Tag: disrupt

Leading People In A Disrupted World

This blog post is based around a talk titled ‘Leading People In A Disrupted World’, given by Lucy Adams at the PPMA summit in Birmingham, on June 23rd 2016.

Lucy Adams used to be HR Director at The BBC, then this happened. In her post BBC world, Lucy Adams refers to herself as ‘a recovering HR Director’, and she is with us today to give her talk about leading people in a disrupted world – which begins looking through the lens of the BBC, something everyone in the audience is very familiar with, and I expect many are affectionate towards.

Disruption : Setting The Scene : The BBC

Technology : Then, four channels. Now, too many to count.

Divisions : The BBC working as tribes, all fiercely proud of their own domain, and all hate each other.

Competition : Then, precious little. Now, Amazon Prime just one example which no one would have predicted, even just a few years ago.

Structural change : Then, London. Now, closing buildings, introducing hot desks, moving big chunks of the BBC north, from London to Salford, as a physical statement, recognising the need to be less London, more UK. Among the complaints and resistance, Lucy Adams recalls one email stating, ‘I can’t possibly move to Salford, I’m a vegetarian!’

Costs and Contracts : Then, final salary pension, incremental pay rises, job for life. Now, pension reforms, huge reliance on a contingency/freelance workforce, lots of anger as a result.

Scrutiny : Then, not much. Now, public, political and media. The BBC went from its highest ever approval ratings immediately post London 2012, to its lowest, in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

That’s a lot of change, and Lucy Adams believes that HR is needed for organisations to cope, to survive, yet she tells us that 42% of executives say HR is not up to the job.

The need to see employees as adults, consumers, humans.

HR feels a need to interfere, to sustain a relationship akin to parent/child. There’s low trust (should that be no trust?). For example – why does HR feel a need to log annual leave? Why can’t we trust that everyone can manage something like this independently, and deal with the odd anomaly – rather than set up a system which assumes people can’t be trusted, need to be managed? Working this way creates child like responses in people – and we are surprised?

Lucy Adams says that in her search for new ideas, she finds no innovation in HR – so where might she find it? In consumer led businesses. Well run consumer led businesses often have:

Customer Insight – a level of data HR would kill for.

Segmentation – market, customer, employee. These businesses understand the different archetypes, and yes, having ’12 different customer types’ may be too simple at times – but we deal with the anomalies as anomalies, rather that over engineer everything to cope with the ‘just in case’.

User centred design – cocreated, not designed in isolation then enforced. Staff surveys came in for a real pounding at this point. In summary, Lucy Adams sees them as telling us stuff we already know, in order that we can do nothing about it.

Our processes and our leadership should be with humans in mind. Humans which have needs and wants, which we currently don’t meet, by design. For example, an annual performance review measures you as an individual, yet almost no one works alone. The whole process starts from a completely disconnected place – why do we expect it to be useful? ‘Can I give you some feedback’ evokes a similar fearful response to the sensation of being stalked at night by someone wearing a hoodie.

Leadership was framed simply as:

Resilience
Engagement : The ability to help someone to do their best work
Insight
Curiosity
Humility

Closing comments I noted included:

When you write – write as yourself. Encourage people to be ok with ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’ and ‘Lets’s give it a try, we’ll learn something’.

I enjoyed Lucy’s talk. Starting the story from a place where many of us feel familiarity and affection, worked well. The talk has clearly been well crafted and practiced, I found it useful.

Epilogue : Reflect and Connect

After the talk – Meg and I facilitated another of our Reflect and Connect sessions. Lucy’s talk sparked some interesting conversation, and the people who showed up for the session seemed to enjoy unpacking a few thoughts, snippets of which are shared here.

Putting a process around a conversation is inhibiting, would you talk like that to a client? Following a process is not very satisfying, creates them and us. Can we build our work on respect, behaviours, and an expectation that we trust you to get it right?

Why does compassionate leave need a policy. We’re all different – the emphasis should be on ‘compassionate’. Operate in the grey areas, the soft edges. Tribunals frame things around a ‘range of reasonable responses’, could we do that – in lieu of policy?

Promotion – often done yo retain good technical skills, without regard for the person having management and leadership skills, which we are often constrained/reluctant to invest in.

Worth seeking clarity and quality. HR as a facilitator, an enabler, not a dictator. Where can we encourage opting in and out, over mandatory?

Be Stiff – A Genuine Tale of Disruption

A review of ‘Be Stiff – The Stiff Records Story’, a genuine tale of disruption

In 2015 the word ‘disruption’ is fast becoming what ‘engagement’ was to 2013, and authenticity and mindfulness were to 2014, much hyped, overused and often misunderstood terms. Disrupt, disruption, disruptive, everything cool seems to warrant the disrupt tag. Here’s how the dictionary positions this currently popular term.

disrupt – verb

interrupt (an event, activity or process) by causing a disturbance of problem, ”flooding disrupted rail services”, throw into confusion/disarray, play havoc with, derange, make a mess of, drastically alter or destroy the structure of, “alcohol can disrupt the chromosomes of an unfertilised egg”, distort, damage, buckle, warp.

Pretty heavy stuff huh? While the overuse of engagement in the world of work felt like the equivalent of sneaking sleeping pills into a board bored meeting, taking the definition above, disruption is more akin to lobbing in a couple of stun grenades under Any Other Business. It’s still only February, and I’ve already had enough of the business word of the year. Or have I?

I’ve just finished reading ‘Be Stiff – The Stiff Records Story’. Written by Richard Balls, Be Stiff is a fantastically well researched and written headlong dash through the chaos, and dare I say it, disruption, that was Stiff Records. Despite being over 300 pages long (not including the all important discography, Stiff Tour Dates, notes and research), this book conveys the pace, urgency and in your face attitude that epitomised the Stiff Records way of life.

Stiff Records emerged on to the music scene in 1976, founded by Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson. Right from the start, they championed musical underdogs, and the way Stiff Records marketed their acts using badges, coloured vinyl, promotional stunts and more, left the established music business staggering in their wake. Click the badge montage photo to see all manner of unconventional promotional items that Stiff Records used to announce new signings, releases and tours.

Stiff Badges

It was as if the rest of the industry was completing the final plodding lap of a marathon when Stiff Records shoved them all out of the way in the last 100 metres as they sprinted for the line, before nicking all the medals, sticking two fingers up at everyone and jumping in the back of a beat up transit van to head to the pub and celebrate.

I first became aware of Stiff Records when they signed The Damned, and released New Rose (catalogue number BUY 6) as the first punk single in the UK. The Damned weren’t the first punk band on the scene, but whilst the like of Malcolm McLaren and The Sex Pistols dithered over their rehearsing and recording, Riviera and Robinson shoved The Damned into their own cramped recording studio, and beat everyone else to the punch, even going so far as to include a cover of The Beatles song ‘Help’ on the B side, just to piss off the establishment. The Damned also gave Stiff Records their first album release, Damned Damned Damned (catalogue number SEEZ 1), and among the first ten album releases you will also find artists such as: Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich and Jona Lewie.

Stiff Records put out more than its fair share of duff material too. Does anyone remember Pookiesnackenburger, The Astronauts, or Viva Vagabond? Thought not – but these unknowns were all part of the mix and all contributed to the colour and the chaos and the creativity that made Stiff Records the disruptive influence it was. Alongside the forgotten, you will find acts such as Madness and Tracey Ullman who generated the all important sales needed to keep the good ship Stiff patched up and sailing hurriedly through uncharted, dangerous waters.

The beginning of the end came when Robinson agreed to run the then failing Island Records in addition to running Stiff. It was too much for one person, and in particular, the kind of person like Robinson, who wanted input into everything. After eleven years of excess, fights, hit records and an approach to packaging and marketing that truly shook the industry, Stiff finally stiffed.

Stiff Records was brought back to life in 2006 and has generated some income for its current owners through reissuing elements of the back catalogue, but it’s not the same disruptive Stiff Records I, and many of you will remember. Despite its current popularity, disruption is a rare beast, and even when it works, by its nature it has a limited lifespan. If everything is disruptive, then nothing is, so if disrupt you must, then please use sparingly. If you have any interest in rock, punk and pop music and what real disruption looks and feels like, I recommend you read Richard Balls’ excellent book. And remember:

‘If It Ain’t Stiff… It Ain’t Worth a F@#!’