I was fortunate enough to experience it first hand a few years ago and was hired almost immediately post acquisition (this was not a merger) and what you quickly come to realise is that it’s a difficult situation from every perspective. The need to satisfy the conditions of the change (whether that be financial or performance) are complicated by the myriad of definitions that exist for various parties.

Not to mention the plans that are concrete on Monday and ancient history on Thursday meaning that even those closest to being the ‘enacters’ of the change being confused and fraught trying to manage what at times feels like a bucking bronco that’s just been kicked in the knackers.

Whilst not on the scale of pre-revolutionary Paris that Dickens describes there are definitely camps involved in integration and whether that be the enacters and the recievers, those staying and those going, those from one organisation or the other – the opportunities to take two high performing organisations and bring them to their knees exist everywhere.

The role of HR (in it’s various forms) during an integration is equally challenging. In the core operations you’ve got big decisions and big change to make around policy, payroll, terms, teams and budgets and once those decisions are made you’ve got to actually deliver the changes whilst not breaking the fragile organisation. From a broader cultural perspective you’ve got an entity that is rife with uncertainty, rumour and agendas and if there were ever a breeding ground for political behaviour and self preservation this is it in spades.

Trying to support and preserve performance whilst you are systematically reviewing the organisation is a test of even the most loyal, committed, high performing individual and the need to shape decisions and enact them whilst preserving both the organisation’s and your own integrity is a test for every practioner.

The hardest part of all? You can’t talk about any of it! Publically no details can be revealed and privately there are very few people either a) who know everything and b) will not take you to a place which is about them so maintaining your individual resilience becomes a greater challenge.

So apart from me reliving the angst of integration does this post have a purpose? Yes in fact it does!

Last week HR Magazine announced their shortlist for HR Director of the Year and it’s a cross industry group of the great and good and a few of the usual suspects have yet again been shortlisted. One of the Unusual Suspects to receive a nod is HR Blogger and general Agent Provocateur Neil Morrison, Group HRD at Random House the publisher currently integrating with Penguin to form a power house global publisher.

Neil like all good integrating HRD’s is tight lipped about the plans for the new organisation and it’s partly for that reason that I believe he is deserving of recognition for what must be a hurculean effort. Another reason is that he doesn’t lead a behemoth of an HR team packed to the rafters with big hitters but rather a small team (12) of people at varying stages of developing their careers in HR who clearly run a tight (if informal) ship.

A further reason is that Neil is one of us – he’s a blogger and a tweeter and from the submission on the site you can see his impact on social media within the organisation but more widely within the HR profession I think Neil has had significant impact on the profession’s engagement with all things social.

To spell out the final reason I will quote Richard Curtis articulated with aplomb by Simon Callow in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ when at yet another wedding he encourages his friends to “go forth and conjugate” as for once he would like to go to the wedding of someone he truly loves for a change. Please relax this is not some long hidden bromance finally coming to light, but once, just once I would like someone I know (and although I’d never tell him – respect) to win one of these awards if nothing more than an excuse for a big night out.

So in short VOTE NEil MOrrison (NeMo) and if you’re on Twitter #voteNeMo

During the group discussion on the barriers to creating meaningful learning organisations the conversation moved to what was stopping the individual ‘going for it’. The answer that came up from nearly everyone was fear/lack of courage. On sitting and reflecting on both the conversation and the conference as a whole I came to the conclusion that there was no better analogy (and the spark for a wry smile) for the requirements of an OD professional than Dorothy’s companions in the Wizard of Oz…

The Lion

The Lion of course needed courage. You could argue that the OD professional doesn’t need courage but I would argue that not every challenge made either to the organisation or individual leaders can be ‘laid off’ with someone for support or necessarily would work if it was supported. The individual needs at times to just have the courage to act – to make the challenge and attempt to change the status quo.

The Scarecrow

The Scarecrow of course needed a brain. Whether it’s to understand the specifics of the variety of business disciplines we need to interact with, the agility to pick up a given situation or strategy quickly enough to be effective or to be able to understand how any intervention will affect the entire system I would say that intelligence (in it’s many forms) are a prerequisite for OD.

The Tin Man

The Tin Man needed a heart. When I say an OD professional needs heart I’m not necessarily advocating either a) that they wear it on their sleeves or b) that it is the guiding force in every action BUT understanding that the consequences of many of things we do have real impacts on real people should be factored in to the way we operate. The other requirement for heart is more to emotional intelligence – understanding the ‘why’ people do things and using that to grow understanding of motivation and agendas I believe will make the way we operate far more effective.

If this all seems very lightweight I did say it would spark a wry smile and there was a much more grown up discussion on a similar topic at the CIPD conference last year, my take on which you can find here. Saying that, whether you work in OD, have OD accountabilities or work with OD professionals stop for a moment and ask yourself, if they all had courage, brains and heart and used them in the right balance, would they/you be more effective?

P.S. I have thought of all red shoe, yellow brick road and friends of Dorothy gags and have ceased to find any of them funny

The one exception to this was with intrapreneurs. Actually when I first understood the concept of intrapreneurship I didn’t know there was a word to describe it. I could just recognise traits and behaviour in others and knew they were operating differently to the norm.

When I first started trying to research intraprenuership a few years ago the challenge I faced (and the reason this blog started) was in finding people who considered themselves intrapreneurs. In my quest I happened upon the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, the lost city of Atlantis and the secret formula for Frosties – all of which were easier to find than people who considered themselves intrapreneurs*

What I found interesting at that time was it was easier to find people who knew people they considered intrapreneurs and it was the recognition and suggestion of others that allowed the individual to even entertain the thought. Even then they were often resistant to the idea that they were operating differently. They often ascribed it to ‘just a project I was given’ or ‘some luck I had in getting it done’. The term is still not widely used or understood, often, it appears to me being used as a derivation of entrepreneur for those who aren’t brave enough to go it alone.

It was therefore with surpise and a smile on my face that I read a post on Sir Richard Branson’s entrepeneurship blog about an awards programme he’s supporting along with Ashoka, an organisation that supports social entrepreneurship and who run the ‘league of intrapreneurs’. You can find more from reading the Virgin blog I read here.

The awards scheme recognised achievement in social intrapreneurship in such large corporates as GSK and Shell and as Branson put it, “Social intrapreneurs are demonstrating to the world how business can be a force for good”. Amen to that!

I love the fact that the opportunity that intrapreneurs offer to organisations is starting to gain more recognition (and let’s face it with Branson attached it’ll get publicity) and that large corporates are seeing these people not as rogues and mavericks but as people who can operate differently to the benefit of the organisation. It’s also great that Virgin are using the fascination in Sir Richard’s entrepeneurial achievements as a way to grow the understanding of intrapreneurship – Bravo!

*I did not actually find any of these things

P.S. Thanks to Rob Harrison for directing me to the blog post

I don’t mind admitting that when I heard what was coming I started to tune out and thought this may be an excellent opportunity to catch up with my work e-mail…until I started to actually pay attention.

He opened with an anecdote about aeroplanes which went something along the lines of, in the case of emergency what was the thing a Captain would want to hear from his 1st Officer – “Captain, we have a problem with engine 43″. The notion being that in an aircraft with 44 engines, a problem with one of them would be so insignificant as to not challenge the safety of the aircraft.

He then went on to debunk his own anecdote as he pointed out that in terms of risk and complexity an aircraft engine is pretty much as high as it gets and that going from the 2 or 4 that are standard to 44 would be adding exponential risk to the aircraft and the passengers thus defeating the point.

Can you guess on a scale of 1-10 how interested I am in the complexity of software development? The answer is an integer below 0. But…it did start the grey matter whirring about the notion that in protecting ourselves from risk often we add complexity that in fact increases the risk.

Stop for a moment and think about the last time you had any form of significant crisis involving HR in your organisation… What was the response?

I’ll bet you a pound that it involved a new process, a new policy, something that needed signing, a briefing, some form of sheep dip training… Am I close?

So you’ve introduced another control mechanism and responded to problem by reducing the empowerment your employees feel another notch and also created something that you can miss out on in the future thus creating more work (which may or may not  add value) for HR to obsess over.

I suppose my point here is if control is anything more than an illusion are we really trying to maintain it by introducing more complexity and more process which actually serve to hinder the organisation and it’s employees? Go into your organisation today (or tomorrow) and look at the policies and procedures you have and to each one ask, “is this the 43rd engine?” – you may find yourself building a different type of aircraft.

A few weeks ago I attended an event entitled “Democratising Learning” hosted by an emerging business in the learning simulation space Ososim attended by a load of Heads of L&D and OD from a variety of organisations.

The speakers (well at least the first two) were preeminent, London Business School professor Lynda Gratton and former Schools Minster Lord Knight of Weymouth. You can find Professor Gratton’s slides here which are worth a read to see the work she’s done on emerging global trends and the perceived people priorities businesses face. You can find Lord Knight’s slides here and he makes some interesting points about the role of technology in learning and how technology has really driven fundamental changes in less developed parts of the world.

The speakers in the afternoon were myself and Perry Timms and as we didn’t use slides I can say you missed a great show!!

One of the discussions held in break out was what the learning organisation of tomorrow looked like and the summary of the responses looks something like this: (thanks to Leon at Ososim for the summary)

• Accessible to all
• Tech savvy
• Bottom up
• Collaborative
• Learning as part of working
• Covert not overt
• Sharing across boundaries
• More than internal
• Empowering…personal choice
• Informal and flexible
• Open, innovative and dynamic
• Team based…peer to peer
• Fast, forgiving and fun
• Focussed on skills, behaviours and application
• Engaging, inspiring and brave

The next discussion topic was what barriers existed to creating this new learning organisation and the classics appeared feared/lack of courage, resource, funding, buy in, support, resistance, etc, etc and we all moved on and had a biscuit.

The day was really enjoyable and I met some great new people (and reconnected with some I hadn’t seen for a while) but I came away from the day with a lingering notion that we were missing the whole point.

Learning is being democratised whether a bunch of suits sit in a room and decide it or not. People are learning informally and across boundaries. Teams are finding their own learning. Peer groups are using whatever tools available to them to share and challenge each other and let’s face it people are voting with their feet if their work isn’t giving them an opportunity to learn.

A great example from the organisation I work in just last week – we’ve employed 20 new apprentices and before we could get them together to ensure to help them start supporting each other and sharing they’ve already formed a private group on a social network and are communicating with each other. Way ahead of us!

As much as technology is disrupting organisations (and the rest of the world) I can’t help thinking that what we were discussing was not the democratisation of learning but actually the democratisation of learning investment – two very different subjects. I can’t help reflecting that those in our organisations who really want to learn and drive their own careers won’t wait for ‘the machine’ to catch up with them they’ll just get on and find ways to do it whilst the rest of us are writing slide packs to reassure the FD that investing in our people is the right thing to do.

In the context of the conversation it was very pertinent and will definitely form some part of the support we give people in preparing for these situations but I have thought about it several times since in the context of management and leadership more generally.

I remember as a younger junior manager that my default setting was doing. In order to be seen to be running the team I had to get involved in every conversation, try and solve every problem and generally make a complete and utter nuisance of myself. With the advance of my grey hair I have become increasingly comfortable not just in holding people to account but more importantly allowing people the space and autonomy to complete their work – supporting them but not becoming an interfering pain in the arse on too regular a basis.

It was another recent conversation that brought the quote front of mind and it was with another senior colleague who was discussing a situation developing in his team. I can’t remember his exact words but he said something like, “there’s always a point like this where it can one of two ways – I’m letting them get stuck into it to see which way they go but I know I’ve got plenty of time to help them course correct if they need to”. I remember thinking how powerful his statement was and how it showed both his experience and his personal confidence at being able to let people make mistakes and knowing when it was necessary (and not just comfortable) to intervene.

There was definitely a lesson for me in his observations and it has already caused me to step back on two different occasions and think about the way I handle something. It also made me think with the triumph of competence over experience in how we assess talent that there was a challenge for those of us in HR roles to understand how this confidence and comfort should manifest in those we support in leadership roles.

Since today I am running an Away Day for one of our senior teams I will contradict myself and get on with a day where it’s unlikely I will have an opportunity to do nothing, but with that said I am sure there will be at least one moment today where I need to let the conversation move on and not stick my facilitation snout into it so maybe a Milton-Moment or two for me after all!

Alexandra is in the process of spending 4 months in the UK with her family for among other reasons, to experience a different culture and to expand her global competence (I think that’s the term she used). We shared a drink and exchanged stories and experiences (I shared some of my China and Hong Kong experiences amongst others).

In reflecting on the conversation afterwards a thought occurred to me and it reminded of an encounter I had a few years ago. I was on holiday in Cuba and being it’s one of the few places on Earth it’s really clear that people are Canadian and NOT American I was enjoying getting to know a few people from Canada. The first person I had chatted at length to was a female marine engineer from Newfoundland who was, to put it mildly, getting all she could from the all-inclusive bar and proceeded to power-drink for the 4 days I spent at this particular resort.

It was my third afternoon sat in the beautiful Caribbean sunshine when I was joined at a neighbouring bar stool by an older gentleman wearing a baseball cap from an exhibition in Toronto. We got to chatting and it turned out he was spending the twilight years of his career consulting in the government trade arena having worked from the Canadian Trade Department for over 35 years. In the course of the conversation he happened to mention that he had been fortunate to visit every country in Asia, at times spending weeks or months working on particular ‘missions’ or projects.

What a fascinating and modest man. We chatted for over 2 hours but the point he made that really stuck with me was that in order to understand a country you really needed to spend time there. He mentioned a few books and models that he referred to in assisting his understanding but mainly his research was arriving in advance of any particular assignment and spending a few days walking around, seeing people going about their daily lives and chatting to people in normal settings – not the enforced facade of government trade talks. He remarked how this real life understanding had on many occasions given him valuable insight that had facilitated progress in the ensuing formal sessions.

So I guess Alexandra has it sussed in that she is here, experiencing the UK first hand and meeting normal people (I AM normal!) and getting to understand the mentality of a nation in real life.

The piece of insight the older gentleman shared with me that has also stuck with me concerned the aforementioned marine engineer. During the course of our conversation she appeared at the bar several times with an insulated commuting mug to get it refilled with Mojito. On observing this my companion remarked “in Newfoundland drinking is more a sport than a pastime” and then he took a beat and added, “and she is quite the athlete”

P.S. Alexandra asked me for some examples of great British TV she should be watching (or watch from the past) and I blanked only coming up with BlackAdder (from series 2 onwards) and Yes, Minster – any other suggestions?

I am minded of Ronnie Barker who used to end most episodes of ‘Open All Hours’ with the line “…it’s been a funny day” and I would agree it’s been a funny two years. From a hotel room room in Hong Kong in a state of panic about my Masters project to here in no state of panic whatsoever!

This is the 150th post (almost like I planned it) and all told it’s been read just shy of 25,000 times with over 500 comments. Thank you all.

I was thinking about how to mark the occasion and was going to post links to the posts that have been read most over the past 2 years. Then thought what a dopey idea that was as the chances are you could have already read them. Instead I’ve found 5 posts from the past two years that I enjoyed writing but for reasons either of a) poor writing b) poor titles c) poor timing or d) just being poor got a little overlooked so here goes:

1. The one with the divine discontent – my thoughts on that feeling of something never really being good enough

2. The one with Billy Connolly & Recruitment – my thoughts on the shock absorber that is the corporate recruitment process and how it impacts candidates

3. The one with 2IC – my thoughts on that all important Second in Command role

4. The one with influencing chess – a shared experience about how someone helped me improve my ability to influence people and agendas

5. The one with some perspectives – how a different point of view can make a huge difference (worth it just for the video clips!)

Thank you for your continued support

Rob

Whether it be the Chief Whip as in the British version or the Congressional Whip as in the US version you see the political machinations of these individuals as they use knowledge, relationships, access to power and their individual guile to navigate the choppy waters of Westminster/Washington. Remind you of a role within organisations?

We’ll come back to that…

Last week, Josh Bersin, Principle of Bersin at Deloitte published his/their predictions for 2013. In summary the advice was:

“…Push the envelope, ignore sacred cows and implement innovative programs that create passion, alignment, and teamwork.”

He goes on to illustrate some ideas on how the HR leader could go about this:

1. Replace the HR technology platform
2. Implementing new systems of engagement not just systems of record
3. Rethinking core processes e.g. annual performance appraisal
4. Implementing 21^st century leadership development
5. Driving new levels of employee engagement

There is very little to argue with in Mr Bersin’s paper and I agree that organisations in general would be better places if more HR leaders felt comfortable (or fought their discomfort) to heed his advice but in thinking it over it also got me considering a question,

“What does the HR Director do that someone else couldn’t do?”

So the Sales Director has to deliver sales and revenue, the Marketing Director the external message, future markets and product/service development, the Finance Director ensures balance and investment, the Operations Director delivers the product or service, the IT Director provides the systems, platforms and processes for the business to operate and manages the change around them and of course the CEO brings them all together and ensures balance between day to day and longer term. What does the HR Director actually do?

If you go back to Bersin’s examples think about these as alternatives:

1. IT Director – it’s a technology platform after all
2. IT Director – most of them are technology platforms e.g. recruitment system
3. Leaders in general – do they really need an annual line in the sand to manage performance?
4. Leaders in general – do they need a team to tell them how to develop leaders?
5. Leaders in general – it’s not for HR to drive engagement that’s a leadership accountability surely?

Give payroll to finance, let line manager’s hire their own people, hire those who have the skills and don’t need training, pay and benefits are driven by budget, systems are run from IT and as for reputational risk – what marketing doesn’t deal with legal can…

Fortunately most of this stuff wouldn’t happen without the HR function to drive it (at which point my bank manager breathes a huge sigh of relief). That said if you sit in an HR team coasting along thinking the business loves you and the business needs you then stop and ask yourself some of these questions. I know of one plc that has just gone from all singing HR/OD to bare bones personnel style function and I doubt they’ll be the last.

Every business needs the HR function. You could say that…I couldn’t possibly comment

In the second section of the session Professor Gratton begins to talk about how the states of existence that we can choose from and how they can inform our role in the future. She uses some great pairs to illustrate the polar options. The 3 pairs are:

• Fragmentation vs. co-creation
• Isolation vs. Connection
• Exclusion vs. Engagement

And uses all of them to illustrate three shifts the second of which is towards greater collaboration which she illustrates like this:

o|o vs. o-o

Her thoughts caused me to reflect on my own experiences with social media and networking both online and in-person but also how we as HR professionals have such an important role to play in helping people and organisations in getting over their barriers to move from the left of those pairs to the right.

For me personally the last 4 years have been transformational in the way I engage with people generally but more specifically now my network has grown and keeps growing. Whilst social media has played a huge part in that the really great stuff has been when those online people have become real and have been part of a conversation whether it be just for fun or about something more grow’d up. Yes, social media was part of it but the great stuff was real!

For organisations, with respect to social media, I think we in HR can either kill experimentation stone dead with a well crafted policy and a culture of fear or we can help the organisation ‘blow the doors off it’ by empowering and supporting the education of those within the business to understand how they can use it both for their own and the business’ benefit. Lots written about that and no need to rehash it here

The real shift that will need support I believe is going to be helping individuals within organisations to collaborate both internally and externally. Helping them overcome the barriers – internally power and politics and externally the competitive edge and business confidentiality, to understand how people and organisations can and on occasion MUST work together. This is not just for the ‘right on’ reason of being more collaborative but the absolute necessity of survival.

Professor Gratton talks about recent changes in technology as the biggest shift ever seen (she admits to it being bigger than the industrial revolution her previously highest ranked shift) and my personal opinion is it’s only just begun. Coming back to the thoughts of yesterday you can either walk into blindfolded or have a carefully crafted future but whichever you do people’s capability to adapt and deal with what’s coming has to be key to the people professionals.