Transformational Human Resources for the 21st Century

Stop surviving, start thriving:  Release your organisation’s untapped inner resources now

Are you, your organisation and staff thriving? Or are you just surviving? If the latter, it may be because you are using old tools in a new world where revolutionary changes require that we now draw on the full resources latent within a workplace. HR has a crucial role in creating the culture, the management style and the learning required to release these inner resources in order to transform struggling workplaces into ones that are sustainable and fit for the 21st century.

This article outlines a proven methodology that your HR dept can use to begin creating this strategic transformation now.

The 21st Century Challenge

For some people work is a positive, fulfilling experience. I was recently interviewing some engineers about their work. “I’ve had 20 years that, as an engineer, could not have been better,” said Ian, his face lighting up in memories of adventures at work.  “It’s a pure joy to work here,” said Graham with a smile. “We have values and we live by them in our work.”

Sadly, Ian’s and Graham’s experiences are far from typical. For many that sense of fulfilment and adventure at work is swallowed up in the stress of rapid, destabilising change, disconnection, disillusionment and discouragement as leadership and management appear to lurch from one crisis to another.

The critical factor preventing businesses from thriving is low engagement - where staff lack energy and enthusiasm - according to research from the 2007 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study ⁽¹⁾ carried out with 90,000 workers across 18 countries. Their research has shown that globally there are very low levels of ‘full engagement’, e.g. just 14% among UK workers. Just look at the direct cost of this under-engagement for companies:

‘They studied 50 global companies… and discovered an average increase in operating income of 19.2% in high-engagement companies, while it fell by 32.7% in their low-engagement counterparts.’   (emphasis added)

People Management, 20 March 2008, p 73 

The phenomenal pace of change that we now face is intensifying the need for massively increased agility, productivity and efficiency. This need cannot be met by working in the old ways. The key to producing a quantum leap in income and productivity is the increased engagement  which comes about when people access their inner resources – their values, their vision, their sense of meaning and purpose. There is a proven methodology that can be used  to tap into the hidden wealth of talent and energy within the organisation and release it as the fuel to drive creative change and vibrant engagement. Robert’s story illustrates this.

A  Story of Transformation

Robert is like many others in his company. Technically very skilled and dedicated to his company, he has reached a point where he is almost literally pulling out his hair with frustration. Change is happening fast. He is being asked to manage a team, win business, deliver the ‘product’ and feed a demanding bureaucracy with endless spread­sheets and reports purporting to control the endemic change and reassure the bosses that all is ‘on track’. “I can’t do my job” he expostulates, red in the face with high blood pressure. “I have to do all the things I’m not good at and that don’t add value, and there’s no time to do what I should be doing. I don’t know how much longer I can go on.” Now fast forward six months: Robert is relaxed, confident, fully engaged and delivering twice as much business. He goes in front of the CEO of the 13,000-strong business to describe the impossible situation he faced and how he had transformed it. He and his team had been experiencing work as unsustainably heavy-going, like wading through treacle. Robert used the tools to transform that very treacle into days of ‘working well’.

How did the transformation come about?

This was achieved not through financial or organisational restructuring, nor through top-down process improvement, but through a very simple shift that transformed everything.  Robert and his group used 8 tools for transformation within a framework of principles to bring out the resources he needed.

If you are used to more traditional, analytic systems, what follows may be surprising.

To begin the work of transformation the first principle is to start in the here and now; we are fully present to people’s real current experience. An organisation may have a grand mission statement for growth or delivery of service but if, right now, Robert is shrinking from coming into work and feeling discouraged, it is with this reality that we must start.

Secondly we become aware of Robert’s team’s core values and vision. It is our values that make us tick, and our vision that draws us forward. They bring meaning and purpose to what we do. Only when people are aligned with their vision and values will  their commitment flow from the deepest part of themselves and with that comes the engagement that underpins high performance.

Thirdly we address that most fundamental of questions: What is a human being? We recognise that a human being has boundless capacity for creativity, innovation, generosity. And we also acknowledge that as human beings we have an equally boundless capacity for messing up, for destroying, criticising, blaming, resenting. Given this, it becomes imperative to create a working culture where Robert can choose to work to his highest potential and be willing to tame and deal with his negative potential.

These three principles – here and now, values and vision, human beings - form the baseline principles for releasing the inner resources.  (This is only part of a larger process which is not within the scope of this article.)

Robert went on to use a deceptively simple tool-set. “Of all the tools,” he said, “it was stillness that changed everything – it took me off the treadmill and I regained my sense of perspective.”. Stillness is taboo in frenetic, driven organisations where being hyper-busy is seen as a virtue. It takes courage to stop and draw on stillness.

Listening, story, encounter, celebration, grieving, visioning and journaling complete the tool-box. They are all commonsense activities that many people use sporadically and informally, but they are easily forgotten and seriously under-used in the hurly-burly of work just when they are most needed. The widespread consistent use of just one of these tools can transform a workplace from surviving to thriving.⁽²⁾ As an individual one gains a sense of calm and confidence; as a team the tools build collaboration, trust and the knowledge that together you can face whatever comes along.

From surviving to thriving - The Role of HR

The principal levers that HR can use to create the culture and engagement that support high-performing organisations are: recruitment; performance management; reward and remuneration; employer-employee relations; and learning and development. These levers are often used transactionally to juggle or tinker with the existing resources and culture. Alternatively, HR can seize a huge opportunity for the strategic transformation of the workplace from the end of 20^th century culture of ‘surviving’ to developing the 21^st century culture of ‘thriving’. Sustainable work requires a workplace where people bring all their skills, talents and vision to work; where values underpin performance; and where inner resources are released to provide growth. When we look at the workplace through the prism of this transformational methodology we see that each lever can become subtle and enriching and transformed.

Recruitment can become a truly synergistic enterprise between HR and other parts of the organisation. With HR’s guidance interviews can involve encounter, story, deep listening and vision. Discovering what makes someone tick will ensure that the right person is found for the right job. In high-employment markets the company with a positive culture where there is meaning and purpose at work will attract queues of recruits. Happy Computers (see ‘The Spirited Business’ ⁽²⁾) has over 1,000 applicants on its ‘waiting list’ eager to work for the company.

Performance management becomes an open, collaborative process as stillness, listening, celebration, grieving and visioning begin to transform the uncomfortable, awkward conversation around low performance into a real encounter about facing the successes and challenges honestly together. At Xerox, a team leader who struggled with giving painful performance reviews that dragged on for nearly three hours found he could turn them into powerful one-hour meetings where there was shared understanding and growth. To do this he used stillness before the review; he visioned the highest possible outcome; he used world-class listening and celebrated all that had gone well; he acknowledged his own pain around what was not working and worked together with the staff member on finding positive solutions and creating a clear shared vision.

Reward and remuneration come in many forms. For most people being valued, acknowledged, and appreciated is a significant form of reward for their efforts. Research shows that while pay is often a factor in recruiting someone, when it comes to staff engagement and retention, other factors are of greater importance

 “The four critical factors are, in order of importance:

o          Senior management is sincerely and actively interested in employee well-being

o          Employees are learning new skills and capabilities

o          There is an open, fair distribution of rewards

o          Employees need to feel respected and listened to ”

 ©2007 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study quoted in People Management, 20 March 2008, p73

People want more than money at work; they want fulfilment and recognition as well.

In another example, where there was a below-inflation pay rise dictated by market forces, managers used the tools of encounter, grieving, visioning and world-class listening. Despite the dissatisfaction about the pay award, the impact on engagement was significantly mitigated.

Employer / employee relations. Two major studies conducted by Gallup⁽³⁾ over 25 years established that the relationship between manager and employee is critical to retention and engagement. When the harassed manager, desperate to achieve results in turbulent change, stops to draw on stillness, when she listens to her staff, celebrates their success, empathises with their disappointments and understands her own, when she communicates the vision of what is possible – then that manager breathes life into the culture.

When I first met John, a leading project manager, he described his role as “I’m here to bludgeon people into delivery”. After he learnt the 8 tools for transformation, John became a different manager, one who no longer bludgeoned but could listen and lead by helping his people see a path through the difficulties facing them. Employer-employee relationships that are based on quality listening, and shared values and vision create a culture where people are fully engaged, each contributing their best to the whole.

Learning and Development. If L&D remains in a silo and fails to connect with the other HR and business functions, it becomes divorced from the daily struggles of work and so people see it as a luxury, an add-on, a nice-to-have that falls easy prey to cynicism and budget cuts. When L&D is closely meshed in with the daily lived experience of the leaders, managers, and the rest of the workforce, it becomes the engine that drives personal and corporate growth and productivity.

The new Frontier for HR - Strategic Transformation

In the 18^th century a technology was developed to drill down into seams of coal and to bring these hidden resources to the surface. It fuelled the Industrial Revolution. At the start of the 21^st century, many organisations are trying to produce more with less. To succeed, they will have to access new resources and these already exist within the company.  And a tried and tested methodology exists to bring these resources to the surface to fuel a sustainability revolution.

Steve Harvey, founding Finance Director of Microsoft UK was also Head of HR. He understood the value of that seam of gold. When I questioned how he could combine these two posts he said, “Ninety-seven per cent of our wealth is the people. My job as Finance Director is to find out what these people have been put on this planet to do and to clear out the space for them to do it.’ Hence his role as head of HR.

He continued, ”I worked out four or five years ago that the finance director can only do so much and that the real money is to be made in the people side. We get now nearly £3 million per employee revenue compared with the average in the UK, which is £150,000. And that sort of magnitude of difference comes from focusing on our people and really making them effective… to focus on employees being engaged in what they do well every day.”

Steve recognised that people truly are the capital of a company. His job was to value and develop those people. When we help people learn and practise transformation we are enabling them to develop the whole of themselves, bring out the best of themselves, access and express their own unique genius.

People come into HR to make a positive difference to the lives of others, but frequently find themselves trying to prop up outmoded management styles, impose processes that stifle, enforce procedures that attempt to contain the distress being generated, and serve as executors of the restructurings that remove people from work. It does not have to be this way. There exists an extraordinary potential for HR to be at the heart of sustainable strategic change, to drive growth and to create the culture where people and business can thrive.  I know, because I’ve seen it happen.

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