Four Groups Blog

Gary Hamel recently wrote about a

survey that found that only 20% of employees are truly engaged in their work — heart and soul

and yet he goes on to say that

I talk to a lot of CEOs, and every one professes a commitment to building a “high performance” organization

So why this huge, 80% discrepancy? I think Dan McCarthy get’s pretty close when he talks about helping leaders to ‘connect the dots’, writing that

the biggest reason why we can’t seem to see what’s right in front of us is that our own “worldviews”, or “paradigms” obstruct our vision.

Other people have suggested similar things, Julian Birkinshaw at London Business School, Richard Donkin, Umair Haque and Lynda Gratton have all talked about new perspectives on management.

Why the 80% Discrepancy?

In my mind, the 80% discrepancy between what CEO’s say they want and what their employees report is due to the methods and means (i.e. the paradigm) available to help manage people. The methods and approaches that are used to bring out the best in people are very different to those which are used to run everything else in a business.

What do I mean by this? If you look at the history of organisations (Managing Value Based Organsiations by Dr. Bruce Hoag is one very thorough view), you tend to find the following themes emerging;

• The methods and technologies to do things define people’s day job
• These approaches are more useful if they are objective and can scale
• Subjective approaches are rarely as valuable or important
• New approaches only endure if they have advantages over the old ones
• People with P&L responsibility have the greatest power to decide things
• They also gain the greatest recognition from their decisions (if they go well)!

If we look at current examples of new methods and technologies, many suggest improvements for the organisations which choose to apply them. Improving knowledge management, green strategies, engineering influencing design, full body scanners, more powerful computers and improvements in transportation all correspond to the themes above.

How is this Different to how People are Managed and Empowered?

The biggest difference between the examples above and how people are managed and empowered is between;

• Approaches that are objective or subjective
• Approaches that are perceived to be valuable or not
• Approaches that improve P&L or not

If one looks at the myriad of methods and approaches that contribute to the management of people, it is hard to find any that fulfil the three criteria above completely. This is why there is no shortage of information along the lines of;

• Besides the transformation, why are there massive gaps in HR?
• It’s time for new thinking.  It’s time to take note of new ideas
• HR = Hardly Relevant
• Critical HR Challenges for 2010
• Are Current Selection Tools up to the Task?

While there are many good things happening in people management and HR, I ultimately believe that right now, practitioner’s own world views remain unchanged. Hence the status quo endures, depsite calls for something different.

While practical, micro-level details may well be expanded upon later, I think the recognition of the different paradigms above might be a starting point, or perhaps a stepping stone on a bigger journey…

Welcome to the final Quarterly Review of 2009. This issue, in addition to the usual round-up, we have an interview with Mike Haffenden. Mike co-founded the Corporate Research Forum and was formerly HR Director for Hewlett-Packard. In this issue we touch on some of the following themes;

• Thoughts on 2009
• The Assumptions behind Motivation
• Reverse Norms
• Retention
• Innovation
• The Future of HR

Articles are included from the likes of the Harvard Business Review, Henry Mintzberg, HR Magazine, Jeffrey Pfeffer, MIT Sloan Review, Nokia, SuccessFactors and the Wall Street Journal.

Tag Cloud

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The following interview was held between Bruce Lewin and Mike Haffenden in December 2009. Mike co-foundded the Corporate Research Forum and was formerly HR Director for Hewlett-Packard. The discussion focussed on a review of 2009 and its themes for HR, along with exploring more broad topics for the function and profession as a whole.

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Two ideas to consider…

1. Focusing on the ‘unstructured, intangible and typically unmeasured’ will lead to the greatest increase in profits and problem solving over the coming years.
2. Benefiting from working on the ‘unstructured’ will only be fully realised when it is possible to see this in the context of new technologies, processes and practices. In other words, the emergence of a new paradigm or theoretical approach.

‘Unstructured, Intangible and Typically Unmeasured’

Gartner and others have suggested that

as much as 60% of an organization’s processes are unstructured – and probably also unmonitored, unmanaged, unknown and unruly

In a similar vein, John Hagel of Deloitte writes that

In a rapidly changing world, the knowledge that matters the most is tacit knowledge… Accessing this kind of knowledge requires long-term trust based relationships and a deep understanding of context

The CIPD then offers us the following

The intangible value of an organisation which lies in the people it employs is gaining recognition by accountants and investors, and it is generally now accepted that this has implications for long term sustained performance

There are of course many more examples, one of the most recent being the contrast between Israeli and US airport security. The Israeli’s focus on intangible, human factors, having established successful processes, while the US still focus on the tangible, to the detriment of the more subtle¹.

If only 40% of processes within organisations have been mapped, or are formal enough to commit to ERP programs, for example, that leaves the majority of an organisation’s activity which might be better tackled from a different perspective.

New Technologies, Processes and Practices

The obvious candidate to fulfil the brave new world of intangibles is Enterprise 2.0 and its collection of internet technologies. While the potential exists for E2.0 to be open, democratic, disruptive and transformative, the jury is still very much out on this.

By way of contrast, perhaps Gary Hamel best sums up the status quo. Quoting research from Towers Perrin on engagement, he writes

barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies

Interestingly, Gary’s recommendations aren’t a million miles away from other recent suggestions on the subject

We’ve got to get management’s dirty little secret out of the HR closet and into the boardroom. And second, if we’re going to improve engagement, we have to start by admitting that the real problem isn’t irksome, monotonous work, but stony-hearted, spirit-deflating managers

These thoughts reminded me of a point made by Rick where he writes

That the HR function needs to become more strategic is a mantra I first heard over twenty years ago when I started working in HR…

Just because senior executives are starting to see the importance of managing human resources it doesn’t mean that they will give Human Resource managers a seat at the top table. It might even be that the HR function never becomes strategic at all and that HR professionals are relegated to a support role while someone else does all the interesting stuff

I think Mark and Seth’s points light the way ahead, but I wonder how long it will be before people management benefits from something as exciting as ‘artists taking over from the technicians‘…

Footnote

1. Finding spending comparisons between Israel and the US is easier said than done.

A good friend, Professor Vlatka Hlupic recently had a piece published in Harvard Business Review called ‘To Be a Better Leader, Give up Authority‘. Congratulations!

The piece focuses on leadership, giving up power as a leader and witnessing corresponding improvements in performance. There are also case studies from CSC and ANADIGICS showing some attractive financial improvements as a result of this new way of working.

Over and above the financial improvements, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article is the idea of “mutualism.”

Mutualism involves measuring workers not against revenue or other numerical goals, which we have observed to be ineffective as motivational tools, but against qualitative values such as trust, responsibility, and innovation.

And it implies that leaders don’t dictate vision or strategy; instead, they enable employees to create a common vision through, for example, off-sites for discussion of strategic issues and regular feedback and education. Hitting numerical goals has been the natural outcome.

It will be interesting to see if methods such as mutualism increase in popularity and adoption over the coming months.