Where business and the arts meet, making work better together.
I was doing some voluntary work for my professional body, the CIPD yesterday. My job was to create and curate content at a social media conference. As part of my work, I had a go at some sketching using pencil and fine liner pens. Here are the results.
I had hoped to do more but I’m not skilled at doodling at speed!
After I posted my blog from a train this morning, Tim Kitchin got in touch and said:
Look forward to seeing the flow of the day…some very interesting developments ahead in workforce 2.0. I hope the conference gets into some of the ‘proper’ stuff…
I asked him – what do you mean by ‘proper stuff’? If and when I hear back from Tim I will update this post with his response. In the meantime – here are a handful of early observations I’m sensing about themes, feelings etc.
Co-creation and Involvement Matter
Yay – and…? How? That’s still not clear enough for me. I think there are lots of simple ways to push further on this front, most of them conversational.
Complete Control is a Total Illusion
I’ve bastardised this feeling so that a) I get a Clash reference in and b) it reminds me of my 2013 tour t shirt. And seriously – there is a rising awareness that this social stuff is going on regardless of your policy.
Total Illusion eh?
I’m enjoying following the Twitter feed of Grumpy Lecturer, who has pushed back on the control issue with this:
Is the interest in social media in workplace akin to Bentham’s Panopticon as employers paranoia increases?
I googled Panopticon and I suggest you do the same – I think we need to be mindful not to rebuild work in this scary shape.
Leadership
This has to mean more than where we sit on an org chart. There are leaders everywhere – acknowledge them regardless of their hierarchical position.
Reward
I think how people are rewarded is a vital part of how an organisation functions or dysfunctions. Mot people are not paid to collaborate – indeed many are paid to compete with colleagues instead. For me – this is currently missing from the conversation.
How About You
What do you think is missing – are we yet talking about the ‘Proper Stuff”?
At the CIPD Conference in Manchester earlier this month, Meg Peppin and I were invited to facilitate a short unconference session titled ‘HR Unscrambled’. Here are our reflections from the session.
“Whether you’re passionate about improving organisational culture, employee-led change, employee communication or anything else that will help make work better, we’d like to invite you to HR Unscrambled.” Our invitation to members.
We wanted to co-create an opportunity for dialogue between the CIPD, its members and any other people interested in exploring both the CIPD purpose, Championing better work and working lives, and the future for HR. We believe there is great meaning to be found in exploring ways to work co-actively, doing things with each other. HR Unscrambled represents the beginning of that learning.
In the future we shall:
8.00am one morning in Manchester
Our space was airy, breakfast was available, and tables were set up for four people. Guests were invited in small groups to discuss what brought them to the session. There were 30 contributors from a wide range of backgrounds including, CIPD staff, HR and Learning and Development professionals from the UK public and private sectors, and independent consultants. We were delighted too that Peter Cheese the CEO of CIPD joined us for the first half despite seemingly being everywhere else too!
The emerging themes were connecting, sharing and learning – and the future.
The connecting and sharing through networking – in its most enjoyable sense – included sharing insights, building on those insights, reflecting and thinking through them together and the implications for organisations.
A question that users of social media are asking with increasing frequency – how can we invite in those who don’t access SoMe – how do we extend the conversation?
Learning comes from connecting and sharing, and having space to assimilate the learning. We explored technology and how it is changing the way we learn, what we know about how we learn, and how we can integrate technology into our Continuous Professional Development. There was also a desire to think about generational learning differences.
Implications for the future – what the generational differences and similarities are, what self directed learning means culturally within organisations, and what skills HR professionals need – were all up for discussion.
Learning
People grouped together in fours to explore common interests around these subjects. The conversations were self-organised; people went where they had the most interest. During the discussions, we invited people to move tables with the purpose of stimulating the development of the conversation and to facilitate more networking. People were also invited to use flipcharts to capture their thoughts, priorities – what they would like to share with people who weren’t there.
We noticed that across what seemed like a broad range of topics, a dominant theme emerged in relation to learning. Discussions encompassed the tools for learning, how people learn, how technology is changing traditional methods and creating opportunities for people to become curators of their own learning. IT can get twitchy but technology, self-directed learning, and the autonomy it offers has arrived. This has so many implications, and we were left with some big questions:
We’d like to thank all of those who were motivated to get up early and create this event, and we look forward to building on this.
Meg Peppin and Doug Shaw
These notes are available free to download.