Tag: HR

Creative Leadership – Connections Part Two

A few days ago I wrote about some of the conversations we were having in Illinois at the very excellent annual State SHRM conference about connections and creativity. As promised, here’s a little more on that subject, and there’s more to come next week after the August Bank Holiday.

Transparent Connections

We all want to be kept informed right? Wrong. We all need to be kept informed. Nobody works well in isolation, and the timely flow of information is vital for doing good work, yet it’s hard finding a company that doesn’t wilfully keep secrets from itself. Strictly Confidential, silos, and locked doors all serve to stifle the oxygenating effects created by a free flow of information. I’m not really interested in ‘Thinking Outside the Box’ on this one, I think we need to be more radical. Just open the box, unpack it, and throw the box away. Rather than coming at this challenge from where we are now, with most things hidden from most people, what if we were to start with complete openness and work back from there? Scary? Yep. Exciting? Definitely!

Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant write compellingly about this approach in Humanize, which I shamelessly referenced again for my Illinois SHRM talk, and in it they suggest a number of key things about transparency, two of which I want to highlight here. First, it’s vital that you can be really clear why transparency is important to you. Second, when you are figuring out what to share, and someone blocks with the challenge ‘we’ve always done it that way’, that is no longer good enough.

Small Picture, Big Picture

I firmly believe that a part of what delivers world beating performance, is when everyone can clearly see the goal and can clearly see all the information they need to be able to contribute to that goal. So the woman who makes the screw which fits the seatpost to the saddle, onto which Bradley Wiggins places his skinny butt so he can PLF (Pedal Like F*ck) and together with Mark Cavendish win the Madison final at the World Championships at 2008. She knows precisely how to make that tiny piece of kit and someone else knows just how tightly to do it up, and so on, and so on. Transparency – it matters.

Screw

Bicycle

World Champions

Photo Credits:

Bicycle Photo – yours truly

Bradley Wiggins  and Mark Cavendish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiggins_Cavendish_2008.jpg

Creative Leadership – Connections

I’m having a blast here at the 2013 Illinois SHRM conference. Kudos to the gang of volunteers that energise and galvanise these events, I feel privileged to be here.

Musical Connections

Thanks to the organisational skills of Dwane Lay and Jonathan Brewer, and the generosity of John Hudson, guitar provider par excellence, things got off to a lively start with a pre conference camp fire singalong on Sunday evening. This was a great way to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones too, and Dave Ryan was on the ball and captured a flavour of our musical time together for posterity.

The theme and purpose for the conference this year is all about HR helping HR – and we are being encouraged to discuss and suggest and encourage different ways of working better together. I chose to approach this challenge by preparing a session about connections, communication and creativity.

Vulnerability

We looked at how we currently learn and work and how this seems to drive up convergent thinking and drive out creativity and divergence. I shared a little of what I’d learned from the recent RSA talk by Ken Robinson to help illustrate this. We also looked at how we react to experiences that make us feel shameful and the impact that often has on creativity too. Here’s a little something I learned from Brene Brown and Heather Bussing on this important, and yet little talked about aspect of vulnerability – an essential ingredient of creativity.

Vulnerability - Brene Brown

Vulnerability - Heather Bussing

Diversity

We spent time talking about the benefits of investing in building a diverse network. Being able to connect, share and learn with and from people is increasingly easy, particularly with the technology available to us (we looked mainly at Twitter, blogging and Instagram as tools to help with this). And we explored how much more interesting things get when you reach beyond people you might typically associate with and strive to learn from others less like you too. Diversity is another essential ingredient of creativity.

Conversations

We looked at Starbucks and Qantas and their ill timed #SpreadTheCheer and #QantasLuxury campaigns as examples of what happens when social goes wrong. Both of these examples could have been prevented , and we discussed how organisations that choose to work in a more conversational, open and transparent cross departmental way often minimise the chances of making these kinds of dumb mistakes. And if HR has a role to encourage smarter working in the business, and we agreed it does, then why not take the lead and be the oil in the machine. Conversations – essential ingredients of creativity.

I’ll come back to this subject after I’ve flown back from the US, and I’ll also take a look at some of the new thinking that Paul Hebert shared with us, some of which fits neatly in this connections space too. For now though, I’m off to enjoy Dwane Lay’s talk and the rest of the conference. Have a great day.

 

Back to Back Meetings

Back to back meetings

Back to back meetings. Oh joy. Most people appreciate that back to back meetings and long meetings are a great way to kill productivity and boost terrible decision making, yet in a culture of presenteeism and busyness they not only survive, they thrive. For example, I recently spotted an online exasperation when someone found out they were booked in for back to back meetings from 8am until midnight. I agree this is an extreme example but how anyone – even the brightest spark – can be expected to be capable of good performance and sound judgment after that lot is anyone’s guess. Yet it goes on, a lot.

Important Stuff

‘We’ve got loads of important stuff to discuss.’ Really? Well good for you – and if it is that important then do your stuff some justice and make time to deal with it properly. You don’t cram a good meal chock full of too many courses then try and wolf it down in double quick time, that way lies indigestion and worse. So why treat your important work any differently? I’ve never understood the logic behind the maths of ‘this stuff matters so let’s rush it.’

Time Travel and A Tactic for Having Better Meetings

I was giving a talk at Louisiana SHRM conference a few weeks back when the subject of time travel came up. I suggested an extremely simple tactic that is often cited as a way for having more effective meetings. Why use this tactic? Well as HR leaders, in fact leaders of any kind, you help to influence and shape culture through leading by example. Here’s a two minute clip from the talk complete with a free technical blooper for your enjoyment.

I’ve got some important meetings later today, including a catch up with Joe Gerstandt and an interview with Jo Dodds on Engage for Success radio. I’ve planned in a gap between these two sessions so I can devote my time and effort to each one separately. In the meantime, seeing as it is such a nice day, I’m going to practice the flexible working message to the max and indulge in a short mountain bike ride. Right now.

Have an excellent day.