Planning process too.

I’ll describe more about this process, and how I can support it, in my next post.

 

 

 

 

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Did you miss? (On Social Advantage during November)

by Franklin Bros

 

Social Advantage box

 

 

 

 

 

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    Developing your 2010 Human Capital / Talent / Workforce / HR Strategy & Plan

    Sunday, November 29, 2009 by Franklin Bros

     

    I’ve previously posted on my Human Capital Management Strategy, Talent Management Strategy and Workforce Planning processes, but I haven’t written about how these processes can be combined.  This is partly because doing so may seem a little nit picking (these terms are generally used indistinguishibly).  But I believe the differences are important (according to Peter Cheese’ data, organisations that score in the top quartile of business results score an average of 3.4 for maturity of Human Capital Strategy, compared to just 1.8 for those organisations in the bottom quartile).

    And although I have a lot of time for InfoHRM and their Workforce Planning process that I described in my last but one post (remember that I tend to be most critical over areas that I largely agree with), I think HCM Strategy involves more – and provides more benefit.

    For InfoHRM, WFP is the maths behind Demand –Supply = Gap.   And HCM Strategy is about the actions taken to deal with the gap:

     

     

    It’s all very well thought through.  But for me,  HCM Strategy is about the type of place an organisation wants to become.  It’s a higher level of strategy / planning than WFP and needs to come first if an organisation is going to maximise the value it gains from its people:

     

    Human Capital Planning

    This is about choosing the sort of human capital or organisational capability that’s going to make a difference to a particular organisation; doing a diagnosis of the current level of capital; working out how it can be best created and setting objectives for this (in the top row in the HCM Value Matrix).

    It’s about deciding on the type of place an organisation wants to become; what it wants to provide to its people; what sort of people it needs and what it needs its people to deliver etc.  And it’s a vital step in meeting Richard Boyatzis’ challenge about accumulating rather than liquidating human capital which I think is essential is an organisation is going to create value and provide competitive advantage through their people.

    It doesn’t need to be performed every year necessarily but I’d suggest it should when facing major changes in the environment such as the one we seem to be entering at the moment ie recession to jobless growth.

    Note that I’ve put Human Capital Planning at the same level of business planning in my slide, above to emphasise that the business plan should be informed by the Human Capital Plan as well as the other way around.

    Another important aspect of my approach is that the focus of energy is inside the organisation – on the things the organisation can already do well and can be developed into differentiators (ie its mojo / organisational capability)

    See:

     

    Talent Planning

    This process is about identifying the talent groups that require particular attention within the strategy.   These people may be high performers (‘A’ players), but they may be other people / groups too (see my last post on differentiation).

    One important part of this process is the identification of Employee Value Propositions (EVPs) for each of these groups.

    This is a really vital step in HCM strategy development, and lies at the heart of the Human Capital Strategist programme that I deliver for the Human Capital Institute (in UK and Europe).  I also think Dick Beatty describes its value well.  But I believe it needs to come after Human Capital Planning as the identification of talent groups needs to be informed by organisational capability, not just critical business processes.  But it needs to come before Workforce Planning because the identification of talent is an input, allowing WFP to focus on what’s really important, rather than an output of this process.  (There may however need to be some iteration of this, for example if WFP throws up critical constraints in the supply of various groups which then may also need to be considered to be talent).

     

    Workforce Planning

    This process is about a more granular level of planning, diagnosis and strategy development, and as much as possible should be data based.  (I don’t believe you need to get into numbers earlier on in the human capital strategy development process, and I’ve been involved in several cases where doing so has obscured rather than clarified strategy making.)

    See:

     

    HR Planning 

    Another input into Workforce Planning is more traditional HR Planning.  This looks at how people can be used as Human Resources to help meet an organisation’s mission, BHAGs, business plans and objectives.  It leads to the setting of objectives in the middle row (adding value) in the HCM Value Matrix.

    It’s it at this level that HR needs to be business first, HR second (at the left-hand side of the slide, I think we need to be HCM professionals first).

    See:

     

    HR Process Planning

    The third level of planning looks at HR processes and how these can be improved, based on best practice, benchmarking etc (rather than how these fit the particular needs of the organisation).  These requirements become objectives in the bottom row (value for money) in the HCM Value Matrix.

    See:

     

    Scorecard Development

    At each level of Human Capital Planning, Talent Planning and Workforce Planning, an organisation should develop then iterate objectives for their HCM Strategy.  Once they’ve completed this analysis it makes sense to develop measures to support these objectives.  This process provides an HCM Scorecard based upon the HCM Value Matrix.

    See:

     

    Scenarios

    InfoHRM note that scenarios help manage change and risk by developing alternative views of the future based on events outside the organisation’s control.   This helps the organisation rehearse how it might adapt to future events today (what if?).

    I agree with the importance of scenario planning but believe it needs to start at the beginning of the strategy development process (ie in Human Capital Planning) and be iterated at all three levels

    See:

     

     

    Note, whenever I work with organisations this process ends up looking very different from the one I’ve described here.  I’m not actually a big supporter of methodologies, at least in this sort of area.

    But the process I’ve described is the ideal one I’ll have at the back of my mind when I’m talking to a potential or new client.  And we’ll then develop something that will work best for the particular client based upon this insight, but also the client’s particular strategies, external environment, internal context etc.

    See:

     

     

     

     

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    Differentiation for Workforce Planning

    by Franklin Bros

     

       In her session on workforce planning at Starbucks, Lacey All talked about the need to ensure resources are deployed against pivotal roles and key talent segments in order to remain flexible in responding to current and future business innovation demands,

    Well, I’d understand it if you feel I’ve done the these of workforce differentiation to death, but I think it’s one of the most important issues in strategic people management today.  As Row Henson from Oracle mentioned in her session on Measuring Performance (quoting Dave Ulrich) the value of top performers can be 12 times the performance of average employees.  So I hope you’ll let me dwell on it a bit longer.

     

    I recently wrote my 5th post on Dick Beatty’s Differentiated Workforce (this is my 6th).

    In general, Dick’s presentation made me feel a lot more positive about his approach.

    • Rather than linking strategic / A roles to critical business processes, he focused much more on ‘capabilities’ as the basis for identifying talent groups.  I thought this was much more positive because it means he is putting the overall shape of the organisation ahead of talent by itself.  This is my approach as well – identifying and investing disproportionally in talent is often going to be an important aspect of HCM strategy, but not, in my view, as important as differentiating the organisation as a whole.  [Note however, that although Dick uses the word ‘capabilities’ he says himself that he really means ‘core competencies’.  I believe that 'true ‘organisational capabilities’ provide a much sounder base for HCM strategy so I tend to start with these.]
    • Dick also showed how capabilities and therefore strategic roles differ across organisations within a sector (Nordstrom and CostCo).  This was an omission in Beatty’s book (at least I couldn’t see it) and one of my major concerns, as I couldn’t see how the approach was differentiating if all organisations within a sector had the same strategic roles!

     

    However, I still have concerns, including:

    • I don’t believe differentiation is necessarily the right approach all of the time (eg organisations with a capability of inclusivity).
    • I don’t believe that differentiation always needs to focus on A roles and A people.  Pivotal talent are another quite possible option for example.  [Row Henson again (lifting from John Boudreau this time): "Who's the most pivotal person at a Walt Disney resort?" she asked. "I'd argue it's the man or woman who sweeps the streets at the end of the day. These won't be top performers in the classical sense of the word, but they are pivotal because, if the resort is dirty, customers won't want to return."]
    • I don’t agree that organisations which do differentiate as Dick Beatty suggests should deliberately search out C candidates for C roles.  I’m with Jack Welch – you want to raise the calibre of the whole organisation – including A, B and C roles / people.
    • When you do have people working in C roles (that you’ve not yet made leave the organisation), I’d suggest you still need to focus on raising their capabilities and performance.  I don’t agree that you should deny them feedback or as Row Henson suggested, have ‘a list of people not to develop’.  I don’t believe that doing this would allow you to invest any more time or resources in supporting people in A roles / A people.  It’s just going to mean putting even more time into looking after, correcting the mistakes etc of the C players who don’t know how they can improve.

     

    So, organisations that want to differentiate themselves (and doing so is pretty fundamental to gaining competitive advantage through human capital), have to ask themselves a number of questions (* although of course they can also ask for my help! *), including:

    • How are they going to differentiate themselves, ie what organisational capabilities are they going to develop?
    • Which talent groups support this differentiation, and how can they best define these?
    • How can they best support each of of these groups differently?
      • See the following slide from Peter Cheese, ex-Accenture, from his presentation on talent management at the CIPD conference:

     

     

    In dealing with the second bullet point above, it’s useful to know that talent can be defined in a number of different ways:

    • Key people
    • Key roles
    • Key people in key roles (Beatty)
    • Pivotal talent (Boudreau)
    • Scarce talent (from workforce planning)

     

    • And based upon a range of other factors, including individual talents’ demographics and perspectives (a true HCM strategy will differentiate according to their talents’ needs, rather than their own) – see another of Peter Cheese’s slides:

     

     

    (Note that for Cheese, using Beatty’s approach isn’t pushing the envelope or leading edge, but is merely typical of what happens today (if done in a rather more sophisticated way).

     

    What do you make of all that?

                Are you differentiating your organisation through your workforce?

                            And are you differentiating it in the most optimal way?

     

     

     

     

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    Lacey All, Starbucks on Workforce Planning

    Saturday, November 28, 2009 by Franklin Bros

       I’m finishing off posting on the CIPD conference with some notes on future human capital / talent / workforce planning.  But before I bring this all together, I want to do a short review of the session on workforce planning from Starbucks’ Lacey All.  Partly because I thought it was an excellent presentation of a great case study (and Lacey hadn’t even had any coffee!), but mainly because workforce planning does fill a central role within human capital planning.

    I think I4CP explained this role quite well in their recent post claiming that workforce planning Is the ‘missing link’ for HR – helping to combine the business strategy and HR strategy:

    “If your bead on the future is looking blurry these days, you're not alone. The global recession has thrown off a lot of organizations' expectations and predictions. So, it's little wonder that many are now striving to do a much better job of strategic planning for the future, especially in the area of talent.”

     

    And at the conference, Peter Howes from InfoHRM explained how workforce planning can assist organisations to better manage within this new economy:

    • Replaces a reactive approach (reduce headcount across the board, cut labour costs by x%) with more precise interventions
    • Decisions are based on clearer understanding of critical factors and relationships –in effect, a ‘risk audit’
    • Which roles or jobs have biggest business impact?
    • Which will be hardest to fill internally and externally in the future? Which have the steepest or longest learning curve?
    • Which skills and competencies will become increasingly or decreasingly valuable to future performance?
    • Which talent segments need to be protected as feeder pools?
    • Organisations can model alternative scenarios to compare long-term consequences for talent supply.

     

    In her presentation, All explained that their approach to workforce planning doesn’t attempt to be the same thing for everyone, but consists of a number of activities ranging from operational to more strategic:

    • Retail forecast tools
    • Dashboard analytics
    • Ad-hoc analysis
    • Environmental scanning

     

     

    • Talent segments
    • Pivotal roles
    • Planning workshops
    • Action planning and progress monitoring.

     

    The focus on retail here is about this being the area which will differentiate Starbucks’ brand and create a competitive advantage.

     

    I thought the most interesting part of the session was the outline of Starbuck’s planning workshops.

    In these sessions, leadership teams consider:

    • The environmental scanning reports shown above (what affects my workforce?)
    • The current state (where am I now?)
    • No change future state (where am I heading if everything remains the same?)
    • Scenario planning (what’s my ideas vision given different operating climates?)
    • Targeted future (what is my targeted or likely future?)
    • Action planning (how do I get there?)
    • Setting up progress monitoring (is my plan right?, am I on track?).

     

    A key issue at the moment is understanding ghost turnover – and predicting how many people will leave post the recession.

    Some of the external factors the teams look at include:

    • Demise of a Competitor
    • Unionization of Workforce
    • Distribution Optimization
    • Process Teams don’t have the right capabilities
    • Full Automation of Production Lines
    • Failure to open 5th Roasting Plant at 75 mm pounds
    • Store of the future.

     

    Although workforce planning is often closely linked to workforce analytics (particularly when considering the current state / supply of the workforce), All stressed that lack of data (outside the US) doesn’t stop them doing workforce planning, and that the process is as much art as it is science.

    The outputs of the planning workshops are solutions to close critical gaps in the future workforce.

     

    All useful stuff – so why aren’t many organisations doing this (and why were so many people walking out during such an excellent presentation?).

    Actually, the situation may not be that bad – I4CP notes that the use of workforce planning is trending upward. About 70% of the respondents to their survey said that they are doing some form of workforce planning in their organisations today, and 43% of those who are not doing it now plan on implementing this process in the future.  But that doesn't mean that most companies are doing it well:

    “There are three types of workforce planning: operational, tactical and strategic. While most organizations with WFP are highly engaged in short-term operational workforce planning - which includes actions such as headcount forecasting and staffing requisitions - relatively few are highly engaged in long-term strategic workforce planning, which includes actions such as business planning, needs assessments and scenario creation.”

    If you want to gain more of the benefits that Starbucks are clearly getting, you may want to review:

     

     

     

     

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    Richard Boyatzis on Talent Innovation

    Friday, November 27, 2009 by Franklin Bros

     

       OK, last few posts to wrap up my posting from the CIPD conference (what will I post on without it?).  And all these posts are going to focus on planning for the future.  Some of them are about talent, some about workforce, and I’ll also be throwing human capital into the mix.

    But I want to start this process by looking at the need to bring more innovation into the planning.

    In the CIPD’s introduction to the session ‘Fighting back through Talent Innovation’, Claire McCartney summarised research finding that 26% of organisations have been forced to change their approach to talent management as a result of the downturn (so 74% have not?).

    Some of the positive practices adopted include:

    • Developing more talent in-house (55%)
    • Focusing on essential development (45%)
    • Continuing to recruit key talent (43%)
    • Increased focus on employee retention (35%)
    • Reducing reliance on recruitment agencies (34%)
    • Talent management practices unaffected (30%)
    • Downsizing while preserving key talent (25%)
    • Initiating a recruitment freeze (23%)
    • Use of new media / technology to recruit (22%)
    • Recruiting talent discarded by competitors (11%)
    • Downsizing and having to let key talent go (just 3%).

     

    The way these practices are being performed has also seen some interesting innovation:

    • Partner with other organisations
    • Increase your profile and brand
    • Keep talent warm for future
    • Where appropriate acquire talent from competitors
    • Set-up leadership exchange groups
    • Build talent assessment capabilities in-house
    • Focus on critical experiential based learning
    • Ask for innovative business suggestions by talent pools
    • Build a sense of community
    • Provide support for stretch assignments
    • Target employees for specific career paths
    • Maximise funding opportunities for skill development
    • Streamline and improve talent schemes
    • Increase focus on talent performance, engagement and retention.

     

    There are some good ideas in here, although I’m surprised by the ones which are missing.  For example, judging from a recent ITT I received, the CIPD still seems to think that organisations are focusing on an inclusive (everyone is talent) rather than exclusive approach to talent management.  My recent experience suggests the opposite – that organisations are being more exclusive and defining talent groups more tightly (I’m not necessarily sure that’s always the right approach but that’s another thing – see my forthcoming posts on Dick Beatty – again).

    You can read about other innovative suggestions throughout this blog.

     

    The CIPD concludes that ROI coming under more scrutiny in an economic downturn means that cost-effective talent management becomes more not less important.  This is supported by the session’s case studies, including Stephanie Oerton from National Express who notes that the downturn has provided opportunities to:

    • Get closer to the business
    • Discover talents within the team that may have not been discovered
    • Involve a wider range of people in development
    • Increase appetite for development from within the business
    • Develop stronger relationships with Business Leaders.

     

    As far as this post is concerned, the important thing is that organisations are going to have to adapt innovatively again as things pick up next year (fingers crossed) – see this slide from Peter Cheese (ex-Accenture):

     

     

     

    And organisations that are going to maximise the opportunities this growth will provide need to plan for this now.

     

    Boyatzis on Talent Innovtion

    You’ll have probably noticed that I called this post ‘Richard Boyatzis on Talent Innovation’ and I’ve not introduced Boyatzis yet.

    Well, one thing I wanted to note, in connection to the ongoing need to innovate, is that we need to innovate our paradigms as well as our activities.  It’s great to see the innovative practices I’ve described above, but there’s much more we can do.  And it’s much easier to do this if we approach the opportunity with a different, innovated mindset.

    And as I was walking briefly around the exhibition I cam across a new book from Mercer called Creating Value through People (I was attracted to it as this is the sub-title of my own book).  It’s a series of interviews with various leaders and writers, and one of these is with Dr Richard Boyatzis (ah, finally!).

    Explaining the concept of the ‘talent innovator’, Boyatzis notes:

    “The reason we need leaders and managers is to co-ordinate the efforts of others and to use capital in an organisation to achieve the organisation’s objectives and mission. When you take that general concept, you realise that the responsibility of leaders is to utilise and create capital. There are lots of ways to describe that. But the ones I like the best focus on financial, physical, intellectual, human, and social capital.

    Now, I think we would all agree that if executives spent all their money on current performance it would be irresponsible. Organisations have to be concerned with the future. So, we would have to think that the job of an executive is to get current performance and long-term sustainable performance. To do that requires using capital now but also investing it in the future. This applies to human capital, too. The problem is that most of the time when people think about managing talent they immediately go to, how do I motivate people? How do I get the maximum performance from people? That frames the problem in a very short-term context.

    As a result, almost everybody who is trying to manage talent is actually liquidating it. What I mean is that they are expending most of their organisation’s human capital on current performance. Let me give you an example. One of my doctoral students is trying to come up with what I call a human resource profit and loss statement and a human resource balance sheet. The problem with existing measures like the balanced scorecard is that while they are moving in the right direction, they get it wrong because they look at almost everything in terms of financial measures. Human capital shouldn’t be measured in financial terms. It should be measured differently, in human capital terms. My point is that we should approach the management of talent with the notion that you should manage human capital so it is greater at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of the year because you’re investing in it.”

     

    This strikes me as a very powerful argument for innovating our attitudes – putting long-term talent / human capital needs ahead of, or at least at an equal level of importance to short-term business process / customer / financial needs, and growing out of the recession by growing our talent and human capital.  You’ll see more of this thinking in my suggestions for our talent / workforce / human capital plans.

    (As an aside, you may also be able to see links between the points I’ve put in bold above to other things I’ve been blogging about recently.)

     

     

     

     

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    CIPD Conference: Measures and Metrics

    Thursday, November 26, 2009 by Franklin Bros

     

       In her CIPD conference session on Measuring Performance, Row Henson from Oracle quoted Haig Nalbantian and Colleen O’Neill from Mercer as explaining:

    “Visionary HR first must clarify what an organization’s work force needs to become, and then must build a blueprint of the necessary capabilities and actions.”

     

    I totally support this, in fact I’ve just posted on pretty much exactly the same thing.

    But Nalbantian goes on:

    “These steps depend on an employer’s ability to find new information showing how HR initiatives do or do not fuel the organization’s objectives.”

     

    No they don’t!

    Yes, of course, having measures and metrics help present the case (don’t they Yuvarajah!)  But in the main, organisations manage people so terribly badly (oh no? – what are your employees’ engagement levels like then?) that you don’t need information to see the opportunities forward.  You need insight, passion, ambition, creativity, yes.  But measures – not necessarily.

    Henson encouraged participants to:

    STOP saying: “I think… I feel”

    START saying: “I know… I can prove”

    SHIFT: From tangible to intangible asset accounting.

     

    Mmmm.  Well, I’ve got nothing against being able to prove things – when it’s possible.  But quite a lot of the time, it’s not.  And I think that we also need to influence our business colleagues to be yet more comfortable with thinking and feeling.  We’re often dealing with ambiguity, and thoughts and feelings, as well as numbers, give us insights into what we’re dealing with.  Don’t dismiss them.

    As for intangible asset accounting, I think this is a red herring.  I explain why in my book.

     

    I’m in a minority view here, I know.  According to Henson’s slide on data from the Corporate Leadership Council, 60% of HR executives say that better aligning metrics to their corporate strategy is their top priority, and 84% say that spend on HR metrics is going to grow over the next 5 years.

    My minority perspective is why I didn’t go to any of the conference sessions on measurement.  But it looks as if I did miss a few interesting things.

     

    For example, I’ve always respected Anthony Hesketh’s views on HR (and he also wrote an endorsement for my book).

     

    Hesketh’s new contribution to the field is a measure called Return on Invested Talent (ROIT). This is:

    Operating Profit + Employee Costs + Depreciation + Amortisation

                               Employee Costs + Depreciation

     

    I’m going to come back and write more about this later once I’ve had a chance to look in more detail at this (by the way Anthony, well done on your HROA Thought Leader of the Yearaward!).

    So what else did I miss?

    Well, it’s always impressive to see the sophistication of RBS’ measurement system:

     

     

    The question of course (well, it’s my question, although I don’t think it was asked at the conference), is how well did the company’s measurement help them navigate this year’s crisis?, and the answer’s obviously not much!.

    So my take-way is the need to align measures with a company’s strategy.

    I think Enterprise Rent-A-Car has got the point.  In her presentation, Donna Miller described Enterprise’s key metrics:

    • Cost per hire
    • Cost per source of hire
    • Hires per recruiter
    • 120 day retention
    • Retention
    • By position
    • By location
    • By length of service
    • Engagement scores

     

    She then explained how these have been generated from the organisation’s strategy, including the employee value proposition, the brand, the value of the HR department and improving business performance.

    And in her presentation, Tricia Raymant showed how the Royal Mail has chosen:

    Metrics (1. Headcount vs plan 2. Redundancy costs vs plan 3. No. redeployments 4. Time to redeploy 5. % vacancies filled internally vs externally 6. Time to fill vacancies 7. % critical vacancies 8. % critical roles with successors 9. Retention Rates 10. No. Staff hours contracted 11. No. overtime hours and costs)

    which relate to:

    Critical customer / business requirements (1. No more than 1% of critical roles are vacant at any one time. 2. Employees are redeployed within 60 working days. 3. Vacancies are filled by employees seeking redeployment wherever possible. 4. Vacancies are filled within 40 days 5. Overtime accounts for no more than 10% staff costs).

    which relate to

    Business challenges ( To reduce staff costs by 10%  To redeploy 20% of the workforce - To have the right people in the right place at the right time but to reduce overall staff costs).

     

    And they are then able to report on metrics which support these business challenges:

     

    image

     

    Maybe not so sophisticated but hopefully more useful?

    For an even more useful approach, see my post on my HCM Value Chain, wrapping up my current series on HR measurement (postponed by the InfoHRM and then the CIPD conference), hopefully very early on next month.

     

    Other HR measurement posts from earlier in the series include:

     

     

     

     

    • 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
    READ MORE - CIPD Conference: Measures and Metrics

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    The trials of independent working

    Wednesday, November 25, 2009 by Franklin Bros

     

    lemming   I thought you deserve a break from my posts about the CPD conference (I’ve just got a few last ones to do).  So…

    I was talking to someone last night about the pros and cons of working independently.

    Most of the time I love what I do, but I do sometimes yearn to be back in an organisation – just to extend the impact of my contribution, and quite frankly, to make life a little bit easier too.

    Take IT – I’ve had so many problems with my laptop this year, and each one can easily write off a day to sort out.

    My latest hassle is with my website and email hosting.  Bluhalo, which designed the site (www.strategic-hcm.com, not this blog which is with Blogger / Google) are ‘transferring’ my service .  They told me about a year ago and I told them who I wanted it transferred to (GoDaddy, who already host my Social Advantage site and email).  Things have been a bit delayed (largely because I’ve had to pay them some extra money I didn’t think I should have needed to) and it now transpires, a few days before they are going to switch me off, that ‘transferring’ means just that – switching it off:

     

    Dear Jon

    Further to your recent conversations with Kelly, I am getting in touch to arrange the migration of your services with Bluhalo to your new hosting provider. I can see from your letter which accompanies your completed transfer form that you would like us to actually set up the website and emails on your new servers.

    Unfortunately we are unable to do this but listed below is all the information that you will need in order to for you, your new hosting company or another third party to do this for you.

    We host the domain name, email addresses and website for the strategic-hcm.com

    Domain name

    The domain name has been unlocked and is ready to transfer. You will need the following authorisation code for the transfer:

    …

    Email Addresses

    We have the following email addresses set up on our servers:

    …

    Website

    You can download a copy of your website directly from our servers using these details, in order that you can upload it to your new web hosting services:

    …

    Kind regards

    Melanie


    Bluhalo Ltd
    The Hub
    Fowler Avenue
    Farnborough GU14 7JP
    www.bluhalo.com

     

     

    They call it migration, but I think they’re thinking of lemmings, rather than wildebeest here!

    I’ve pointed it out to them that they’re the ones ‘transferring’ me, not the other way around (I’m not large enough for them apparently), but it’s not made any difference – they’ve not got the manpower to help me.

    Great.  So I’m cancelling my meetings for tomorrow, and will get to learn some more thrilling information about website hosting instead.  I just hope you’ll still be able to contact me via email { jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com } come December!

     

     

    READ MORE - The trials of independent working

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    More on developing a culture of…

    Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by Franklin Bros

     

    Abbey slide   Now we know how to develop culture, there’s still one important question remaining – why should we want to?

    Earlier this year, I participated in a debate with from Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons in Training Zone.  Michael suggests that organisations shouldn’t create a coaching culture:

    'We're going to create a coaching culture' is a commonly proclaimed goal, with some leader filled with visions of coaching reinventing life and work in that organisation.

    But coaching alone is not always able to miraculously drive change, improve performance, increase happiness, make money and lift the level of engagement in an organisation. Coaching is a powerful tactic that is best used to support and achieve a specific business objective.

    The focus on a 'coaching culture' runs the danger of confusing the means for the end, and it is a lack of context – why exactly do I need to use coaching? – that can undermine any attempts to get managers coaching. Commitment and engagement with coaching works best when there are two levels of context.

    The first is the business context, and we've found that enhancing coaching skills works best when it's serving a specific business purpose – for instance, building team resilience before a corporate re-branding and re-organisation, increasing key customer retention or reducing the churn of front-line sales staff.

    The second is a personal context, or more bluntly: how will this help me and my work? Getting managers to see how coaching can be not just another thing to add to the to-do list, but rather a way of actually reducing their own workload while increasing the focus on their own 'great work' builds the likelihood of it being a tool that’s used. Context allows managers to see coaching as a support and a solution – and not just the latest HR trend.”

     

     

    To me, its just the reverse – in today’s fast changing world, it is only by creating a culture of [or more accurately, social capital in] coaching, innovation, leadership, or whatever it is, that an organisation has a chance to become and remain successful:

    “Coaching for it's own sake - just because you think it's trendy, or because company X is doing it - is clearly not going to take you anywhere.

    So in this sense, I support your desire to see a clear business focus and benefit for coaching activities.

    However, I also think that coaching can have transformational outcomes which are often unknowable in advance.

    This is the benefit that a coaching culture provides - it will help unleash everyone's, or at least talent's (depending on how extensively it's applied) potential.

    Some of this may help meet current business goals. But it may also help go beyond these goals and help uncover new business opportunities (it's what I mean when I talk about creating value - ( http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2007/12/people-and-cogs-creating-value.html ).

    Organisations may loose considerable potential advantages for creating value through their people if they dismiss the opportunity out of hand.”

     

     

    The point is described in the slide from Abbey that’s shown above: people drive the business.  More (of the right) talent equals more results.

    I also like this quote taken from Sherman and Freas in Jane Turner’s presentation on coaching cultures:

    “When you create a culture of coaching, the result may not be directly measurable in dollars. But we have yet to find a company that can’t benefit from more candour, less denial, richer communication, conscious development of talent and disciplined leaders who show compassion for people.”

     

    Of course, as I explained in my last post, no organisation can do everything, so they need to pick and choose.  Some nice-to-have’s like coaching may be left off the list in order to include other must-have’s like innovation (the choice being dependent on the organisation, its strategy, context etc).  But once you’ve decided what’s going to make the difference, just do it.  Don’t wait to pin down some specific needs, or until you’ve calculated a potential ROI.  Just do it.

    Make it happen.

     

     

     

     

    • 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

    .

    READ MORE - More on developing a culture of…

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