#cipdACE17 - summary post

So this week its been the 70th Annual CIPD Conference and Exhibition, referred to this year as #cipdACE17. I was thrilled to be part of the Blogsquad again covering the event on social media on behalf of CIPD. Here's my summary of the event.

I should start by saying a big thankyou to my current employers at the Disclosure and Barring Service for allowing me to see through this commitment that I'd made some months before joining them, despite it being a busy time, for not once moaning or making me feel guilty about going, and for recognising the huge development potential #cipdACE17 had for me and the potential it had to reflect well on them through me raising their profile.  Thankyou for that.

This was my 14th year running attending the event, and although some years I've just made it to the exhibition, I've come to enjoy the conference itself just as much. The conference this year was about "Embracing the new world of work" and many sessions were focused around this theme.  As usual, I found it hard to select the best sessions to go to and its a shame I had to miss more than I attended because of clashes etc.

Here's the blogs I did of the various conference sessions:

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-1-introductions-kn1.html

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-2-session-a2.html

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-3-session-b4.html

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-4-session-c3.html

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-5-session-d2.html

http://hrtriathlete.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cipdace17-blog-6-session-e3.html

I enjoyed each of these sessions and although I missed the final two sessions, including the closing keynote, because of needing to attend to a work-related matter, I found there had been sufficient to stimulate my interest across the bits I had attended.  I went away with a big long list of actions to take back into the workplace and am looking forward to doing them.

The exhibition seemed larger, and that's a good thing.  There was a good variety of exhibitors and a range of free to attend sessions.  I was disappointed in the overall lack of quality of free gifts - in some years gone by I'd return home with bags full for my kids but this year I filled half a bag - my kids don't want mints, pens or stress balls unfortunately.

I was also disappointed - again - with the lack of engagement some exhibitors had with social media.  Not all, I should add - some were excellent - but some others did nothing to try to engage with attendees on social media and some, when asked, did not even know their own Twitter handle.

Sadly I didn't get as much time in the exhibition as in previous years, and felt I didn't do it justice - next year I'll try to redress this.

However the general atmosphere in the exhibition hall and in conference sessions was excellent, something many commented upon.  The only thing I thought went wrong was the Members Lounge in the CIPD stand was poorly organised and cramped, and should perhaps be separated back out next year.  Otherwise, everything was great.

And this translated well into the fringe activities but again too much clashed for me to be able to get to it all.  At least 3 things happened Tuesday evening, at least 3 things Wednesday evening and at least 2 things Thursday morning - now that's good in one sense as it caters for the interest that must be there, but scheduling them all at the same time makes it difficult to attend them all.  And the fringe is an important part of the Conference - its still not quite what it was in Harrogate because of the sheer size of Manchester, but its improving and can improve further.

I enjoyed speaking at the CIPD Manchester fringe event on the Thursday morning #cipdbigconvo - doing an Ignite on the subject of being a working parent - and strangely this prompted a lot of reflection from me on my current priorities, something I'll update you all on shortly.

Like many people, I got as much from the conference through networking with people and generally catching up with ex colleagues, old friends and new contacts.  I'd like more space built into the programme for this - the gaps between the conference sessions were sometimes 30 minutes - and there isn't much time to get to the toilet, grab a drink, look round the exhibition AND network in just 30 minutes.

But it was great to see so many friendly faces and to talk to as many people as would listen about my current situation and how I can resolve some inherent conflict in it.  Also great was the ability to input into other people's discussions and help them improve their own situations.

It was also a very tiring event as usual, made worse by the transport difficulties caused by rail and bus strikes on Day One getting there, and the closure of the M6 when going home on Day Two.

But I loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

I found myself thinking a 3rd day, as used to be the case years ago, would have given me and the conference the room to fit everything in.

Is it time to go back to 3 days?

Overall, a great conference and exhibition and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Till next time...

Gary

PS a time of upheaval for me in many ways - watch out for two imminent blogs updating on my personal and professional lives...

#cipdace17 blog 6 - session E3

After another too short break I’m back in another session. This time it’s about Connecting HR, Finance, Operations and Business Leaders, with HR acting as an organisational facilitator to help the organisation achieve its shared goals. 

This will be my final blog from today as I have some work matters to attend to this afternoon and won’t be attending the afternoon sessions. I’ll do a summary blog in a few days though with some wider observations on the whole event. 

Graham Smith from Devon, Cornwall and Dorset Police started off. The two separate forces are due to merge and he had a challenge to bring together two different organisations from a people perspective. He highlighted the Daimler Chrysler merger as one that failed because of an underappreciation of the cultural and people dimensions of such transformational change. 

Andy Boulting, Assistant Chief Constable, took over at this point and explained how HR act as facilitators in things like workforce planning. 

I liked this figure of 8 approach as it ensured all parts of the business are included in workforce planning, and that there are strong links to organisational vision and takes account lots of different supply and demand factors. The HR practitioners have to have the right skill set and right level of trust and empowerment to be able to make this all work. 

Interesting though that on this plan, analysis of supply comes before analysis of demand, and I think this is something many organisations get the other way around. They can be led by demand, and then work on matching supply to it without having first got a real handle on what supply looks like and the volumes therein. 

Gill Quinton from Buckinghamshire County Council then spoke about collaboration across professional disciplines. Her role now encompasses more than just HR and that gave her a unique perspective of how HR could and needs to work with other functions to improve the organisation. 

She ran through Bursins HR Maturity Model and described each level within it to outline what is required from HR teams at each level. She feels that HR needs to do a few things to drive organisational effectiveness: customer focus, business acumen and simplicity. 

I agree with these three things. HR teams that I’ve had experience of have usually had one or two of these three and we have worked hard to develop the third, but it’s been a different gap in different teams in different organisations. 

But, as Quinton pointed out, HR can’t develop and be excellent at these three things on its own. They need help and input from IT, Finance, and business leaders. True collaboration is required. 

This was an interesting case study in how to encourage and develop collaboration and one that is also relevant to current challenges I face. 

Now it’s lunchtime...

Till next time...

Gary

#cipdace17 blog 5 - session D2

So here we are on Day Two, and as predicted I’m a little more tired than I was yesterday. The evening fringe activities last night were all excellent, and then I’ve been speaking this morning at a breakfast seminar on flexible working. 

I may have used the platform to make a big announcement too, something it’s been hard to keep secret. See the Twitter feed for details. 

And now I’m in session D2 on enhancing your brand and attracting the right talent. 

First up is Jane Graham from Wiltshire Council. She talked about the journey they went on from a traditional to innovative approach to talent acquisition and what worked for them. 

The financial challenges faced by local government are well documented, and so the ability to attract the best talent is something that is also difficult. Her first case study was on social workers, where demand exceeds supply at present and there are numerous problems around recruitment and retention. 

They worked with an agency to understand their current employer value proposition and to get to know their target audience more. This proved helpful because it showed them the kinds of things that attracted social workers and helped them to understand why some previous campaigns had not worked. They moved away from using stock images in their campaigns and used images of actual staff, actual things happening at work and used this to refresh their offer. 

The results speak for themselves. They increased the number of applications, reduced turnover, reduced agency spend and filled more vacancies. They also had softer results that improved engagement, and helped them to move into the 21st century!

This approach seems to have worked really well and is one of several organisations I’ve seen who have been on a similar journey and really embraced new technology, analytics and a thorough approach to talent acquisition and employer brand - but in my view you get out what you put in. 

Put in the right amount of effort and you’ll be rewarded. 

Next up was Jon Dawson from Mandarin Oriental Hotels. They had a strategy to become one of the best known employer brands within the UK hospitality sector, separate from their parent company Marriott. They had zero presence in the UK at the time, and were doing this at the same time as recruiting 250 people to actually open and run their hotel. 

The photo above shows the journey they were going on, and he outlined a challenge where the various creative people who worked with them were great in generating excitement and buzz around the brand, but the technical side of having a candidate portal wasn’t ready in time to manage this demand. 

This was an interesting talk of how to create an employer brand and whole new organisation from scratch, and to me highlighted how many organisations are hamstrung by their own history and how, if they started all over again, they would end up with something completely different and at the same time more appropriate for who they are and what they want to do. 

As refreshing and developing our employer brand is something we are about to work on in my current organisation, this was a very relevant talk. 

But now I need a coffee. 

Till next time...

Gary

Ps in other news, check out my recent big announcement...blog coming soon on that 

#cipdace17 blog 4 - session C3

After the afternoon break and some more hurried networking I’m in the final session of the day, session C3, on creating an organisational culture to support flexible working. 

The introduction centred around the fact that the technology is there to allow and support flexible working, but that the barriers are usually cultural. I’ve found this in more than one organisation, although have found technology (reluctance to use) to be a barrier in one or two also. 

Speakers from Forster Communications and Nokia gave examples of how this has been addressed in their workplaces. 

Up first, Gillian Daines from Forster. Forster are a small company, and flexibility of and by employees is crucial to their success. Daines cited some examples of how flexible working has helped with the organisational objectives, and gave some statistics on how flexible working impacts on employee absence, wellbeing, retention and engagement. A lot of this was setting the business case for flexible working though, which although valid and accurate, is not really what I came to this session to hear. And thankfully she recognised this and moved onto talking about the challenges they faced. 

Daines took us through a step by step approach to making flexible working work which I’ve included below. 

Forster, with just 25 employees, went through this process and around half of their employees now work flexibly in some way. That’s a healthy percentage as long as all employees are able to access flexible working and those who haven’t, have made a conscious choice not to. Therein lies one of the cultural barriers - many employees do want to work Monday to Friday 9 to 5 in an office with other people. 

Let them. 

As long as it works for them AND the business. 

Up next was Gareth Davies from Nokia, who opened by admitting to be a Health and Safety professional. Brave. 

Gareth talked about some for the generational differences around flexible working. Whilst he is right that there are different approaches to flexible working, I don’t think these are mostly generational differences - I think they are mindset differences, and there can be some correlation to generational origin but not necessarily. 

He then talked about how connected we all are now, and highlighted the sheer range of flexible working tools that are on almost every smartphone or tablet. These pose dangers to individuals unless they are properly equipped to manage and deal with them. 

Another good example of this was managers benefitting from flexibility and choosing to send emails late at night or at weekends. It’s a personal choice and absolutely fine, but when their direct reports receive these emails do they feel there is pressure or expectation to respond at a time they may not suit them? Something I’ve relatively recently switched myself onto is setting emails to send the following morning, so that I don’t interrupt colleagues home lives. It allows me to work flexibly and do what I want to do when I want to do it, but without creating pressure on anyone else who reports to me. 

Davies offered some cultural tips to make flexible working work. Stopping rewarding the wrong behaviours (like working long hours) was a good step they took. They made flexible working visible and something people could and should talk about, and they gave coaching to line managers on making it work, amongst many other actions. 

This was a good finish to a session that looked at how to overcome some of the cultural barriers, and a good end to a good day. 

Till next time...

Gary

#cipdace17 blog 3 - session B4

After a much needed lunch I had a chance to talk to some people from CIPD about their challenges in developing new and relevant content, particularly around OD. I was pleased to be asked to help and hope that my ideas are taken on board.

Time just gets away from you at this conference and already I’m back in another session. This time B4 and a panel discussion about adopting an ethical approach to HR. 

First up was Ben Yeger, who shared his illuminating stories from his time in the Israeli army, particularly around how he almost lost his humanity through an unethical choice he was presented with. This was such a powerful memory that it was difficult to capture here, but his main point was that you need to act from a stance of peace in order to retain your own humanity and behave ethically. 

Siobhan Sheridan, newly crowned most influential HR practitioner in the UK by HR Magazine and a thoroughly nice person to boot, picked up next. She drew on her own research about ethics. She felt that in her early career she was too scientific and not human enough, and recognised a point in her own career where she felt she had to change and become more human. 

I had a similar Road to Damascus moment in my own career several years ago and have been on a similar journey, but I think with less success than Siobhan. 

Siobhan urged us to consider the human element in everything we do, and it appears to be a hallmark of her recent and very successful career. She advised to consider the impact on people, as individuals, in everything we do. 

Roger Steare from Cass Business School, author and academic, took over nmext. He likened the decisions we all take to the decisions Ben had to take in a war zone, and Siobhan had to take as a high profile HR professional - all choices and decisions have a human element and all have an ethical dimension to them. He made a good point that although computers can now make very complex decisions, they struggle with the ethical dimensions because the computers don’t feel fear, shame or worry. 

He then went on to describe the moral character of the HR professional. He said that in our personal lives we are usually very ethical, but are influenced often by the workplace and the fear factor inherent in many workplaces and lose our human element because we wish to conform to the organisational culture and prevailing order. 

The bad news is, he says, we are close to Banking but even closer to the Media and Politics, and a long way from Healthcare and Nursing as professions. 

He said that where workplaces are modelled on lines of feudal control, then ethical behaviour becomes difficult. This leads to fear and coercion in the workplace and diminishes the ability of the HR professional to behave ethically. But workplaces are human communities and systemic entities that can only be understood at a very local, eg team, level - and therefore can be influenced at that level. 

Essentially, boil the kettle not the ocean. 

Leaders need to create space and safety for individuals and teams to be open and honest with each other and challenge ways of thinking and ways of behaving, in order for us to create room for ethical behaviour. 

In my career I’ve seen unethical decisions be taken, and have been called upon to defend such decisions. I am not proud of that, but it backs up the assertion by Steare that one is influenced by power held by other people and the prevailing culture in an organisation too. 

Siobhan made a point that people are people wherever you go. You need to stay close enough to people to bring them with you, but not so far away as to alienate them to what you’re trying to achieve. 

As someone who often has to wrestle with such dilemmas, irrespective of the ethical dimension, I found this an interesting panel discussion but one that perhaps needed longer to allow us to get into more depth. 

Mark Hendy posed a question from the audience about whether we have seen a tipping point in seeing unethical business behaviour, citing lots of recent examples. Although the panel agreed with the hope and sentiment, a view expressed near to me was that we haven’t, because nothing appears to have changed in the last ten years since the banking crisis. 

It’s hard to argue with the evidence on that, but I too agree with the hope and sentiment. 

Off to the afternoon break now. 

Till next time...

Gary

#cipdace17 blog 2 - session A2

After a rapid break in which I somehow managed to speak to more people in 25 minutes than I thought possible, I’m back in a session. This time it’s A2 on continuous performance management, and a very well attended session too. 

We start with Paula Leach, Chief People Officer at the Home Office, of whom my current organisation is a subsidiary. We share a lot of the same policies and IT platforms, so their journey around performance management was extremely relevant for me and some of the challenges I currently face. 

The challenge faced by Home Office was to move away from a process that was driven by completion rates and more towards one that could demonstrate the business impact of good performance. What they had was too bureaucratic and not very engaging. They wanted to move away from performance management being seen as an HR process and one that was owned by the business and driven by the Board. 

Paula ensured that all representative and other employee groups were fully consulted throughout the process and that regular blogs were published to ensure all employees could be kept appraised of and participate in the ongoing discussions. She reports a high level of engagement because of this. 

Coming from the engagement sessions it was clear that staff wanted something that was employee initiated, conversational and frequent, that had a flexible structure that could be adapted to various situations. However it wasn’t an easy model to develop and this is what they did:

- changed the process by removing forced distribution, creating model conversations, and including a new assessment and standards framework

- invested in learning by providing coaching skills for managers and a two day workshop for senior leaders

- developed leadership by focusing on accountability and assurance, and correlating ratings distributions to business performance

- changed the culture by enabling rather than policing, and realising its a long journey to encourage ownership and not an overnight fix

Next up was Nebel Crowhurst from River Island talking about their own journey, which had some similarities. The drivers for change were quite similar despite the major difference in sector and culture, and the main need - for increased coaching - was also very similar. She shared some telling statistics from within their business - 95% of managers were dissatisfied with the process, and 90% of HR people questioned the accuracy of the process. 

River Island are further ahead on their journey than Home Office are, and could demonstrate some valid success measures around engagement and performance that show their journey is having an impact. Home Office are about to validate their own journey metrics but detail shared from both companies suggests that the journey is worth embarking on and will bring success and much needed culture change. 

Having taken a couple of organisations down this route I can attest to this but can also attest to how difficult it can be. Some organisations don’t have a culture that is ready for this and I’ve blogged separately about this before. My advice is work on the culture before you embark on changing the process, otherwise the process change may not work. This is mirrored by advice from Nebel and Paula. 

This was an interesting session and very relevant to a journey being embarked upon in my current organisation. 

And to quote The Gruffalo, now my stomach is beginning to rumble...

Till next time...

Gary

#cipdace17 blog 1 - introductions, KN1

So here I am again at the CIPD Annual Conference, known this year as #cipdace17. I think this is 14 years in succession I’ve attended and it remains the best development available to an HR professional in any year, in my opinion. 

I’m again part of the Blogsquad for the third year running and I’m thrilled to be given access to all the sessions and everything to do with the conference. Being part of the Blogsquad is often tiring but it’s such a great opportunity and one I am happy to support CIPD by doing. I, here for a day and a half and will be sharing content on this blog and via Twitter and LinkedIn in support of the conference. 

We start with Peter Cheese giving his usual introduction. This year’s theme is embracing the new world of work, and after a nifty introductory video (a new thing in itself), Peter commented on this as he usually does. He gave a quick potted history of the 70 years of the conference, and what things were happening in society and the world of work around 1947, which included some strikingly similar things to what are happening or could happen now. He also commented on the amazing developments in the world of global politics in the last year, many of which couldn’t have been predicted just 12 months ago. His view on this is that populism and nationalism is on the rise, and attributes this to the need for people to have a voice and a perception by many people that they don’t. 

A challenge that arises from this is how do we create safe environments for people to have a voice. A happy and productive workplace will do that, and be inclusive at the same time. The CIPD are working with lots of other organisations to influence how work and employment will look in the future, and Peter outlined some of their key objectives and partnerships in doing so. 

CIPD believe that the best way to predict the future is to help create it. Peter asserts that HR professionals are ideally placed to leverage all the different bits of research and discussions and projects and to shape the future world of work. It’s clear though that there are many challenges ahead, and more of these challenges will be immediately visible in our new digital age, but he’s right that we are well placed to influence what happens from now on...

The keynote speech was from Baroness Martha Lane Fox. She has had a stellar career and has a CV with some enormous highlights. She started off by talking about how weird it is to be in your 40s (she’s two years older than me) and how difficult it can be to relate to our children who have grown up in a different world to us. She highlighted just how far we have come in the use and development of technology in the last 15-20 years, and it really is scary to try to remember how we used to operate as recently as the mid 1990s before the explosion of the internet and the rapid development of technology. 

She also talked about how bad hires can impact on a company. She commented that it’s often the case when you recruit at pace and in great volume. She gave an example of one person who had a great track record and was a competent professional in his previous job, but was simply the wrong fit at the wrong time for lastminute.com and how this helped her to think more about fit when hiring people and not necessarily look at their existing skill set. 

From lastminute.com she moved on to working with the government about digital inclusion and skills across the UK. She started to understand the makeup of how people used the internet because of this. Many people are great at using it, and take these skills for granted, but too many people did not have the access or skills that were needed. As part of this she began to realise that government itself needed to change how it uses technology, and how much of a challenge this was. 

She passionately believes that everyone should have the same level of access to information. And right now that’s not the case. She sees this in her daily life and highlighted a big gap between the general populace and those making decisions about how society operates. 

She believes that the gap around digital understanding needs to close. She believes that inclusion is key, right down to an individual level. She also highlighted the forthcoming legislation (GDPR) which will give more power to individuals to control and manage their own data and how organisations use that data - this will help shape the future of technology itself. Her third point was about closing the gender gap to help fill unfilled vacancies and challenging the existing cultures in digital sectors - not enough women and other diverse groups are underrepresented in technology sectors and this is currently holding those sectors back. 

She closed by saying we are at a critical point in our own development, but that we are at the slowest point of the development. The pace will only increase. People with digital skills are useful now but their skills will be out of date quickly. People with entrepreneurial skills and people skills who are curious and resilient are critical for the future and we should seek out such people. 

And then we are off to a break. I’ll do another blog on the following sessions later today. 

Till next time...

Gary

PS in other news, I tried helping my son with his GCSE Maths revision last night. I really wanted to help and could see he was struggling but despite remembering being good at maths when I was at school, I couldn’t help with his particular struggles as I just didn’t grasp it myself. Never have I felt so powerless and useless as a parent. Never. 

On the move

As many will know by now, I’m due to start a new role soon. Here’s my thoughts on what’s happening. 

I’m taking up the role of Associate HR Director at the Disclosure and Barring Service in Liverpool and I start on 1 August. I’m excited by the challenges ahead and it promises to be great for my own development and is a really good opportunity to make a noticeable difference to an organisation that wants to transform itself and sees HR as critical to that transformation and overall journey. 

I joined Trafford College as HR Director since February 2016 and learnt an awful lot in my time there. I shall miss the HR team, who I really enjoyed working with and who are a talented and enthusiastic team who anyone would feel lucky to lead. They are partway through their own transformation and are well placed to see it through. I shall also miss several of the Leadership Team with whom I’d forged good, strong relationships, and I hope to keep in touch. 

That was also where I was lucky to undertake my Personal Trainer qualification, which will be the subject of a separate blog, and I can highly recommend that particular course and the staff involved in teaching it. My PT qualification is 99% complete with just one assessment left and that’s to be done next week. It’s been a great learning experience.

But there comes a time in any role when it’s time to move on, and it has been an interesting time leading HR within Further Education, a sector which has its own share of challenges and many from an HR perspective. 

Just as when I left my role before this one, I thought long and hard about going self employed / freelance, something I have blogged my thoughts on before HERE. I had the same debates with myself again and reached pretty much the same conclusions, although confess I got closer this time than previously. 

I still want to work within an organisation, with a team around me, and help to change and improve people, processes and organisations from the inside. I still feel I’ve got a major contribution to make to organisations as an employee and as a senior HR leader. I know I can make things better. 

And that’s what I’m doing from 1 August. 

Let’s get started. 

Till next time. 

Gary

Ps in other news, I turned 42 today. I remember my Dad turning 42 and he finished work at that age through ill health, so me getting to this age and about to start a new role has made me quite reflective on where I’m going and so on. I wouldn’t mind retiring at age 42 though…

Baby its cold outside

Some musings on change management, prompted by a story told to me by a close friend, who we will call Zeus in order to protect their identity and that of their organisation.  It concerns how organisations can overlook group needs at the expense of satisfying individual or organisational needs.  And how too much effort is put into Refreezing a new state of affairs and not enough into Unfreezing in the first place (to use Lewin's model):

Zeus worked for one particular organisation as a senior HR leader for a long time and says it felt like being part of a family. A big change happened to that family that upset Zeus and which affected a large group of people within it, and he left when he felt he couldn’t influence what was happening any more. Zeus says he had a lot of conversations at the time that were supposed to help him deal with his feelings, and that he thought were helpful at the time - but developments since have made him realise they didn’t fully resolve those issues. He feels the organisation missed a trick in its change management programme by not allowing him to talk with others with similar feelings in the hope of resolving them for their entire group.

In short, there was a larger group of possibly up to 100 people who needed therapy, and no amount of re-positioning by the organisation and focusing on new values or new directions was going to make an impact on how that group was feeling, as it ignored the elephant in the room.

So Zeus left, and one by one lots of others have left too. When each person since has left, Zeus says there’s been a social gathering. Always in the same place at the same time, and he says these have felt a bit funereal, in that they were all there mourning the loss of something they all shared, but at the same time celebrating that life goes on.

He says that the social gatherings are nice events, very informal and very easy to be at, and the family feel they all had when working at that place carries on into the social setting. At times it’s easy to imagine they all still work together, or so he says.

But they don’t. And Zeus says they often spend some time discussing why that is and how they feel about it.  Lots of people, lots of conversations.

To him, and to me, it’s clear that as a group they haven’t let go of their feelings about what happened, about why their family had to change and what that change was. Zeus says there were good business reasons for the change, but it’s clear that there’s still feelings of resentment and hurt about a lot of things, and that no individual has successfully managed to deal fully with them.

When we talk about models of change management we often recognise the change curve in individuals, and create strategies to manage that curve for those individuals. As organisations we look to models like Kotters Eight Steps or Lewin's Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze to help us move forward with change at a strategic level, often successfully.

But I wonder whether in these models of change we focus too much on the individual and the organisation, and ignore the groups and collective social sets.   And if we focus too much on the Change-Refreeze and not enough on the Unfreeze, in helping people get ready for change.

The social gatherings Zeus attends are lovely (he says), and are always helpful because he get to talk to others who feel the same way. Who understand. It helps them all to move on.

But I wonder whether, if they had done this whilst they all still worked together, whether they would in fact STILL be working together and actively helping the organisation grow and change

When they did still work together, although some individuals like Zeus did get to talk about their feelings, they never did so together - only, he says, to "outsiders", and only post-change, never pre-change, and when they were together they ignored the elephant in the room and ignored how they were all feeling without tackling that head on.

Organisations provide EAP schemes for individuals, and have well crafted change management programmes, but we may be missing out the middle here - we might be missing a trick around group therapy.

So in managing change in organisations, yes - consider the organisation as a whole and it’s culture and structure. Yes - consider the individual and their approach to the change curve. But also consider the group or team, and how they may have a collective change curve to go through and a real need to talk to each other, not to people who they don’t know very well, about how the collective feels.

And when trying to change a culture, spend time Unfreezing people and groups from their current mindset before making any change and before trying to Refreeze in the new culture and mindset.

As Lewins model asserts, Unfreezing is as important as Refreezing, as individuals and groups need to be ready for change, and I’d argue that it’s even more important. Without doing the Unfreezing, any subsequent Change and Refreezing won’t entirely work.

Unfreeze for individuals, for teams and groups, and for the organisation. 

In Zeus' case, there was a clear change happening and a lot of effort went into executing that change and Refreezing - but hardly any went into Unfreezing in the first place.

Small wonder the change left Zeus and his peers feeling cold, and on the outside of what was going on.

Baby, its cold outside.

Till next time.

Gary

Ps in other news…

Mental

It's been Mental Health Awareness Week  this past week and it's been hard to escape the mass amounts of publicity raising awareness. I've found it really interesting to read so many examples from both famous people and people I respect in my PLN about their struggles with mental health issues. 

It's made me reflect on my own experiences. I don't think I've ever had any long term mental health issues, although I've certainly had some very short term adverse reactions to events, but I tend to be able to spot when these happen and take steps to deal with it. 

I think I'm more fortunate than others in that respect, but I admire anyone who has the courage to talk about their issues. 

My one episode of any kind of mental health issue came when my first marriage broke down unexpectedly and in very public and extremely difficult circumstances. I know for certain I suffered a depressive episode and struggled with lots of things. I've talked before about how my employer at the time and particularly the Chief Executive supported me wholeheartedly. My judgement was very much impaired, I made lots of bad decisions, my mood was all over the place and I didn't think there was a way to recover. 

But time heals. 

Slowly. 

Nowadays I can tell when I'm feeling stressed or coming close to anything like a depressive episode. There are headaches, a feeling of blood rushing round my head, and heart palpitations in extreme cases. I'd have trouble sleeping, or staying asleep and would wake very early with my brain very active. If any two or more of these or other symptoms show themselves, I know I'm getting stressed and I know if I do nothing about it then it would make me ill. 

So I tend to do something about it.

Sometimes it's about doing something physical to expend some energy. I'm lucky enough to be fit and active and I use that to help me in times of stress. It gives me time to think as well, which helps too. 

Sometimes it's about talking or writing. I find both incredibly useful to manage my emotional state. I'm a big believer in the power of counselling and other similar techniques, although I was brought up to think that men shouldn't show emotion as it was a sign of weakness, and I should hide it all away. 

This means I do struggle to show emotion, and do keep it all internal, so talking and writing gives me an outlet. 

Whilst I have times of difficulty nothing has come close to the depressive episode around my divorce, although I know that if I didn't have coping mechanisms I'd be in greater difficulty. 

I also am more aware now of situations that can cause me stress. It's usually when people think something about me that is untrue, or argue with me from a position I can't understand, or when I feel a very strong sense of injustice. These situations create some of the symptoms I've described so I have to try my coping mechanisms. 

An alternative is to avoid these situations altogether but that's not always possible, and another technique is to not let them stress me, but that's easier said than done as well. 

I read an interview in HR Magazine this week with Alastair Campbell  talking about his own mental health issues. He mentally rates each day at its outset according to how he feels it is going to go from what he knows he is doing that day, on a scale of 0-10. He says he is comfortable if his days are no lower than 2 and no higher than 7 but he struggles if he knows days are going either side of those scores. 

I quite like this approach. He's planning ahead, and if he knows he's in for a 2 day, he knows he has to plan out his coping strategies and to be honest on reflection I can see that's what I have been doing, albeit without any scoring mechanism to quantify it. I'll always schedule a run after an event I know may cause me some difficulty, and it does help. Or I'll make sure I make contact with someone I can talk to during the day. 

I've also read about some places, e.g. in France, where companies can't send emails after a certain time and employees can't read emails whilst on holiday. When I first heard about this I didn't think it was workable, but over time I've come to appreciate what a good move it is in terms of mental health and work life balance. 

I blogged here about my experiments with it and I've continued them. When I'm off work for anything more than 24 hours I deactivate my email from my phone and tablet so I'm not disturbed. And I try my best each evening to switch off my work communications and focus on other things like family, and I'm mostly successful in doing so. 

There was once a regional union official who used to send me very abusive emails late at night. He would never send these during the day and in person he was not as nasty either. But he seemed to get a kick out of sending these because he knew the effect it would have on me (a very negative emotional reaction because it hit all the triggers I mention above and I had no available coping mechanisms due to the time of night, and he knew that), and he would also cc in the Chief Executive and as many other union officials as he could, which would further exacerbate my stress reaction and is a part of the reasons why I'm so anti cc. 

These experiences taught me the downsides of using email late at night, and I often encourage managers who do need to complete work and send email themselves late at night to set them to send at 8am. They get their bit done but without the negative impact or intrusion into someone's home life. 

I'm halfway through The Winning Mindset digital coaching programme via ex England cricketer and noted sports psychologist Jeremy Snape and it's really good. Highly recommended. I'll do a longer blog on it when it's finished but a few of the daily coaching episodes have focused on mental health and in particular how to develop mental toughness or resilience. 

It's been interesting to hear from world class athletes and their coaches about how they manage work life balance, how they manage their mental state and how they cope with setbacks or criticism. 

One thing I particularly liked was a top athlete suggesting that you shouldn't view mistakes or bad experiences as something to dwell on, but instead view them as successive drafts of your ever increasing performance. 

Another was to put setbacks and such things in context. Rarely do setbacks affect your entire life, usually just one portion of it and often they're no reflection on your whole self or your direction or anything, they're just one isolated bad incident that is already in the past and therefore it shouldn't affect your sense of self worth. 

Really good stuff and I'm enjoying the coaching programme and have got a lot from it. Watch out for another blog on this soon. 

But I still can't shake the feeling that I'm not supposed to be anything less than strong and focused all the time. That as a man I should never have emotions and certainly shouldn't ever feel like crying. I'm a senior manager too and I still often think that's not what we do. 

Those kinds of views are wrong but they are what I was brought up believing and what many people still do believe. It's only through campaigns like Mental Health Awareness Week and the stories shared by those a bit braver than me and those who have gone through tougher times than me that I can even begin to feel it's ok to talk about feeling stressed and being less than my best from time to time. 

In this blog I've tried to explain how I cope with difficult times and how it's been helpful to read others stories and to learn from external sources too. 

I hope that I'm able to help others in doing so. 

Till next time…

Gary

Ps in other news, I've had the wetsuit out today and have been open water swimming for the first time since last August when I caught a nasty bug doing so. I felt great except for the first few minutes when I had brain freeze. Glad I'm back in the open water. 

Mental Health Awareness Week

I'm only human, after all

This blog is about criticism, both public and private, and its effects on people. It is prompted by some unusual but repeated public criticism of his players by Jose Mourinho, which seems to be a style he believes is both appropriate and effective. 

Let's examine this. 

I should start by saying, again, that I'm a United fan, so I've been watching this closely. I've long admired Mourinho before he came to United last summer and it's been interesting to see his approach to man management. 

In his short tenure as United manager, he has used public criticism and also ostracism to attempt to motivate and manage certain players. 

First Schweinsteiger was ostracised and made to train with the reserves, but not allowed to leave the club. Later, when he had been readmitted to the fold and then allowed to leave, Mourinho expressed regret at the way he had treated Schweinsteiger, but that didn't stop him doing it in the first place. Now, if this was a "real" workplace, this would be deemed bullying, and possibly leading to constructive dismissal when the player left. 

Of course, football isn't real, but let's go on. 

Then Mkhitaryan suffered some of the same treatment but fairly soon after got back in the team and began to play very well indeed. Mourinho took credit for this, saying it took him some time to help Mkhitaryan to learn how to play in this country. In a real workplace, this may also be bullying and possibly racial discrimination too, but of course football exists in its own bubble. 

Then lately both Rashford and Martial have come under fire for their goal scoring records. Rashford has responded with some of his best performances of the season and a few goals, but Martial is still under fire and Mourinho says he listens too much to his agent (union rep perhaps?) and not enough to him. This could be considered good performance management but for the public nature of it, and as such it may be considered bullying too. 

Finally, recently Shaw has been heavily criticised for his commitment and performance, again in public. But Shaw has also responded with some better performances and has been "rewarded" with public praise. 

I could go on. 

Others, he has largely ignored in public, as he feels they give him what he wants and "get him". 

I think treatment like this is more common than we realise in organisations. I've come across examples in my HR career, and have had friends and family tell me stories that would have made my hair stand on end, if I had any. But the difference is that this is usually in private. 

The public nature of the Mourinho criticism has made me wonder though. 

It obviously gets some results, as some players have demonstrated. 

So does the end justify the means?

Is public criticism acceptable if the recipient takes it on board and responds with increased performance levels?

I'm not so sure. 

I have come across semi-public criticism of employees in the past myself and have always been shocked at this. In some cases it has been, like with Mourinho, one of the most senior people in the organisation being critical of an individual in front of others (if not quite as public as Mourinho), but in none of the cases I've personally witnessed has the individual managed to turn things around and publicly respond with better performances. In all cases the criticism has been too much and they've parted company with the organisation. 

And that's sad. Not because they didn't respond in that way, but because there was really no way they could. Real people don't exist in the professional football bubble. When we are criticised, particularly when unjustified and especially in a public way, we react badly in most cases. 

In most cases, we can't deal with it. Criticism, when doled out from a very senior person in a semi public manner, removes most of the motivators from Herzbergs model and reduces the positive effects of any hygiene factors too. It's a massive demotivator, and more so when the individual feels it's unjustified and also, because of the respective positions in the organisation, feels they can't respond. 

So why does Mourinho feel he can get away with it, and often does? Is it because of the results it seems to get?

I'm at a loss to explain it. 

But the criticism must hurt those who receive it. Whenever I'm criticised, be it in my personal or professional life (and believe it or not, I am not infallible) I will always hurt inside, but the way I can tell if the criticism has any merit is the depth of emotions it triggers in me. If I have a strong emotional reaction and keep thinking about it, it usually means there was something to the criticism and I can usually use that as fuel to change something. Is that what Shaw, Rashford and others have felt and done? But if the criticism is unjustified or inaccurate, I deal with it in different ways and have a different reaction to it, sometimes involving trying to show the person delivering it why and how they are wrong, which can often backfire on me. 

I told you I'm not infallible. 

I'm only human, after all, as the song goes. 

And so is everyone else, so if criticism must be given out, and there are sometimes really good reasons why it should, managers should make sure they do so one on one, not in public, base it on the facts so that it is accurate and not subjective, and also be aware of how individuals may respond differently to such comments. Regardless, criticism has a major impact on employee engagement for that individual employee, and therefore must be taken seriously by organisations. 

As for Mourinho and his man management tactics, they seem to be working. He's likely to get away with it. And sadly, most managers doing things like this will also get away with it. 

It's up to us in HR to make sure managers know it's not acceptable to treat people in this way, and to provide guidance on how to treat people as human beings. 

Till next time. 

Gary

PS all quotes now in for our building work and mortgage information obtained too. Approaching decision time about whether to go ahead with it…

#hrdsummit17 blog 6

And so I've done my own talk now. It seemed to go down very well indeed and I had a blast doing it. There were a LOT of people there and everyone said such lovely things. 

My energy levels have seriously dipped now. 

To those who are interested though, there is a Pinned Tweet on my page @Gary_Cookson with a link to a 10 minute version of today's talk. Today I added 5 minutes of new material and haven't (yet) recorded this but watch this space. 

But enough of me. 

I'm back in another session now, this time by Jeff Birk from OC Tanner on building a culture of recognition and appreciation. This is something all workplaces should strive to have. 

Recognition, says Jeff, is partly about encouraging effort. This can be done by communicating that someone is on track and in good standing, but has the impact of improving manager/employee relationships and improves employee confidence in their own skills. 

He asked when the last time anyone had this at work. Pleasingly, lots said within the last week but for many it was a year or more. 

Recognition is also about rewarding results. This encourages improvement, customer satisfaction and helps employees feel they are making a difference. Jeff made a comment that we need to have this continually, like the crowd during a football match, and not save our recognition or feedback until the end result or end of the match. 

Jeff's style of delivery was really engaging and I enjoyed listening to him. 

He said recognition is also about celebrating careers. He gave some good examples of how we can appreciate career choices by individuals, choices of coming to work for our organisations and choices to stay, particularly those who stay a long long time. This is about showing that the company cares and that the employee fits in (something I blogged about last week) and improves relationships amongst co workers. 

His advice about recognition was that it should be:

- in the moment

- inclusive

- performance based

- conscious of cultural differences between countries

Really good advice here and strikingly simple but sadly not always followed in many organisations. 

He challenged us not only about when we last received recognition, but when we last gave it. 

When did you?

Off to another session now on creating a coaching and mentoring culture with Claire Vaughan and James Moore from the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust. 

Claire talked about the poor culture at WAST 3-4 years ago and it's clear they were in a bad place both from an employee and customer perspective, and outlined some of the improvements that had been made. 

She pointed out that their new CEO has an HR background and therefore "gets" engagement. I'm sure this must help. 

Interestingly, the service began focusing on relationships and behaviours, not actions and outcomes. This appears to be a running theme both in this conference and in my own personal development recently. It is neatly summarised by the photo below. 

 

James mentioned that they are trying to break the Drama Triangle in the interventions they are doing, and got us to try this out via some paired coaching conversations which proved surprisingly effective at creating a sense of dignity and engagement. 

Well done WAST. 

Lunchtime beckons. 

Till next time...

Gary

#hrdsummit17 blog 7 (final one)

I'm in a session by Rob Jones from Crossrail. I missed the afternoon opening keynote as I was having a late lunch, having missed lunch because of arranging to meet people at that time. 

Robs session is about transitioning from operational to strategic HR and the key building blocks of doing so. His style was brilliant, and he was an engaging and funny speaker. 

He talked at first about what he had noticed in his career that are operational. Lots of things may appear operational, but they can also be strategic. He refreshingly talked a lot about the mistakes he had made, but also how some of these had helped him to learn more about how people operate and how they improve. 

His point was that you can only learn certain things from a report, but you learn much more from getting out and about and talking to people - not in a staged way, but when they relax and open up to you. 

He also talked about his time at Mothercare, where he figured out that the leaders viewed anything that put cash in the till as strategic, and anything that didn't as operational. 

His experience of being at Crossrail was a true initiation into the world of Organisational Effectiveness. His role was to examine barriers and blockages in the organisation, help to remove them and then get out of the way. That often involved HR work but was about understanding people, systems and processes just as much. 

He realised that he was better at his job, and could win, was by doing problem solving and getting into the detail of it. Not by delivering an HR service although that does need to happen too. But also try to be three or four moves ahead of the rest of the organisation and plan for different eventualities. 

This was a tour de force talk on how HR can reimagine itself as organisational effectiveness professionals and Rob made a passionate and entertaining case for that happening. Well done. 

And that, I think, is me done for today. It's been a long and tiring two days and I'm glad to be headed home but I've enjoyed this event more than in previous years. Next year I can see that it's going back to three days which I am concerned may be a mistake but we shall see. 

I hope to be here again anyway. 

Till next time...

Gary

#hrdsummit17 blog 5

So I'm back at #hrdsummit17 for the second day, and the crowd is noticeably smaller despite the later start. Possibly this is because many delegates are nursing hangovers from a late night at the awards ceremony last night, and it will be interesting to see how many people sneak in throughout the morning. 

We are starting off with a talk from Cisco's Jill Larsen, on reimagining and transforming HR. 

She began by sharing many of the contextual statistics that other speakers had shared that highlight how work is changing. The relevance here is that Cisco had been thinking about this earlier than many organisations and decided to transform their HR offer and service to prepare for this future. 

 

She talked about their People Deal. It helped engage all employees by talking not so much about HR stuff and focusing on the employee and customer experience. This started out small and cost very little as it was mainly about conversations and ideas. 

This then began to involve rethinking what HR needed to be based on what employees felt they and customers wanted to experience. This is a novel approach and one I'll be thinking about a lot in the coming weeks. 

They also then began to individualise the employee experience, starting with pay and rewards, allowing each employee to completely customise their total reward package. They then began to rethink their talent brand and began to make it more human, recognising their employees are their best ambassadors. This latter project is something I'm very keen on in my current organisation and have started to work on, so it will be interesting to see the outcomes. 

The way Cisco measure their talent brand impact was startling in that I don't think many organisations will even be considering the things Cisco are doing, let alone aim to compete with Cisco. And yet that says more about them than it does Cisco. 

She went on to talk about their Talent Cloud, which looked fairly complicated but also quite effective, and I suppose for an organisation whose HR team alone numbers 900 then they need something of this level of complexity to manage their talent and workforce planning.

She left us with a few challenges that she feels would help HR to transform. Determine your value proposition. Rotate talent. Focus on the experience. Go digital / vertical. And find champions. To be honest though these could be considered good change management practice in general. 

This was an interesting talk and whilst a lot would be more relevant to multinational organisations, the principles were helpful for anyone thinking about HR transformation. 

The next slot was a panel discussion on digital HR transformation, moderated by Richard Doherty from Workday, with contributions from HR leaders in Rolls Royce and AstraZeneca. 

Both organisations faced considerable challenges in terms of transforming their HR services. One point that stood out at the start was how both organisations had lots of disparate systems in place to manage aspects of their HR service, and there was an overall lack of integration and joined up thinking.

Clearly both organisations had chosen Workday as their preferred solution in terms of integrating their different HR services, and it's a product I'm not familiar with although I have, in my time, implemented two different full HR systems in two different organisations so I know how important it is to get the right system. 

One thought that occurred to me was that these two HR leaders were very pleased with Workday but what if we asked front line staff and line managers, what would they say about it? I just wonder if the viewpoint of HR leaders (including myself) is perhaps too blinkered to see whether technological changes in HR have a positive effect across the entire business, not just in HR. 

And now it's break time. 

At least until I do my own talk at 10:55. 15 minutes, 30 slides auto advancing every 30 seconds, on the concept of the Amazing Workplace. 

Let's see how that goes. 

See you on the other side. 

Till next time...

Gary

#hrdsummit17 blog 4

I took myself a longer break after the Connecting HR Africa session to process what I'd heard, get myself a sugar boost and generally reflect. So far this has been a very good conference and quite different to previous years. Last year at three days felt too much and too spread about. This year has been back at two days, and more seems to have taken place on the Exhibition floor in the mini theatres, which has meant much less walking about. 

The next session was introduced by Mark Martin, CEO of Foundation Stones, talking about how we can get HR to the top table and keep it there. He outlined his perspective on how the world of work is changing and how that makes it more critical for organisations to win the hearts and minds of their employees. 

The next speaker from PwC highlighted some of the changes he is seeing, for example a move to cloud based technology for HR systems, and the challenge was whether HR teams are ready for this. A lot of this is how HR is seen by the business, which is an issue I've experienced both extremes of in my career. 

Amanda Williams from Quorn Foods took over at this point. She reiterated these points. The HR team need to understand the people in the business, and whether they are motivated for the future or any future change. She isn't sure that most HR teams do, and she feels they need to do this in order to be taken seriously by the business. 

Mark followed this up by asking about other people's perceptions of HR and asserted there were three things we could do to make change happen so that we are at the top table:

 

This was an interesting and important topic but none of the three speakers really had enough time to cover it in the depth it justified. All had useful thoughts to share but not enough opportunity to do so. 

I've then moved over to another session about building the digital employee Fiona Mullan from Facebook. This talk was packed out and promised quite a lot as it's a brand almost everyone is familiar with. 

Facebook are obviously a mobile first and digital first organisation, and Fiona said lots of people are surprised to learn they are even an employer of staff, such is the power of their customer facing brand. 

Fiona qualified a lot of what she said by pointing out that Facebook is still a very young company, only 13 years old, and are growing and evolving all the time. As a result though of being staffed mainly by Millenials, it has been digital since the outset, and comfortable with little or no rules and policies, and with viral change and news spreading informally. 

She also mentoined how frequent hackathons take place, and how idea implementation is encouraged without permission being sought. This is a very unique culture but a hint at what many organisations can expect as demographic change works its way through society and into most organisations. 

I recognise this works for Facebook and some other organisations. But how easy is it to change existing organisations to work digitally and informally like this, without simply letting the organisation evolve through demographic change? That could take a decade or more, but can organisations change faster without employee turnover?

What do you think?

Fiona made another good point that people's Facebook profiles are used almost like a kind of company intranet, and therefore everyone brings their whole self to work with no secrets and it helps build better relationships. I can see this working but a lot of companies would shy away from it. I myself would have shied away from it just 3-4 years ago. 

As Facebook grows though Fiona outlined some of the challenges they face in terms of taking on more staff and having to introduce things like career structures, so there are some tensions coming into the organisation. She encourages people to be honest, be themselves and be open to seeking and also receiving feedback. It's the concept of the Authentic Self. 

This was an interesting talk also and, whilst very company specific, it contained many lessons for all organisations to think about. 

And that's me almost done for today. I'm missing the keynote closing speeches for today because they are starting too late - a bugbear on this event annually - my train home is 5 minutes past every hour and Clive Woodward finishes at 6pm. I'd never make the 6.05 train at New Street so would have to get the 7.05 train and get home after 8pm and miss my youngest daughter go to bed. Can this event finish earlier in future years?

But I'll be back tomorrow. 

Till next time...

Gary