structure

You’re so fit

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“I just didn’t feel they were a right fit”.

That’s the feedback heard time and time again in recruitment. But is it fair? Is “fit” something that you can reasonably justify and does it really matter?

As much as we would like to pretend recruitment is a science, so much of it still resides firmly in art. We make decisions not just based on technical skills and abilities, but on how we feel about the person. And the irony is that we both accept and reject this concept in modern HR practice.

On one hand we applaud the Google approach to assessment and selection being analytic and impartial. At the same time we congratulate Netflix for their intolerance towards mavericks and disruptive individuals. We want you to have the skills, but we want you to fit in.

Of course fit has a whole host of discriminatory overtones to it too. I’m not entirely sure I’d be judged as a good fit in a conservative, Catholic institution. But that is perhaps a too trivial way of looking at things. What about a woman applying to an all male environment, or a muslim to a secular workplace?

Yet at the same time, I understand the importance of “fit”, the need for someone coming in to the workplace to embed within the team and to gel with the organisational ethos. In many ways I think the organisational fit will be more important than technical skills in the future of our corporate lives.

But is “fit” ever justified? I think it is. As a candidate, I assess an organisation on whether I think I’ll be happy there, whether it matches with my ethics and opinions. So why shouldn’t organisations do just the same thing, providing it isn’t discriminatory?

I think that’s ok. Don’t you?

We want to be together…..

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I’ve written before that the true value of Human Resource Management is in taking a systemic approach to organisational performance. HR is at its strongest when it provides a convincing, cohesive agenda based on organisational understanding and environmental awareness. Understanding the internal and the external environments and delivering seamlessly across the organisation.

HR is at its weakest when it is fragmented, isolated, distant, disconnected and seemingly counter intuitive.

We’ve all seen the models of HRM that show the inter linkages between specialisms and functional capability, but more than that we can use our common sense to understand the importance. If reward strategy is aiming to achieve something different to the performance management approach, which is built on different principles to the learning and development plan and has nothing in common with the resourcing goals. Then we intuitively know that this is one screwed up organisation.

HRM is a broad church, as a profession it accepts people with specialisms, it accepts people transferring in from other professions and it accepts inter dependencies with other areas of business. The skill of the HR leader is to recognise the breadth, diversity and inter connectedness and yet to be able to present it in a cohesive, recognisable and understandable manner. It isn’t always easy, but it is always achievable.

As with any broad church, you’ll also find the conflicts, the tensions, the insecurities and the chips on shoulders. You’ll hear claims for greater seniority, more importance, recognition and responsibility. Learning and Development feels overlooked and not taken seriously enough, Resourcing wants to be seen to be more strategic, Compensation and Benefits doesn’t understand why people can’t be more compliant and Generalists believe they have a God given right to walk on water.

That’s just the way it is.

The role of the HR leader is to manage the tensions, to help build knowledge and understanding of the value of collaboration, cohesion and consistency. To take the view of the employee, the manager, the leader and not to be inward facing and self obsessed. Put simply, nobody cares about the internal relationships other than us, they just get in the way of delivering successful organisations.

We are stronger when we’re together, we’re weaker when we’ve divided. It is as simple as that.

The last resort

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We draw inspiration from some funny places. The moments, the stories, the experiences that sometimes we even struggle to place can form our thinking, our feeling and our doing. As a kid, I had a collection of Aesop’s Fables, I can’t even remember whether they were read to me, or I read them myself. Or perhaps even both. But I remember the stories.

The one that sticks with me most is the story of the North Wind and The Sun. If you’re not familiar with the fables then you can read more about it here. The message being that gentleness or persuasion is more powerful than force or bluster. A lesson that has stuck with me through life and work.

The organizational context within which we co-exist is becoming increasingly complex, with relationships stretching across borders and boundaries. Inter connecting departments, shared purpose with separate ownership, leadership from within not above.  The world of work is increasingly full of ambiguity.

And faced with ambiguity and complexity, the natural instinct is to create order from disorder, certainty in uncertainty and control the uncontrollable. But the rules of the games have changed forever and the traditional methods of management are themselves ineffective, outdated and the refuge of the ineffective and outdated; the last resort of the inept.

In this increasingly complex and inter connecting world those that succeed are the ones that understand that trust beats control, that persuasion beats force, that collaboration beats independence. We create cohesion not by instruction, but by willingly coming together, we create certainty by collectively defining the future, we create success through self-determination and empowerment.

The future of work bears little resemblance to the past, the environment is changing at such a pace and some will adapt, but many won’t. The scared, ill prepared and ineffective will try to hold it back. The wise will listen, understand, talk, create, co-operate and succeed.

When things are bafflingly complex, only through empowering, respecting, trusting and collaborating will we find the way through.

Only by letting go will we hold on.

It’s all about trust

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So loudmouth Morrison spoke at the CIPD conference last week about social media. And to be honest, in my reflection on the event I’m not really sure I was talking about social media. Ok…..so I WAS talking about social media….but it was more of an example of where I think organisations and HR teams go wrong. And the lessons are applicable to so many other areas.

I was talking about TRUST.

So this is an old-fashioned concept, right? Work is all about supply and demand. Anything else is just side dressing.

I’m not so sure.

The thing is this, how many of you can turn around and say, “we truly trust our employees” or “we trust our employees to do the right thing for us and for them”? My guess is that a lot of you will be saying yes…..yes we do.  So then let me ask you this…..why do you have so much of your HR infrastructure set up to kick into play when something goes wrong?

I’m talking about disciplinary procedures, performance improvement procedures, policies on this, that and the other. Ways in which we monitor, evaluate, measure and generally rip the soul out of the heart of the organisation.  We all do that. Be honest…..don’t we?

So why is trust so hard? Why is it that we manage the majority with the fear of the minority? Why do we shy away from the bold actions of trust, individual responsibility and mutual support and respect? Why do we seek to punish people for “non-compliance” rather than seek to understand?

Because we are weak, scared and generally under prepared to deal with the responsibility of managing the expectations that are set upon us. So control, structure and managing to the lowest common denominator are simpler, less scary and without doubt more certain.

And that, my friends, is the challenge that we’re up against.  Whether we’re talking social media, or whether we are talking about any other aspect of the human experience at work.  We need to decide if we’re prepared to truly trust, or if we want to say we do but orgainse ourselves as if we don’t.

There’s a huge opportunity out there, there is a changing agenda. The brave and bright will get it, the rest will become a thing of the past. You have a choice.