Four Groups Blog

Welcome the second review of 2010. In this issue we have a ramble around current thinking on engagement, kick the tyres on organisational behaviour and give the old leadership tree a good shake. We’ll also explore the following themes;

• Engagement
• Strategic HR
• Productivity
• Complexity
• The Dunning Kruger Effect
• High Potentials

Articles are included from the likes of Accenture, BP, Charlene Li, Gary Hamel, Google, HCL Technologies, MIT, Sainsbury’s, Seth Godin and Strategy + Business.

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Welcome to the first update for 2010. In the spirit of new beginnings, in this issue we will look at how the debate around organisational performance is widening. We’ll also look at how after 18 months of economic chaos, the fundamentals of organisational behaviour and what everyone has taken for granted about motivation and engagement could have played a key role in recent events. We’ll also touch on the following themes;

• Mergers, Acquisitions and Human Capital
• Motivation and Engagement
• Myths surrounding Top Talent
• New Ways to Engage via Social Network Analysis
• Limits of Understanding around Managerial Behaviour
• Passion and Purpose
• Innovation Constraints
• Managing Tacit Knowledge

Articles are included from the likes of Deliotte, Gary Hamel, Henry Minzberg, HR Magazine, Karen Stephenson, McKinsey and Strategy + Business.

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I can’t help but think that the statement below, from the CIPD’s  Next Gen HR – Time for change, shows a profession that has just thrown its toys out of the pram. Or if you prefer your metaphors of the footballing variety, the CIPD has just done a Zidane.

Every business gets the HR it deserves

This strikes me as both shirking responsibility for people management on the one hand and on the other, a tacit acknowledgement that HR lacks anything like a consensus around its raison d’etre. Perhaps the idea that 20 – 40% of performance is determined by the quality of people’s relationships might be a start?

As for the ‘insight driven’ approach, haven’t we been here already?

I’ve just read the great piece from Jon Husband at the FASTForward blog and its made me think a great deal about Enterprise 2.0 (E2) stuff and how this compares to other new technologies and methods that we’ve seen play out in the last 20/30 years.

My thinking is as follows;

• E2 can be framed both as a technology and as a cultural shift
• Its takeup is clearly very different from hard technologies e.g. email, personal computers, blackberries, databases etc.
• Adoption is also very different from technological/methodological hybrids e.g. CRM, BRP(?), ERP and JIT amongst others
• Likewise, the debate about top down and bottom up drivers of adoption is new(ish)
• E2 seeks a different culture from command and control in which to thrive

Thus;

• Given the potentially disruptive nature of E2
• Its perceived low cost of technology
• The apparent need to be integrated into processes (see Howlett for example!)
• Its material ‘distributed’ impact on culture and values (what can’t be E2′ed?)

It will either;

Take hold on a case by case basis, varying from organisation to organisation and function to function, eventually fulfilling its potential and bringing about a subtle change in culture, the credit for which will vary dramatically and some will claim it was their idea from day!

or

Fail to take hold as the organisation seeks to control and police (in the nicest possible way of course!) the various elements of E2

Therefore;

• E2 is a bit of a slippery eel, who knows where it will go next
• E2 doesn’t lend itself to linear outcomes and cost/benefit analysis (hard but not impossible!)
• Claiming credit and gaining influence for E2 is anyone’s guess

As Jon writes himself;

I am not aware of significant work in the general area of changes to mainstream HR practices as a result of embarking on the path towards Enterprise 2.0.  I will be delighted to learn from any of you of examples and / or issues I may have missed or glossed over.

My guess is that we’ll be waiting quite a while…

Rather than bandwagoning around E2, I think that setting out to claim a element of an organisation that can be improved and has thus far been overlooked will reap richer rewards.

Many thanks to Anne Marie for the brainstorm

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…