In truth, we had no idea at first exactly how our clients would be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, no more than many of them knew themselves. In these unchartered waters, one thing was clear, however. We would all need to embrace change.

 

As a starting point, we were sure we’d need to learn a new way of working as a team so we could continue to do our best for our clients. Here’s what the experience has taught us so far:

 

Practice Bounded Optimism

There was no point being fatalistic about the weeks and months ahead. This paralyses effort and drains energy. We needed positivity to keep our spirits up and to help the team to continue to make progress. Conversely, unchecked optimism can be risky too, so we engaged in what is often called “Bounded optimism”, namely confidence combined with realism. We encouraged clients to practice the same.

 

Personal Adaptability

At a time like this, nobody has the luxury of doing only the work they enjoy. Each team member needs to step forward and take on fresh responsibilities. It requires courage to try something new, especially when your team is counting on everyone to step up and do their share. New responsibilities can be uncomfortable or dull, but when there’s a hole in the boat, everyone must bail out water. Trust in one another grows when everyone is willing to do what’s asked of them.

 

Client Focus

We exist to serve our clients and our focus had to remain on our clients. In a crisis, what we can’t do is often more obvious than what we can. Many clients approached us seeking advice, guidance, or reassurance. We worked hard to help them to identify their best options so that they could keep making progress during constrained times. Some clients wanted to act right away, while others needed time to process what was happening. We were ready to assist, to talk about their unique situations and challenges, when the time was right for each client.

 

Strengthen Team Spirit

When regular scheduled work stopped, we needed to find a way to remain active and connected to one another. Regular video team gatherings were important at the start to check in on one another and make sure nobody was disconnected or feeling abandoned. Over time, these gatherings were used to explore ideas, uncover hidden individual capabilities, and to plot new ways in which we could be of service to our clients. Covid-19 has made us grow closer as a team.

 

Learn New and Learn Fast

When the old way doesn’t work anymore, you need to find a new way and you need to start straight away. For example, clients were using diverse technologies and needed reassurance that we could work with their systems. We were happy to provide that reassurance. Some clients had systems that could do everything online, but most did not. Identifying ways to reshape learning and bring it to participants across all these differing environments, while maintaining our highly-engaging approach, became our key focus. We combined the resources that each client had with our own ideas and resources, creating impactful and engaging learning that clients were excited to offer to their employees.

 

Lockdown altered many familiar routines. In our team, it inspired us to become more flexible, more imaginative, and more selective. Crisis can be an obstacle or a catalyst, depending on how you choose to frame it. We chose the latter and as a result, it catalysed new sources of energy and ideas that we harnessed for both our clients and our own team’s development.

 

 

Justin Kinnear is Head of Research at HPC

Justin is a highly experienced facilitator and coach who advises HPC’s clients on their most pressing development issues.  As well as his extensive research and facilitation experience, he was formerly Head of L&D at IBM and Britvic.

Will “management” mean something different after the pandemic?

 

It’s already different.

 

According to numerous reports, managerial practices have already evolved throughout this pandemic. Managers have adapted their behaviour in ways that have increased trust in their teams. Employees are reporting managers demonstrating more empathy than before. Managers are engaged in more regular communication with their teams, with an increased focus on the personal challenges employees are facing. Managers have shifted in many cases from micromanaging their employees’ time to managing outcomes instead. There’s almost no part of the manager’s responsibilities that has escaped the need to adapt.

 

Crisis fuels change
Previously when a crisis happened the timeframe was usually short. Managers needed to react, to rally their team, to weigh the options and take decisive action. This usually ended in the manager issuing directive instructions to get the team through the crisis so they could get back to normal. This crisis is so much longer and can’t be addressed in the usual way. Instead, Managers have had to become far more inclusive, drawing ideas and energy from their teams and preparing for a long period of upheaval. This has produced a more lasting change and has involved teams in ways that many have never experienced. We’re not likely to return to how things were before so the involvement and engagement of the team are crucially important. This also means the changes that have been adopted and implemented have a better chance of being sustained in the future.

 

Managers have had to reset goals for their employees to suit the short-term and unknowable time horizon for performance during the Pandemic, the setting of more short-term, more fluid goals is something they can expect to continue doing from here.

 

Clarifying expectations has proved to be critically important during this crisis, even though we have already known for some time that employees are generally not clear what’s expected of them. In conversations with employees, usually over video calls, managers have explored not just if their employees are clear about the work to be done, but also whether their working at home environment will allow them to do the work. Reviewing performance has also improved and managers are now engaging in regular formal and informal discussions about performance.

 

Managers have improved their supporting behaviours too with many employees noticing improved listening on calls, with many managers making good use of their coaching skills. Recognising the effort of employees is much more difficult in these conditions so managers have had to work extra hard to understand who’s doing what and who’s going above and beyond what’s expected. The manager can’t do this alone and this has helped managers to develop a more complete picture of performance by involving the team in talking about each other’s work and outputs.

 

Switching to team meetings via video chat is not as simple as it sounds, and many managers found that keeping the team together and engaged took a lot of work. Some employees are inclined to become detached and distant when working remotely, so managers have had to become adept at noticing which employees are showing signs of disengagement or reduced motivation.

 

It has not been possible for many teams to conjure extra resources at a time like this, so managers and teams have worked to uncover previously hidden talent and capability in the team. Discovering someone in the team knows how to get the best out of Zoom, or someone knows how to create an automated process using Microsoft Office 365 – the discovery of hidden expertise has proved to be very valuable indeed during the constraints of a pandemic.

 

Finally, managers have realised the dramatic and vital importance of communication between them and their team members. Previously a manager could assume that silence means no problems. Now silence may mean something entirely different, so managers have been working hard to stay alert to potential problems and issues. The team wants to know how things are going and what’s coming next, so the manager’s ability to communicate effectively and empathically has grown in importance and impact.

 

Is this the future?
In the first few weeks of March as the impact of COVID-19 was becoming evident, many managers wisely resisted the temptation to speculate about the future, what would happen, or even how long this upheaval would last. As we contemplate when we might progress to the next stage of this experience, nobody can be sure what will happen or when things will change again, so all we can do is step into the future, one week at a time. In the meantime, try to remain agile in your ways of working. Regularly assess with your team what’s working well and what’s not working. Be open to changing things quickly to lock in learning and improvements. Recognise that the changes you have already adapted to as a team have taught you important lessons you should lean on when the next change arrives.

 

Justin Kinnear is Head of Research at HPC

Justin is a highly experienced facilitator and coach who advises HPC’s clients on their most pressing development issues.  As well as his extensive research and facilitation experience, he was formerly Head of L&D at IBM and Britvic.

 

Justin features as part of the IITD’s Ask The Expert panel and specialises in organisation development. You can read more questions answered by Justin in the IITD’s Developing Your Organisation Archive.

This global disaster is bringing out something different in each of us.

 

While business leaders expedite crisis management, working parents channel their inner pedagogue. Elsewhere, productivity ninjas attain insurmountable results while health practitioners save lives against all odds.

 

The rest of us are still in pyjamas.

 

Wherever you land on the personal effectiveness scale today, note – it is transient. Now is not your forever home.

 

Classic work-from-home scriptures pre-date Covid-19. They are no longer your proverbial passport to success, and indeed as immaterial as any other passport in the current travel impasse.

 

In the past month, we have spoken with 100+ leaders from different organisations around the world.  These leaders say there is one almighty galumphing elephant in the non-virtual room – reality. Children, chores, vulnerable loved ones, lonely and anxious thoughts, harrowing headline news – the list of gargantuan distractions is overwhelming.

 

In this pandemic, the importance of attention management supersedes time management. The more you become aware of what is stealing your attention, the easier it is to take control.

 

Here’s what these leaders are doing to redirect their attention.

 

  1. Build a Bunker

Sir Winston Churchill did not direct the Second World War from his kitchen table. No-one pestered him to walk the dog or play ball. His underground shelter protected not only his life but also his supreme and single focus – to win the war.

 

To focus productively on your work, your brain needs a metaphorical bunker. If your home office is the poster child of ergonomic and aesthetic wonder, that’s fantastic. If not, the feral imperative to mark out your territory is crucial.

 

Start with the ideal, then adapt. Commandeer a room far away from human traffic and any distractions calling for your attention.

 

Failing this, establish your makeshift HQ with explicit visual cues that you discuss and design with the rest of your household. Get creative.

 

For example, let everyone you live with know not to disturb you when you:

 

– wear a physical ‘thinking cap’ or your headset

– sit in your designated corner-facing ‘work’ chair

– take your laptop and phone into the car, garage or laundry room

– put up a door sign that indicates the time of your next break

 

When you are not in your bunker, don’t work, no matter how tempting or convenient this may seem. A distinct boundary between work and everything else in your world will help you unplug and shift your focus 100% to something or someone outside of work.

 

  1. Honour the Unique You

To figure out a better way of managing your time at home, first take stock of your unique needs and circumstances.

 

Are you a night owl, morning lark or, like almost half of us, somewhere in-between?

What are the needs and patterns of your household?

To do your best work, do you:

 

Drive for results?

Connect and align with other people?

Crave peace and quiet to think and plan?

Discuss your ideas about possibilities?

 

How is your physical and mental health? (55% of people in a recent UK survey say it is harder to stay positive day-to-day since the outbreak of Covid-19.)

 

Listen to your answers. Then ask, “What can I do to make this experience better?”

 

Your responses will guide you to a schedule and plan to meet your unique needs in a more meaningful way.

 

Will you seek out an accountability buddy over video or do your most important work before everyone else wakes up? Who will you talk to about your anxious thoughts? Will you go for a walk? Here at HPC, I really look forward to our Thursday morning team coffee and chat. It helps to keep me connected and motivated.

 

As Albert Einstein famously wrote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” What will you do differently to get a better outcome?

 

  1. Give Your Expectations a Reality Check

Relentless social media posts from people who have learned to play the ukulele or write a book within a month just make us feel inadequate and guilty for not achieving more. Oh look, a man in quarantine has just run a marathon around his tiny balcony.

 

Cut out the noise. Their journey is not yours and that is OK. As Kristin Neff, a leading researcher in self-compassion, discusses in her Ted Talk, berating ourselves is pervasive and toxic. Her evidence-based approach to soothing such thought patterns is powerful.

 

Once your brain has made the mental shift to these new crisis conditions, your creative and resourceful self will be waiting for you.  To help get there, prioritise the building blocks of well-being, one at a time: sleep, exercise, food and social connection. There will be good days and bad days. This is normal.

 

Expect to be less productive than you were pre-pandemic. Your brain is silently running its own uphill marathon while it processes painful emotions and distractions. Carve out small chunks of time for different types of work and activities. Start off with 15-minute chunks. Breaking down projects into small steps makes them seem less overwhelming. Identify just one important task per day. If there is another adult at home, work in shifts to share childcare. If you are the only caregiver, show yourself the same compassion you would show someone else in your situation.

 

Expect to feel more tired than usual. Proper breaks to restore your energy are critical. Every athlete knows the benefits of allowing time to recover after a workout. What will most nourish your mind and body in this moment? Power walk or power nap? Go for it.

 

Remember the people around you are not mind readers. Brené Brown puts it simply, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” Be as transparent as possible with your loved ones and colleagues about your work patterns, needs, limitations and struggles.

 

The Survivalist’s Handbook for Our Times Is Just Getting Started

 

Of course, one day you will amble back into your office and favourite coffee shop. You will hug and be hugged. Economies will convalesce.

 

Until then, build your bunker, honour the unique you and give your expectations a reality check.

 

 

For a decade at PayPal, HPC’s Jenny McConnell helped to fuel its growth from startup to a multi-billion dollar company. She did this by building cohesive remote teams that collaborated and innovated across multiple locations. As a sought-after virtual coach and facilitator, Jenny attracts ambitious clients globally. She is known for her interactive, high-impact style that engages people from the get go.

A message from David Storrs

 

As we all start to get over the shock of recent weeks and start to look forward, I thought it would help to share where we are in HPC and the direction we are moving.

 

Our highest priority is to support our colleagues as they seek ways to support their family and friends who are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 and the impact of isolation. And our thoughts and support are with all of you, our clients and partners, as you deal with the same practical and emotional challenges.

 

Along with this we are taking every step possible to help the national effort to minimise the spread of the virus. We are strictly applying the guidance from government on recommended protocols.

 

Our headquarters in Belfast is working with reduced staff with everybody else working remotely. Our facilitators, coaches and client team are available to you, so please contact them in the same way that you normally would.

 

We are a resilient bunch at HPC and we have a fantastic team of committed professionals with the skill-set that is required in times of need to support and guide our clients. That time is now.

 

Many of you will know us for the high-quality blended learning experiences we provide. We were pioneers in blended learning and we have been using virtual delivery in many of our bespoke programmes for several years now. So, we are very comfortable and confident in our ability to switch to “full virtual” delivery.

 

This week several clients have instructed us to move to “full virtual” delivery for forthcoming programmes. Over the next few weeks, it is highly likely we will be switching to virtual delivery for all of our workshops.

 

We will also be supporting our clients with tools to manage remotely, manage virtual meetings effectively and develop greater resilience. If you wish to speak with either me or Kevin about enabling your programmes virtually, please contact us.*

 

All our 1:1 Coaching Sessions have been switched to on-line. We can provide immediate coaching support to Leaders to help them rise to the immediate and impending challenges they face.


HPC has been built by a community of passionate people – our team and our clients – and it’s so important to remember that a community is a social unit and not a gathering. We remain unified with you even in our distance and we are available to work with you through this unprecedented challenge.

 

We are also part of a wider community and we will continue to follow government guidelines and do everything we can to extend care, consideration and kindness, so all can remain as safe and healthy as possible.

 

Remember that we are all only an email, phone call or video call away from each other. We know we will get through this and we are committed to supporting you get through it too. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

 

David

‘Purpose is an ever-evolving process that touches everyone’, HPC’s John Hill explores the meaning of purpose, and how having purpose challenges and empowers people and teams within organisations.

 

 

In our work with leaders, organisations and teams, generally speaking, we are not long into the conversation or the work before the theme of purpose raises its head. If it is a coaching engagement with a team or an individual, we aim to discover and unlock the purpose of the coaching so that we have an agreed outcome to strive towards. If it’s a programme of leadership development, it helps to focus the work if we know what outcome the work is there to serve.

 

This is the ‘Why’, that Simon Sinek alludes to in his theory of the Golden Circle’, that sets organisations apart from those who know just what they do and how they do it. It presents a challenge and a calling to every decision, every strategy, every behaviour and every practice within the organisation and impels the organisation and its people to reflect on and question their rationale for each strategy and initiative.

 

It is important to point out here that there are almost always, multiple purposes at work within organisations and teams. For some it is the performance of their department against an agreed KPI, for others it is may be preparing for a major political shift, and for others it may be that there are compelling purposes both inside and outside the organisation. In a recent piece of work we did with a senior leadership team, it was a case of helping them find resonance between two strongly compelling and equally valid purposes – that of providing exceptional charitable services to their clients and that of  helping the organisation to meet commercial goals, both of which, at times, in terms of values, seemed at odds with each other.

 

It is helpful for leaders and people in organisations to think of their purpose as a living, breathing, evolving thing which is always present and which constantly has to be responded to and interacted with. Katzenbach and Smith, in their seminal book ‘The Wisdom of Teams’, posit that ‘better teams often treat purpose like an offspring in constant need of their care and attention.

 

This makes perfect sense in a world, to quote Thomas Freidman, that is ‘changing at warp speed and directly or indirectly touching a lot more people on the planet at once”. Our purposes will have to evolve to meet the demands and needs of that world. These are demands, needs and desires that are becoming different and distinct from those of ten, twenty, thirty or forty years ago. For example, we find that millennials and Gen Z’ers are looking for different things out of life and work than their predecessors. Tellingly, a recent survey by Deloitte revealed that 63% of millennial workers believed that improving lives was more important than generating profit – a quantum shift indeed.

 

It is no longer enough to encapsulate a purpose in a well worded catch phrase, frame it and mount in on the wall behind reception – it may be out of date before the paint has had time to fade around it. Instead, purpose needs to be made real. There is a danger of empty rhetoric and lofty principles that bear no relationship to the culture and everyday experience of those who live in the organisation. There is also a risk that, in framing purpose as a fixed idea, a constitutional principle, it loses relevance to the dynamics of a rapidly changing global environment.

 

One very helpful model which I have used both with leaders and teams to help them consider their purpose, is that of the Purpose Diamond, devised by Ed Rowland of The Whole Partnership. In it he considers the ‘founding purpose’, which first brought the team or the organisation into being. A founding purpose of the organisation that may have been legitimate at the outset might not be appropriate now. Then there is what he calls the ‘espoused purpose’ – what everyone says the purpose is, or what they are supposed to say the purpose is. This can become merely a mantra and bear no real relationship to the ‘at work’ purpose – what the team or the organisation are really focused on in this present moment. Then there is the true purpose, towards which the focus of the team and the leadership have to consistently direct their attention. “Why are we really here? To do what? And in service of whom?’ That answer should both resonate with those in the team and organisation and those who are the beneficiaries of its activities.

 

We might have heard the oft quoted mantra that 65% of the jobs our kids will be doing are not even in existence today! Whether or not this is true, and it may not be, one thing we can be sure of is that the world of 10 years’ time, will be significantly different and affected by trends that we may not even be aware of today. Taking into account the environmental challenges facing our planet, the social upheavals we are living through and the technological innovations being ushered in by the 4th Industrial Revolution, the central purposes of our lives, teams and organisations will not serve us well if they remain like proverbial insects trapped in ideological amber.

 

As leaders in organisations and for those of us who work with leaders and organisations, the question is, how do we create and craft working environments where, in the words of Barry Oshry, ‘the system is responsible for its own fate. This is a huge step away from (leaders) being responsible for the system’s fate”. Or to quote Peter Hawkins, Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, ‘What does our world need right now that we, as a team or an organisation can uniquely step up to?” The aforementioned Edward Rowland addresses this when he addresses the issue of authenticity. He observes that, in order to be real, purpose needs to be inherent rather than constructed and needs to be discovered rather than invented through ideas and words. It can be discovered both within us, between us, in our connections and relationships and around us in the world we inhabit.

 

In our work with leaders and teams as facilitators, we will often bring an empty chair into the room and ask those present to imagine it occupied by one of their key stakeholders or even to sit in it and speak from the perspective of one their key stakeholders (even more effective!). it could be a customer, a board member, someone who reports to them, an investor, or even perhaps a grandchild. It is important to hear loud and clear what that stakeholder asking us to step up, to engage with, to be courageous about, both today and in the future? That is one way in which to connect with our purpose.

 

So, it’s not just the question of why we are doing what we are doing, but why are we doing it now and what is it serving? The challenge remains to keep our purpose alive, evolving, responsive and always meaningful. It Is not a one-off exercise, but a constantly evolving process that engages and touches not only everyone in the organisation but also those who are affected by the organisation.

 

John Hill is a Facilitator and Executive Coach at HPC.

In a world of technological advances, Justin Kinnear explores how AI might impact L&D.

 

 

Technology as a negative force

 

Humans have a long history of suspicion toward new technologies. When Henry Ford introduced his new moving assembly line concept in 1913, reducing the time taken to build a car from 12 hours to 2 hours and 30 minutes, many were unsure what this new way of working might mean. While Ford’s innovation in production did mean cheaper cars for more people, it changed the nature of work at Ford and other factories forever after.

 

Technological advances may bring benefits for millions, but there is almost always a latent fear about the unintended consequences of what’s new. Today, organisations are already looking for ways to use AI to advance our work and lives. Amazon’s robots run its warehouses, Japanese insurance claims are handled by IBM’s Watson AI solution, and Stanford University Hospital’s “pill-picking robots” dispense medicines 10 times faster than a human can. So, where might AI make a positive impact in the field of learning and development?

 

Learning is more than consuming

 

The inevitable assumption is that AI will somehow replace the traditional instructor. Previously promising technology solutions in the classroom have often offered little more than news ways of delivering information, or news ways to access and consume that information. AI can help to tailor what is presented, where it is presented and how it can be accessed, but that won’t radically change the learning experience. Beyond information delivery, great learning should provide relevance for learners, and a deeper human connection through stories and lived experiences. The human contribution to learning may be enhanced by AI but unique human capabilities of relating, finding meaning and relevance, and bringing learning to life through stories, mean human input is likely to remain critically important.

 

A mountain of sensory data – but what does it mean?

 

L&D has tried to get to the heart of what makes an effective learning experience using various evaluation approaches. What if AI could discern when we learn and when we don’t learn, and thus guide us to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t? AI coupled with 5G technology will capture and aggregate data on a scale never seen before. Just imagine what we could do with data on what happens when a learner returns to their workplace, who they spend their time with, what they spend their time on, which order they tackled activities etc. However, the current state of AI is closer to machine learning than true AI where a system can think and interpret as we humans can. The capacity for systems to self-teach, to interpret and to derive meaning within a context – these are all capabilities that remain theoretical goals at this time.

 

We never saw the potential, but it was there all along

 

As L&D professionals, we should consider the possibilities that technology may create in our industry. New technologies are rarely perfect at the start, but as they evolve and we gradually get used to them, we eventually see the value in the technology as it reveals new possibilities and makes us more capable than we ever imagined. Patience coupled with the imagination to utilise technology in new and interesting ways will be essential for us to make progress.

 

 “There is an inevitable assumption that AI’s role will be to replace the role of the instructor, but as we have seen with e-learning and more recently MOOCs, technology can’t entirely replace the value generated by a skilled and knowledgeable instructor.

AI’s greatest impact on learning may be in the evaluation and transfer of learning.”

 

Justin Kinnear is Head of Research at HPC

Justin is a highly experienced facilitator and coach who advises HPC’s clients on their most pressing development issues.  As well as his extensive research and facilitation experience, he was formerly Head of L&D at IBM and Britvic.

 

hpc’s Kevin Hannigan explores why Learning and Development Professionals should look to other professions for insights into how they might transform their practice.

Last year’s IITD conference looked at the future world of work, the rise of AI, and the rapid disruption of industries. We now largely accept that to survive in “the new normal” we need to prepare people to learn and to change at an extraordinary rate.

 

 

These circumstances provide L&D professionals with an extraordinary opportunity to take their ‘seat at the table’ and support organisational transformation. Unfortunately, many L&D functions are struggling to justify their worth to the business.

 

 

Is this a failure of senior leadership to grasp our worth and impact on the organisation or should we bear some of the blame? In our rush to push out training, have we inadvertently focused on events rather than
performance.

 

 

If we do want to take our seat at the table, what will it take to shift from designing ‘learning events’ to creating ecosystems and experiences that increase performance? We think that the answer may lie in taking inspiration from other professions to craft new ways of thinking about our work.

 

 

These 5 ideas won’t solve all our woes, but they will play an important part in enabling this change and, in the process, future-proofing your career:

 

BUILD LIKE AN ARCHITECT

 

The Roman architect Vitruvius in his treatise on architecture, De Architectura, asserted that there were three principles of good architecture:

 

• Firmatis (Durability) – it should stand up robustly and remain in good condition.

• Utilitas (Utility) – it should be useful and function well for the people using it.

• Venustatis (Beauty) – it should delight people and raise their spirits.

 

 

These three principles could equally be applied to Learning and Development.

Durability – are our programmes based on robust evidence and sound research?

Utility – Just as architects believe that “form follows function”, we too should choose the most appropriate tools, inputs and supports to create a learning environment that influences behaviour, experience and performance.

Beauty – Great architecture is influenced by its surroundings – would the Eiffel Tower work as well in a high-rise city like New York? In a similar way, our learning and development strategy and each intervention should reflect the environment in which they were created and our organisational strategy.

 

 

CREATE LIKE A DESIGNER

 

Great design makes us want to engage with a product or service. The iPhone changed the world not just because of its combination of technologies but also because its design made us want to engage with it. Many businesses and social organisations now embed design thinking throughout entire organisational policies and practices to be more constructive and innovative. Stanford University’s D-School’s ‘5 stages of Design Thinking’ raise some interesting questions for us:

 

 

Stage 1 – Empathise – Have we spent time observing our audience in their environment (as opposed to focus groups)?

Stage 2 – Define – Have we segmented our audience properly; defining their pain points, challenges and understanding their incentives to change? (see marketing above)

Stage 3 – Ideate – Have we considered new approaches and tools or that a training programme isn’t the correct approach?

Stage 4 – Prototype – Designers build quickly, fail fast and learn from the process.

Stage 5 – Test – Sometimes, the only way to trial something is to build it and seek feedback. Great designers build, test and learn from feedback.

 

 

ENGAGE LIKE A MARKETEER

 

If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. Marketeers understand that people engage with brands and that brands convey meaning, emotion and purpose. If you think about your function as a brand, how would people describe it? Is it a brand that they want to engage with? Do they trust your brand in the same way that Irish people voted the Credit Union as the most trusted brand in the country?

 

Marketeers also understand their audience and continually segment their customers to understand their needs. This segmentation extends beyond needs analysis to include:

 

• Communicating with different stakeholders through different channels and with different messages;

• Developing new offerings based on both horizontal and vertical segments;

• Differentiated investment in different segments; and

• Analysing data based on segments.

 

 

SOLVE LIKE A HACKER

 

Hacking can have negative connotations particularly as it relates to criminally “hacking” databases and secure servers. However, the original meaning of the term referred to ‘a desire to solve a problem using playful cleverness and creativity’. Indeed, people like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux identify themselves as hackers. Hacking is about being outcome driven and using anything and everything around you to achieve your goal. Rather than seeing every problem as a nail and smashing it with the ‘hammer’ of formal training, hacking implies that we expand our toolkit and consider all available options to achieve the results we require.

 

 

Even better, if like a marketeer you understand your audience, you’ll recognise their current tools, processes and practice, so you can build a solution into and aligned with their workflow.

 

 

MEASURE LIKE A SCIENTIST

 

Sixty years on, Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation has cornered the market on evaluation in L&D. That’s unfortunate because it’s largely tied to the event-based model of training we’re trying to relegate to history. Worse, it’s ‘reaction’ level runs counter to the reality of learning whereby learner happiness after training has little correlation to actual learning.

 

We need to develop an evidence-based approach to decision making, leveraging data to justify targeted investment in L&D. We need to be curious about our impact and look across the organisation for potential evidence of impact. This means us becoming more comfortable with data and measurement and engaging with data from other functions.

If you really want to get value from your core values, you need them to resonate across the organisation. They can’t be just aspirational, beautifully crafted words in an annual report, or an excuse for a marketing launch: they need to mean as much to the person driving the forklift, as they do to the leadership team. As learning professionals, we all know this: we’re well versed in the arguments for building a shared sense of purpose, a common culture, and a meaningful set of values.

 

But the elephant in the room is that, too often, an organisation’s core values are anything but meaningful to the people who matter most.

 

In a Deloitte Survey, half of employees thought that “clearly defined values and beliefs” contributed to their company’s success. But that means one in two employees didn’t.

 

In the most extreme cases, the problem is not just that employees don’t see the value in the values; it is that they have strong feelings of negativity and cynicism towards them. This is particularly the case in companies which have been through more than one cycle of rolling out a new set of corporate values, usually preceded by a change in leadership. The reaction from employees, understandably perhaps, is ‘here we go again’ and ‘what does this have to do with me?’

 

Writing in Harvard Business Review, Patrick M. Lencioni cites the example of the CEO of a financial services company, who kicked off a management conference with an announcement about a new set of values. The announcement was accompanied by a slick video with a rousing soundtrack and stock footage of famous athletes, intercut with employees waving awkwardly at the camera. When the video finished, the CEO asked the assembled managers if they wanted to see it again, and he was met with a loud “No!”

 

That audible groan of dismay will be familiar to many of us who have been responsible for starting a conversation about values. So what’s to be done about it?

 

At hpc, we take the approach that values should be thought of in a three layer structure, which sit one above the other: ‘they’, ‘we’ and ‘me’.

 

Often, values are seen by employees as something that concerns the management team, shareholders or the media – it’s something ‘they’ devised, and something ‘they’ talk about, with no real connection to us or our daily lives.

 

The challenge for organisations is to encourage employees to think about how ‘we’ implement those values in our roles, how they matter to ‘us’, and ultimately, why they matter to ‘me’. 

 

We kickstart this process by bringing groups together across the organisation, and asking people to think first about the company’s values in the context of the things that they do really well. It can be as straightforward as choosing a value, and asking how it comes to life in their part of the organisation.

 

The process doesn’t have to involve anything more complex than a flipchart and a few markers – but the results can be astonishing. Focusing on the positive gives employees a tremendous sense of ownership, encouragement and self-regard. Once this conversation begins to open up, the biggest challenge can be getting employees to stop talking.

 

The second step is to look at the things that are not being done so well, and run counter to the organisation’s values. Because they have focused on excellence first, employees typically feel more empowered to talk about the areas where the values are not being lived.

 

The third question is what can be done to address these areas. And just like that, we’ve moved values from being something ‘they’ talk about to something ‘we’ do every day, to something that can drive ‘me’ in my work and something that ‘I’ can actively contribute to.

 

It is a powerful process, and one that is effective not just in newer organisations, but even in longer-established ones.

 

Storytelling is an important part of the conversation too: it needs to involve examples of values being lived well and less well both inside and outside the organisation.

 

When we’re asked why values matter, we sometimes share the story once shared with us by an acquaintance who went to pitch for the retention of a contract from an important client. The client told her that a competitor had just been in and had been badmouthing her company. In the interests of fairness, the client offered her the opportunity to respond.

 

She thought about it for a moment, and then – feeling that no matter how much she’d like to set the record straight, engaging in slagging off a competitor was at odds with her company’s values—she declined and said she’d prefer to talk about her proposal.

 

Two weeks later, the call came. The client said her company’s proposal was more expensive – but what followed wasn’t the rejection she was expecting. He’d been impressed by her integrity, he said, and he felt confident she would be just as discreet if she was ever asked about his organisation. She stayed true to her organisation’s values and her own—and retained the contract.

 

Having a real, meaningful set of values that are lived by every individual in the organisation should be the goal for every company. The good news is that getting there might just be easier than you thought.

 

Author – Justin Kinnear, Senior Facilitator, hpc.

 

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