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Why data can make you a coward

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I hear a lot about data, a lot about analytics and a lot about the need to be numerate. I don’t hear much about being a free-thinker, being creative or being brave and bold.

I find that peculiar.

If you said to most CEO’s would you rather a creative, free thinking, bold and brave HRD or a data rational, analytical, numerate one? My guess is that most, would opt for the former. But strangely, we don’t talk about these elements. We don’t value them.

Why do we value BIG DATA and not BIG THINKING?

Data is the shroud that weak people, weak thinking uses to wrap a justifying existence around itself. Data is the reason that we can prove any argument that we want.

Data is a wanton whore waiting to please its next master.

Data would have told you not to carry out most of the major innovations that have changed our world. Data did not show that people wanted the internet. Data did not show that microwaves would be popular and (more closer to home) data did not show that erotica would be a best-selling genre in 2012.

Data is promiscuous.

I’m numerically literate, I have good GCSEs in Maths, A-levels in Economics and Accountancy and a degree which included statistics. Believe it or not, I even taught statistics for a couple of years.  I’m not anti numbers, I’m anti dumb people hiding behind numbers.

When someone tells you that you need more data, tell them you need more ideas. Creativity changes the world, data measures what it has done.

Be part of creating history, not measuring it.

The skills debate is changing, but you’re still doing the same

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I’m fascinated by the changing employment market. I’m fascinated by education. And I’m absolutely fascinated by the crossover between the two. Any HR professional worth their salt (and there are more than you’d imagine) should be intrigued, concerned and curious about the changing landscape of skills and education.

Let me put it simply,

  • If you’re a carpenter, you need to know that you’re going to get enough good quality wood.
  • If you’re a butcher, you want to know where your meat is coming from.
  • If you make wine, you care about the grapes.

Do we have a skills shortage, a skills deluge or a skill mix problem?

Well, probably a bit of all three.

I was taking part in an interview last week about over skilled and under utilised employees. I won’t take you through the whole thing, you have better things to do with your lives. But a couple of comments stuck in mind.

At the end the interviewer said to me, “thank you, it is great to hear from a company that recognised the presence of a skills mismatch. Most of the companies we’ve spoken to said they haven’t witnessed it.”

Really? My response was, “ask their employees what they think”.

The second was an observation that had been stuck in my brain for a while. When I talk to my colleagues in Germany, a large proportion of the HR people have a PhD. I can’t think of a single one in the UK. Clearly they are over skilled and over qualified. Or not?

I’m not sure there is any point to this. I’m not sure I have a great reveal to make or any insight to give, just more questions.

At a time when we are talking about a skills shortage.

Do we actually have more than we think? Is the labour market broken? Has immigration, the democratisation of tertiary education and the mobility of labour changed the rules of the game?

And are we all struggling to catch up?

Sack the HR department?

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Scanning the social media airwaves this weekend, a title immediately grabbed my attention, “Sack the HR department!” the title of a white paper from the “Great Place to Work Institute”. You can read the entire paper here but the summary highlighted a number of reasons why staff don’t have high opinions of the HR department.

HR function outsourced so more remote

HR staff seen as ‘whistleblowers’

HR staff not following their own rules about recruitment and promotion

HR turning a blind eye to managers likewise who don’t play by the rules

Line managers expected to carry out HR role with little or no training

HR seen as out of touch with the rest of staff

I’m not a great fan of “research” papers that are essentially there to sell a service. But the summary points resonated with a number of arguments I’ve made in the past.

I struggle to think of an example of an outsourced HR solution that has added long term value to the organisation and improved the service for employees. I’ve heard the arguments, sure, but the evidence? Last April I wrote a piece about the “Sausage Machine”. The outsourcing process, however, is the sausage machine on steroids, supposed efficiency drives and incentivises the dehumanisation process. It is as simple as that.

Trust is a theme that I’ve come back to time and time again. Most HR departments aren’t trusted and this makes any sort of intervention or improvement in the employee experience almost impossible. If you’re not trusted, your work won’t be trusted. If you can’t deal with confidentiality, you won’t be confided in.

And a lot of this is underpinned by the relentless desire by HR to be seen as “commercial”. Which so many read as, “doing whatever I’m told by the big bosses” and which, of course, in many cases is exactly the opposite. Sometimes saying “no” well is the most commercial thing you can do. If you want evidence just look at the role of HR in most of the corporate failures in the last ten years.

But perhaps the biggest warning light to the profession, is being out of touch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Most HR departments don’t have a clue what is going on in their organisations. And sadly, most think they’ll solve this by learning to read a P&L. In the same way that there are no answers at the bottom of an empty glass, nor is their organisational insight at the bottom of a balance sheet. Well, certainly not the sort we’re looking for.

So does this tell us anything new? Not really. Does it tell us anything we don’t know? Probably not? Will we pay attention? I guess the good will but the bad won’t.

And that is the fundamental problem with the profession.

Why I’m not listening. And nor should you.

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Would you buy a cookbook from someone who hadn’t been near a kitchen in anger for decades? Or learn to drive from an instructor who last saw a car when they had someone walking in front with a red flag?

How about someone teaching you to shoot, who only had a track record in making bullets? Or have your house built by a plumber?

How about a mountain guide that had never been outside of Holland?

I’m sounding ridiculous, right?

When you’re looking for advice, when you’re looking for someone to help, when you’re looking for a friendly hand to guide, when you want expertise…..when you NEED expertise. Then, you want someone who has been there, taken the blows, dodged the bullets and made it out the other end. You want someone who, themselves, has done the hard miles.

So why in the world of work do we take advice from people who have come no closer to running a business than I have to running a marathon? I could tell you how to run after a bus…but that would be the limit of my experience. And you’d be foolish to listen to me on anything further.

On a daily basis, I hear lawyers telling me how to run a business. Now anyone who has ever provided HR support for a legal department will tell you that lawyers are amongst the worse people managers since Attila the Hun hung up his axe. They are great at providing legal advice, but after that….not so much.

And how about the consultants that have “worked” in HR. The ones that when you check their Linkedin profiles haven’t actually been in any organisation of any size since Margaret Thatcher was in power.

Or they just had a sucky job in a sucky company.

I don’t want to beat up on consultants, or lawyers, or anyone. Well maybe a few people, but I’m going to shelve that now and focus on my professional persona.

For the best part of 20 years, I’ve been slogging my butt in to organisations and trying to make them a better place to be for the people who work there. From the CEO to the cleaner. For everyone. And I do it because I honestly believe it makes the world of work a better place.

So I completely resent being told how to do my job better, by people who have no idea of the realities of an organization, of my daily life, of business in the 21st century.

I don’t mind thoughts, I don’t mind suggestions, I don’t mind specific points of knowledge. I am not against collaborative working. That is all good.

I’m an HR Director, I have skills, I have experience, I have knowledge, I have expertise. Every day I hone these as I work to do the right thing for my company and my employees. I bring something to the party.

And if you work in HR, so do you.

So next time someone is telling you that you should be doing this, that or the other. Ask them….when did you do that? When was the last time that you succeeded in deploying that in an organisation? What was the result?

What experience do you have that can complement MY experience?

And if they can’t answer that question to your satisfaction, then show them the door. They add no value.

And I tell you now, I won’t be listening to them. And nor should you.