Innovation versus process: Day one of #CIPD12

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Life is about contrast, the good and the bad, the brave and the faint hearted, the inspirational and the disappointing. The great thing about contrast is that it helps you to form an opinion, helps you to learn and, if you take the time to reflect and consider, it can help you to grow.

The first day of the CIPD Annual Conference has been a lot about contrast.

As an opening session, Gary Hamel was never going to disappoint. Energetic, humorous, informed and challenging.  Some of the quotes alone were worth attending for,

“No-one grows up wanting to be a manager”

“Markets are better at allocating resources than managers”

“Management was created by engineers and accountants…..and it shows”

And my personal favourite,

“Organisations are like dogs, really good at peeing on lamp posts, not so good at doing the tango”

But entertainment is one thing.  Was there substance behind it and what did we know that we didn’t know before we entered the room? The answer to the first question is yes, the answer to the second….not so much. But ou often don’t need to learn, just being reminded can be powerful.

The basis for future organisational success and growth needs to be about defining a higher purpose which we can all collectively work towards. Management is a tool that has developed to ensure conformity, but the organisations that will thrive and succeed are those that are not focussed on conformity, but focussed on innovation. And as HR people the fundamental issue for us is not developing better processes, better tools or better methods, but helping to develop better principles. In order to innovate and create at speed we need to focus on decentralization and not centralization.

Music to my ears.

The thing is, though, as an HR profession we have been focussed on the antithesis of these principles. We have become focussed on process and procedure. We desire conformity and control more than anything and this lust has led us on an ongoing agenda of centralization and aggregation. We have shown the greatest lack of ingenuity, innovation and free thinking since the lemmings all decided it was a good idea to follow one another off the cliff.

But life is full fo contrasts and on leaving the session, I went in to another (to remain unnamed) where I was presented with a “case study” full of process and procedure. And when I say full……I mean full. There isn’t enough Valium in the world to get me through that session.

If this is an organisational challenge then it is one which we are ill-equipped and ill prepared to tackle as we currently stand. Both a risk and at the same time an amazing opportunity. Because if we can get our own house in order, then we can play an important role of the evolution of business, work and the workplace.

From what I see though, we have a long way to go.

Who are the CIPD and what do they want with us?

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Seems like a strange question to ask really. Who are the CIPD? And……what do they want of us?

Like many of you, I get a nice letter once a year asking me for money. I fill out the various forms and I put the invoice through to my accounts department where the good people that work there, happily process it.

And then once every so often I get a copy of People Management through the post and I read it….well sometimes. I used to look at the jobs, but not so much these days. I get invites to branch events….but they’re not really me. I’m not a “society” kind of a guy.

So what is in it for me and if those good fellows in accounts were to reject my payment, would I be willing to put my hand in my own pocket and cough up the hundred odd quid that I’m asked for?

I don’t know. Or at least I didn’t know.

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to spend some time with Peter Cheese, the new CEO of the CIPD for a coffee and a chat. Now anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not slow to crack a few old surname jokes. And it would be easy to make some, although I’m sure Peter has heard them all.

But sometimes you meet someone who really inspires you, someone who makes you think. Peter is one of those guys. We share a lot of concerns and we share a lot of ideas about the future and so it would be easy to say that I’m just kowtowing to someone who thinks the same as me. Maybe I am. But I left our meeting more confident about the future of the CIPD than I have ever been before. Maybe this is the start of something?

Leadership is a funny thing, leadership is often about being unpopular. I have a feeling that Peter might be unpopular…at least with a vocal minority. But during the time that I spent with him, I have to say that I experienced a clarity of purpose that the CIPD has lacked for many, many a year.

Take the new look People Management magazine, it certainly feels different, it certainly looks different. The cobwebs of institutionalisation seem to have started to be blown away (although they still need to call in the web designers tout de suite). And as Peter says in his introduction to the latest edition, “We’re developing a clearer framework for the way we communicate, placing us at the heart of the changing worlds of work, organisations and work forces.”

The CIPD at the heart of the changing world of work, organisations and work forces…..now there would be a thing, a long overdue thing…..

The CIPD needs to be leading the debate, not following it. It needs to be pulling on the collective knowledge of its membership, the people who are there, day in and day out, working with organisations on their needs and challenges. Not just focussing on long and academically heavy studies that appear months after a news story has passed. The CIPD needs to be a voice for its members, not a voice for itself.

So, are we turning a corner? I’d like to think so.

A we enter our conference season, I look forward to a bright new dawn from the CIPD. I look forward to a renewed sense of meaning, I look forward to EVERY member having an equal voice and remembrance of the fact that a vocal minority are exactly that….a minority.

I look forward.

And, in my opinion, you should do too.

We still need to answer the questions that started this post.

Who are the CIPD?

And…….

What do they want with us?

There is a lot to yet be defined, a lot that is yet to be discovered and a lot that is yet to be concluded. But…….if you’d allow me this, I’d like to take the opportunity to misquote the inimitable Professor Green…..and allow my foible of playing with people’s names to emerge just a little.

“The future’s bright, the future’s Cheese.”

For the moment at least…..let’s see whether the mountains are truly conquered.

I’ll go back to my day job now…….

The CIPD Annual Conference starts on Tuesday 6th November in Manchester. You can follow developments on Twitter via the hash tag #CIPD12. I’ll also be giving my thoughts on it here and you can follow fellow members of the blog squad, such as Doug Shaw, Flora Marriott, Sukh Pabial, Perry Timms, Rob Jones, FlipChartRick and Mervyn Dinnen to name but a few. And of course, the CIPD….. on @CIPD!

Let it all out

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Some people will tell you that there is no place for emotion in the workplace. These are the same people that will tell you that everyone is equal, that fear is irrational and that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The workplace is full of people and people are full of emotions. These are the facts of life.

As a HR professional, there are times when you will see the extreme of emotions, the good, the bad and the downright ugly. You have to be ok with that and you have to react to that with skills that they will never teach you in school.

People laugh, people cry and sometimes, people shout.

Shouting is ok. Shouting is natural. Shouting is an expression of frustration, of need, of incompetence, of disappointment and desire. Shouting isn’t desireable, but it is acceptable.

As a HR professional you are going to get shouted at. Because you’re a safe place, not a soft place, for these emotions to be expressed, because you’re neutral and because you, alone from many others, will tolerate it.

And tolerate it, you must.

Remember, that when someone is shouting at you, they’re doing so because they are hurting. Remember that they don’t care about your process, or policy. Remember that they want to be treated as a human, because the hurt that they are feeling is the hurt that only a human can feel.

Keep calm, listen, keep your voice low, ask questions, seek to understand. Seek to help, remember that you are the person that can resolve the hurt.

That is the value that you can add. And it is the value that often individuals seek from their HR partner. The forms and processes can wait for another day. But the person in front of you can’t. They need you, they need your help, and they need it now.

So what are you waiting for?

A rewarding conversation

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I read a lot of blogs from the HR community, both here in the UK and in other less developed countries….like the US. I read good, bad and indifferent posts about a range of subjects. I read about engagement, resourcing, learning, strategy (pause for theatrical laughter) but I seldom read about reward.

The very essence of employment is reward. We might try to shy away from it, we might try to avoid it, but put simply, work is undertaken only for reward. Whether it is the exchange of goods, the promise of salary or of course the contentious bonus.

We work for return.

So why is it that we talk so much about so many other areas of our remit, but so little about reward?

Is it too hard? Is it too sensitive? Or have we forgotten the essential element that underpins our existence as HR people, because we would rather focus on the froth?

Reward has been the driver behind so much of our corporate success and corporate failure over the last gazillion decades. It has taken more mainstream column inches than any engagement initiative or recruitment technology. Yet for all the creative thinking that the blogosphere offers, so little of it is dedicated to the biggest prize of all.

When I’ve written about reward in the past it has had a mixed reaction.

My mind boggles, I need to address these topics, I need to think about these things more clearly. I don’t have the answers, I’m not even sure I have the questions, but I know that as a profession we need to be thinking about this topic in so much more detail.

So…..why aren’t we?