If you will let me indulge you let me tale one of my new favorite words……COLLABORATION, how many times have your heard this, been exposed to this is a team meeting or heard about this at a conference or read about in the press or via the social media? it is the the single biggest buzz word of today, from the hallowed halls of Harvard, to the New York Times to the Australian Financial Review everyone is talking about this but what surprises me and it should not is that no one person I have met or heard comment from has a really firm and fixed understanding of what it means and how to achieve it.

Let me provide you with a few recent insights that I have come across in my daily grind and lets see what you think?

I was working with a large food manufacturer a few weeks back and had the opportunity to spend time with one of the GM’s in the company. Now this particular GM is a bright, intelligent , experienced and capable leader in the FMCG industry so no dummy at all when it comes to leading great teams. We started to discuss some of his key needs, desires and future objectives. One of the greatest challenges that we focused on  was of course on the fact that the organization he and indeed his team were facing a real lack of active collaboration which of course was a great concern to him because of the cost of duplication and replication across his team and the fact that there were no collective agenda for the business in place…so much for strategic planning.

I asked him how he was going to address this and in a very carefully and well thought through manner he worked me through his reorganization of the team and their primary accountability’s and responsibilities so that clearly one could see that there were better aligned.

Ah this should fix the problem if I get ” all my ducks in a row”.

A great start I remarked but how does this get your team working more effectively with one another besides creating greater clarity of job role and function?

Ah that was simple he replied ” I simply put them all in one room after I had completed this and told them to not come out until they had sorted how they should work with one another with this new model in place and then to come to me and tell me how they are going to work together  better with one another”.

The logic behind this approach is sound and there is no question about that but what this example should highlight is the very fact that collaboration is not a one step process but a process of many steps which may include a more command and control , so by ‘ crunching peoples heads ” together in one spot at one time is an approach but is it effective long term if you have not defined the process through which the team needs to collaborate through and that they clearly understand and have defined the factors that will influence their success and or failure?

It is early days there but you have to applaud the fact that at least this one GM is doing something so as to try and fix the issue of how his team works and collaborates with one another instead of sitting back and complaining about it.

The CBA (Commenwealth Bank of Australia) has looked at the issue of collaboration in a slightly different way .

CBA are in the process of  creating a new office organization for their team in Sydney which has given them an opportunity to break down the format of their traditional workspace and structure, they identified that as a part of this process so as to allow teams and other operating divisions within the bank to more effectively collaborate you need to literally ” tear down the walls”. The new CBA office design has been described as looking more like an open ended classroom , lots of common areas for people to gather and connect in newly formed breakout spaces which may be a little challenging.

This is equally enlightening and challenging as this approach looks at how to create a corporate environment where walls and meeting rooms no longer create barriers and further silos and brings everyone ( well maybe not everyone) out into the open. The comment made by David Craig CBA’s CFO interested me as he indicated that these sorts of changes fundamentally changed the way in which people had their work judged that being “ more on their output and less on their presence” which is a refreshing approach to a culture and organization like many in the financial services sector who have been driven by activity, meetings and the last car in the car park mentality for many years..

Perfect well no, but a good start yes as we have seen collaboration is not achieved by a CEO simply saying that his team and his organization must collaborate more effectively with one another starting today it is a game of many moving parts which I am not sure everyone is seeing right now.

Let me give you one final example of what I have been seeing.

I was with another large financial service provider the other day and talking to their Head of Key Accounts and we were discussing the issue of collaboration within his and the other sales and distribution teams. He gave me a wonderful insight ” we tend not to collaborate as at the end of the day each of our sales teams are in direct competition with one another and our reward and remuneration model is based upon what we bring in and often we are competing with one another in the same client space”.

Ah I commented “who needs competition when you are fighting against one another”, which unfortunately is the case for many organizations and teams today.

His point was that yes collaboration is a good thing and yes it is something that we should be doing more off with one another but why should we when it may impact how much I am being paid or  impact my future promotion opportunities in the firm as it is the “top producers” whom tend to move into the larger leadership roles. So here is the third part of the equation, we also need to consider and change in the way that people are rewarded and recognized as you run the risk of causing severe internal damage to a team and organization current success if you overlay a model of collaboration that in fact works against how your success and contribution is being measured.

Mind you we had this discussion in an open area in between the lift banks and the main office in area just simply covered off by a modesty curtain which I found really interesting for at least this organization as at least on the surface it is trying to flush people out into the open so as to have more visible, open and constructive conversations which is at the heart of effective collaboration.

So by changing the physical structure like at CBA it is another step forward in the right direction as there is no ” silver bullet or magic wand” in this discussion but it is a much more complex and multi dimensional issue than most people give it credit for

People, teams and leaders alike need to see a clear need, direction and purpose to why they need to collaborate. But at times collaboration  can come at a cost as well because it can be taken to far and actually halt or slow innovation, connectivity and creativity and bury it in a new  administration process. One only has to look at Cisco who are the kings and queens of collaboration & teaming to see that even they of recent time have had to modify their very collaborative  ”Councils model| as it has been seen of late by many within CISCO  as slowing down and complicating their decision making practices and their speed to market.

Collaboration like trust, connectivity and networking are not simply static terms and models of practice, they to need adjusting and tweaking like any other operational model, they require a defined process that allows people to see and understand what the barriers are to their success and it requires organization to look at this from every angle and from a very whole brained approach…if it was simple it would not be the most fundamentally predominant issue facing most if not all global organizations today!

I would be interested to hear what you think and have seen?

Cheers

Leigh

If you have never heard of ID (Instinctive Drives) well that is OK but it is a real shame as here is one of the best kept secrets in the world of learning and development.

Just ask the teams at Cisco they will tell you exactly that as they have been working with ID for over 10 years now and have seen some wonderful transformational results being achieved.

Why I like this and see such incredible value in this model and process is that first time , how someone behaves or acts as a leader has been distilled down to see what really drives them and how these drives impact on the ways in which your think, communicate, plan, execute as a leader.

I first came across ID some 6 years ago but it only now after many years that I can see the real value of what it can deliver. It really challenges and extends your thinking, knowledge and basic understanding of ourselves not matter how aware we think we may be, there is a whole lot more to discover about ourselves that others see and we simply have a blind spot too.

The ID helps to change the value and essence of the conversations we are having on a daily basis, it helps to accelerate teams, issues and objectives, it changes the way we look at other people and gain a better understanding of the “Why” and not just simply the “What”.

So what ID look like?

As we discussed before it helps us understand the difference between a persons behaviour and actions. It is only by taking the time to look more deeply at what drives and motivates us that we get to true measure and understanding of what really drives a person to do the things that they do.

It is very different to say MBTI and HBDI, it certainly is a cut above LSI and DiSc as it does not offer an excuse or a reason, a box to hide in but an explanation of why we do the things we do…….interestingly we are all hard wired from birth to do what we do but do we really know how this impacts on our actions and the way the world views us? ID is one of the very few models and insights that I have encountered that peels away all the layers of the onion skin and sees what it takes to have people really in stride with themselves

ID has multiple applications, of course at the individual level, the team and most importantly at the organizational level so the tool and process is very robust and expansive.

ID helps to understand how we both use and avoid a range of drivers which include:

• How we Verify.
• How we Authenticate.
• How we Complete.
• How we Improvize.

I like it as it a very complex model and system of thinking that provides not only a form of assessment or personal inventory but also a road map and tools that allow you to become a more effective person and leader.

This little “quiet acheiver” is the brain child of Paul Burgess as was developed in Australia over 20 years ago.

To learn more about Paul and his company Link Up International please go to their website which is http://www.linkup.com.au and you will get a better feel for the entire service and product offering.

Why does it work so well, simply it can be applied in some many ways, organizationally, in teams, personally. It is not a “once of ” process as it has a life of its own as it creates both a language and a culture that develops and sustains its own momentum which is very powerful compared to other process models like MBTI which need to pushed along the way. ID has its own energy and power as people get what it means to them at so many levels.

Ah I hear you say more  black boxes, smoke and mirrors but ah I am glad to say that ID has stood the test of validity as well where Dr Anneke Fitzgerald and her team at the University of Western Sydney put ID through its paces where they found that ID proved to be  a very  ” reliable and valid catalyst for improving team performance”.

But as Paul Burgess would say the best validity for anything is ” face validity” so if it is meaningful and resonates with you then it is real and works.

It works  trust me as I had my 16 year old daughter complete her ID last night and she came back with what is regarded as a “searching” profile that is that she scored a ID of 5555.

Now 5 normally shows a form of flexibility and sometimes a lack of specific drive ( use or avoid) but in her case no one driver really stood out and provided a lighthouse for her to navigate against. So what, well this is a great reflection of where she is personally , new school, new friends, returning back to Australia after living in the US and Switzerland for the past 6 years and trying to work out what her future direction looks like….she is searching for what is and feel right for her and where she will get her fun and energy from.

But with some coaching, some guidance and some further help I know she will be able to unlock this and find what really drives her and how she can best use these in the days and years ahead, that is the beauty and the simplicity of what ID delivers.

Does sound sort of familiar to many for yourself , your children or work colleagues?

Being ” out of stride” like this causes us all sorts of concerns and issues and if these are allowed to remain unchecked they can lead to a broad range of health conditions. I know first hand how dramatic this can become as my own wife Kate lost her thyroid when we were living in the US as she was taking to much on, her energy was being drained, she was been pushed and pulled in all directions and she was out of stride with her own drive and energy.

If I could encourage you to take a step back, sit in the balcony and enjoy your life a little more please take the opportunity to complete your own ID as it will make a difference to you, your family and your colleagues. John Elder Robinson in his new book entitled “be different” talks about this in the form of being an outsider, I just love his quote ” after all , everyone feels like an outsider some of the time” and for a guy who suffers from Aspergers he should know but I think we all have felt this at some point in time

If I can help you please let me know but please invest the time to check this out yourself as I think everyone in the world should complete and experience the ID just like  The Coca Cola Company said ages ago when they wanted buy the world a Coke but then again that is my personal bias coming out.

Have a great and safe Easter.

Cheers

Leigh

OK tell me why do we send our children to school?

If they attend for 5 days a a week and have about 8 hours of classroom learning per day that equates to 40 hours of formal learning per week. Now if my 8th grade and 11th grade daughters are a good example they would on average do up to 3 hours of homework during the week and about a further 5 or so over the weekend, which maybe sometimes be punctuated by chat, Facebook and or Skype but this comes out to about 20 hours or additional work for them.

My eldest daughter tells me that it is more like 30 hours when you take into account all the research, planning and preparation so even higher than first thought ….so what are they doing at school and what are we paying for???

I have long struggled with the concept of homework as it is often not linked to any formal classroom work, has low intrinsic value from a grading view point and personally does little to reinforce little alone support learning as the time and or length that is made available to complete the set homework tasks are limited. A good example how do you describe a complex bit of work in comparative analysis in less then 3 minutes when realistically it should be done in 5 minutes, where is the value. I listened to my daughter practice her classroom presentation and it was like listening to a bullet train. lots of great ideas and data but it is all lost by the artificial barriers that were imposed by her teacher.

Value nil, increased knowledge nil, frustration and effort high, not what I would call conducive factors for learning I think.

Have a look at a really smart guy called Clark Quinn had to say about this issue in his insight ‘getting it off my chest’ department:

I gave a talk to a national society last week on the future of learning. An off-hand comment on ‘homework’ got more interest than I expected. My point was that there are limits to reactivation. However, given the battles I know so many are having with schools on homework, and we too, some thoughts.

The underlying mechanism, roughly, for learning is associations between related neurons (and, at a bigger scale into patterns). However, our brains saturate in their ability to associate new information. Some activation a day is about all a brain can take. Re-activating is key, over time. That is, the next day, and the next. And, of course, the feedback should come quickly after the effort (not the next day). And, let’s be real: some kids need more practice than others. Why aren’t we adapting it? And are we really rewarding achievement? In elementary school, my first-born noticed that by being smart, he got more work than the other kids with the ‘stretch’ assignments, and wondered why being smart was punished!

So, in theory, a light bit of homework on a topic that was first visited in prior days might make sense. So you see it on Monday in class, say, and then visit it again in homework. Note that reactivating it in class the next day in a slightly more complex problem is better. And, as, John Taylor Gatto has hypothesized, everything we need to learn in K6 really ought to take only 100 hours to learn, if the kids are motivated. With the feedback coming the next day, it will also be harder for the learner to be able to make the connection. This post I found while verifying the 100 hour claim is fascinating on the amount of time really necessary.

However, that’s not what we see. I’ve seen my kids complaining about trying to solve more of the same problems they saw in school that day. That’s not going to help. And it’s too much. If every teacher wants to get an hour out of them, they’d be overloaded with homework. This is middleschool, but the same problem manifests in K6, and I’m only dreading what comes next.

And then we get the ‘coloring’ assignments. I’m sure the argument is something along the lines of ‘by seeing the information represented as they color, they’ll remember it’. Sorry, no. If they’re not applying the information, or extrapolating from it, or personalizing it, processing it, it’s not going to lead to anything but prettier classrooms for open house. I’m sorry, but don’t spoil my child’s youth to pretty up your room. And it’s very clear that, at least in our school, largely the mothers are doing it.

And then there is the weekend homework. I’m sorry, but I do believe kids are entitled to a life, or at least most of one. Why have work hanging over them on the weekend? Now, if you give them long term projects and it replaces some homework, and they decide to put it off ’til the weekend, well, I suppose that’s ok, because I think interesting overarching projects are valuable (and bring in important meta-skills). So then there’s the homework assigned on Friday that’s due on Tuesday, so supposedly you can get it done on Monday so it’s not really homework, but who do you think you’re fooling?

So, my first-born got hammered with homework the first year of middle school. Worse, it was idiosyncratic; so it was luck of the draw whether your kid got a teacher who assigned lots of homework. My school admitted that while the math teachers were pretty much in synch, the science department had great variability, and didn’t explicitly admit that they can’t do anything about it (*cough* tenure *cough*). This had been going on, but now my better half had me behind her as she rallied the other mom’s into a persistent force against what was happening. There’s now a homework policy, which still gets violated (oh, this is a honors class at highschool level, so we have to assign weekend homework). Nope, sorry, don’t buy it.

My second has not been hammered by the first year of homework (luck of the draw, the science teacher who doesn’t believe in homework), and hasn’t had her love of schooling squelched. The first, however, has had to have serious support by us to not turn off completely. I really believe that the middle school (a good one) has a belief that the only way to deal with all these coddled elementary school students is to hammer them the first year. Frankly, I’m not convinced that most kids are ready for middle school in 6th grade. But I’m getting away from my point and getting personal…

Some reactivation, within limits of the overall load can’t keep kids tied to desks hours after school’s out, can be understandable, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s not really that necessary. If we tap into motivation, we can accelerate learning and get more utility out of school. Doing the same problems at night, overloading from too many classes, and weekend homework don’t really provide enough advantage to justify such assignments.

I’m not sure whether they’re teaching the principles of homework to teaching students, and whether there’s any education of existing teachers from whatever path, but we’ve got to get it right. If Finland can get by minimal homework, I reckon we can too.

How many of us are required to spend hours helping our kids with their homework, yet their teachers encourage us parents to stay out of their learning and development as we are to out of touch or even more sadly how many parents especially in the junior years end up doing their kids homework anyway, I have seen and still see some great example of this happening even today.

As end note can someone please remind why we pay for school fees when most of it is done at home…lets change the learning model a little, who knows maybe more of this could be done in class time and form a part of a normal learning routine rather than be seen as a bolt on, you note that I have avoided the word Add On as this form of learning is not additive but repetitive and in some cases even punitive.

Happy learning one and all.

Teachers, trainers or facilitators of learning are no longer nor should they be the focus and center of attention of the learning process, learning as we know is about enablement and empowerment of development and not solely about the content and they way that is should be organized. Last time I looked we are all were different, learn differently, think differently and take in and use information and data in an infinite manner of ways.

At last the world is seeing the need to change…..the teacher as a coach now that is what I would like to see as this might allow education to catch up with the changing needs of the up and coming generation of learners that we have, read on and see what I mean in this great article by Tina Barseghian in The Control Shift: A Grassroots Education Revolution Takes Shape.

Kids are taking charge of their own learning as educators grapple with their new roles.

For as long as anyone can remember, adults have played the role of information owners, meting out what they believe kids should know. Whether it’s the classroom teacher imparting expertise in American history, or a parent explaining the birds and the bees, adults have always tried to control what children learn.

Now, with open access to every imaginable kind of information found online, kids are happily seeking and finding it on their own — and on their own terms. The balance of power has shifted irrevocably.

So what does this mean for educators who are trying to figure out their role in this age of kids’ self-guided discovery?

“The control piece is really big, because if it’s acknowledged, it leaves educators with this empty hole,” says veteran teacher Will Richardson, the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. “‘Well, if we’re not doing that, then what are we doing?’ That’s where the conversation needs to be. But it’s a hard one to have. It’s very difficult for people to see themselves in a decidedly different role. But at the end of the day, we have to examine what we’re doing in terms of content in classroom. It should be more about learning, giving kids power to get content on their own.”

“We really do have to change our roles as teachers to co-learners and supporters and mentors. It’s a big shift to make.”

This power shift is at the crux of an education revolution that’s been gaining momentum online. But it’s not about the show-stealing headlines of “Waiting for Superman,” or Michelle Rhee’s vision of school reform that are dominating most of the education-related media.

This revolution is orchestrated by frustrated educators who believe the current school system must be torn down to the studs and rebuilt in order to keep up with the enormous cultural shift wrought by technology and the Internet. And though their own Twitter universe is ablaze with new ideas and practices – check out all the blogs, Tweets and voices on #edchat – it’s happening piecemeal, and under the radar of most teachers.

Pockets of Innovation

In spots across the country, innovative programs are leveraging the vast power of technology and the Internet. This Sunday night (February 13), PBS will air Digital Media – New Learners Of The 21st Century, featuring a few examples of these programs. The Digital Youth Network, for example, focuses on teaching kids to record music, create podcasts and videos; New Youth City Network structures the school day around rich sources of information, like the American Natural History Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and New York Hall of Science, among others. Like an extended field trip, students spend time learning about the neighborhoods, the city’s ecology, and practice skills like data visualization and collaboration.

There are dozens of other programs like these across the country, but they’re few and far between. Even basic access to the Internet is spotty in many schools, which block major websites like YouTube because of the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act in order to protect kids from unsafe sites. Those pushing for change complain that schools are throwing out the baby with the bathwater – blocking large swaths of rich, useful information online. While some educators push the boundaries by allowing their students to use cell phones in the class to get instant assessment, to take notes, look up information online, and so on, schools across the country still ban the use of cell phones in class.

“Learning through technology will not replace the need for teachers,” said Diana Rhoten, director of the Knowledge Institutions program and the Digital Media and Learning project at the Social Science Research Council. “It will change teachers’ jobs. They become more like coaches or mentors. But I think it will make their job more exciting and give them the opportunity to be pedagogues, which is ultimately more rewarding.”

Where to Start?

But the next step in this revolution is still undefined. Richardson, who travels the country spreading the gospel about harnessing the power of technology to teachers, superintendents and school districts, says that educators are confused about how to proceed.

“The interesting thing is that they will acknowledge that this shift is happening,” Richardson said. “But it’s hard to take that next step, and say, ‘Okay, so we really do have to change the way we do things at school, and away from content delivery to learning, and we really do have to change our roles as teachers to co-learners and supporters and mentors?’ It’s a big shift to make.”

“Parents say, ‘There are places that are experimenting on that stuff, but don’t experiment on my kid. I want those grades, I want those scores.’”

Although Richardson and his peers have been pushing for the movement for as long as a decade or more, it’s still very much in its infancy. “We have to stop thinking that when one thing goes wrong, that we don’t have all the answers,” says Christopher Lehmann, of the museum-based school Science Leadership Academy in the PBS documentary. “What do we want our schools to be? What’s the most important thing we want our kids to learn?”

Depends on who you ask. Authors Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown might say it’s the ability to learn on their own, to create and be part of a community, to iterate and continue refining their own and others’ projects, to learn from their peers, to create their own learning patterns. All this happens when the teacher creates space and opportunity, and gives students control, they say in their recently published book A New Culture of Learning, Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.

So what will propel the movement to burst out of the Twitterverse into reality? First and foremost, the vision needs to be clarified. There are plenty of pilot programs and school experiments to look to, but there’s no agreement yet on how to apply those best practices within the monolithic, rigid public education system. Especially given the enormous cultural emphasis, government funds, and schools’ and teachers’ successes attached to test scores.

“I think parents understand that schools need to do something different – but the ‘different’ doesn’t equate to anything really different at the end of the day because they want their kids to pass tests, get to college, do all the things that we define as traditionally successful,” Richardson says. “Parents say, ‘There are places that are experimenting on that stuff, but don’t experiment on my kid. I want those grades, I want those scores.’”

As for what’s next, here’s what some of these thinkers predict: The experiments will continue to proliferate and take shape around the edges, and eventually, if proven to be successful, there will come a tipping point that will drive the change in the public education system.

“Traditional approaches to learning are no longer capable of coping with a constantly changing world. They have yet to find a balance between the structure that educational institutions provide and the freedom afforded by the new media’s almost unlimited resources, without losing a sense of purpose and direction,” Thomas and Brown write. “The challenge is to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new.”

Maybe it is timing or maybe HR is at a real crossroads which I believe is the case.

The recent Kings College Report on the state of HR showed that not enough is being done across the board to develop line managers to be people managers and true managers of talent and at the same time HR is showing signs of being very  reluctant to pass up many of it traditional roles and practices so that line mangers can develop appropriately.

We know that many managers and leaders come into these roles because they have a strong technical or domain expertise, this does not qualify them to be or become a suitable leader of people but this situation has been allowed to perpetuate because HR teams have been able to provide the back up for this skill and knowledge deficit by many line managers and is so have made the situation even worse.

Research out of the Stockton Borough Council and conducted by Liz Hanley shows that HR may be loosing its grip and line managers are demanding and wanting more control of the people and talent agenda.

“Stockton Borough Council carried out research to support the implementation of the organisational vision to develop the strategic HR function in this way. Line managers at third-tier level were questioned about what they saw as the core aspects of the role of the line manager and that of HR professionals.

The research showed that there was already a culture of line managers working closely with HR in order to address people management responsibilities. However, it was also clear that line managers felt vulnerable about taking on more of what they saw as traditional aspects of the HR role – such as dealing with poor staff performance – without direct access to HR support and undertaking additional training, for example in conflict management. The risk of a lack of consistency in judgement and decision-making by line managers was also highlighted, as was the perceived reluctance of HR professionals to relinquish some of their traditional responsibilities. Managers who took part in the research also expressed concern at expectations of their taking on more duties, when they already lack time and are juggling a number of priorities.

Implicit in the research findings was the acknowledgement that the employment relationship is very complex and that there has been significant growth in employment law that can appear to be contradictory. The economic environment makes it more important than ever that employees are enabled to perform at the peak of their abilities, with public services expected to achieve more with significantly less resources.

Line managers play a crucial role in managing employee relations and performance, but can be described as the ‘weakest link’, as some managers in the public sector may be promoted for their technical expertise, rather than their specific people-management skills and experience.

For the organisation to be fit for purpose in the current and future challenging contexts:

• The required managerial behavioural competencies need to be embedded into job design and recruitment processes.
• Good people management needs to be recognised and rewarded.
• Line managers have to be involved in the development and review of HR policies.
• These changes need to be embedded, before HR support is withdrawn in a controlled way.

To effect the required changes to the line manger role, it is important that HR continues to provide for the ‘employee champion’ role, particularly until the change is embedded.” (source” HR Magazine)

This is a very complex issue and one that does not have an easy answer or is there a silver bullet but there is a clear message in this complex debate that HR transformation has to include more than being a process of internal review it must affect real change with its external clients and business partners it is to really transform.

When HR and people are not a key business priority everyone is a loser but this reported loss in business confidence makes the GFC look like a small market adjustment.

The development of HR teams has drastically fallen down the corporate agenda for 2011, according to research seen exclusively by HR magazine.

Just 3% of organisations ranked developing their HR team as a first or second-place priority for 2011, compared to 34% in 2010. However, 74% of respondents said that developing people to achieve growth and competitive advantage was paramount (up from 69% in 2010), according to the Corporate Learning Priorities Survey 2011 carried out by Henley Business School’s corporate development team.

Despite the reduction of focus on HR capability, HR must continue to develop and transform in 2011, said Nick Kemsely, co-director at Henley’s Centre for HR Excellence. HR functions need to address gaps in their content, structure, process, system and skills to ensure they are meeting the needs of organisations – or risk being sidelined, he added.

“This change must happen quickly. HR will need to live the values of the post-downturn world – speed, pragmatism, tangibility, impact – in its own evolution, or else risk being left isolated in a business world which has to get on with things with or without its help.

“If HR can pull this transformation off, then the kind of work which happens within the function will be genuinely business-critical and offer both enormous opportunity and challenge for those who want to, and are able, to work like this. HR would be a place where a connection with business strategy and performance was immediate and tangible,” he said.

Retention of talent was the second highest priority for development activity, with 73% identifying it as crucial, a rise from 63% last year. Concern about managing change came third with 64% naming it as a learning objective, compared with 60% in 2010.

Henley surveyed 2,500 HR and non-HR senior managers from private and public sector organisations employing in excess of 500 people. Hugh Evans, vice-dean and director of corporate learning at Henley Business School said performance management was a key theme emerging from the survey.

“There is clear recognition that the skills and behaviours of talented people are fundamental to business recovery and high performance. Leadership development has perhaps never been more important for the senior team and, for the second year running, middle managers in particular. When change sets an organisation off in a new direction, leaders have the challenge of taking people with them; inspiring, facilitating, engaging, coaching and communicating.”

For all our sakes lets raise our games , transformation many not be the answer maybe we need a revolution or a professional revolt…well it worked it Egypt so maybe we should be taking greater personal and professional control of events too?

Not only do they lack the requisite skills and experience but they also lack the presence of an appropriate range of client engagement and business partnering, sadly they offer nothing more than a range of vanilla administrative services/functions.

So if the owners of the people and talent agenda do not have what it takes , how do we expect organizations and leaders to be able to excel in the leadership of their people and teams?

Please read on and see what Bersin found, I offer one word of advice that despite theses findings there are a number of great HR teams and practioners out there making and driving a real difference.

The study, which included surveys and interviews with more than 720 global organizations, found that overall spending levels, organization structure and team size have far less impact on business performance than the skills of the HR professionals themselves. The resulting report is titled “The High-Impact HR Organization: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence.”

“This research clearly shows that the days of bloated HR organizations focused on administrative tasks are over,” said Josh Bersin, chief executive officer and president of Bersin & Associates. “Lean, technology-enabled, well-trained HR teams are able to take advantage of modern talent practices and partner with business leaders to drive impact.”

The research also determined that the decades-old “HR generalist” model is no longer effective unless these individuals are highly trained and connected to senior business leaders. The key competencies that drive results today are familiarity with integrated talent management, understanding of workforce planning, and comfort with social networking and HR technology.

These findings emerged from a two-year global benchmarking study that looked at 14 talent management and HR effectiveness measures across global businesses. The measures included a company’s ability to source the best talent, hire and onboard top candidates, identify and develop leaders, build a culture of learning, allocate compensation effectively, and drive high performance through coaching and feedback.

“Our research revealed that many HR teams are unprepared for the future,” said Stacey Harris, director of strategic HR and talent management research at Bersin & Associates and author of the report. “Twice as many HR organizations gave themselves poor marks in these 14 critical areas than those that rate themselves excellent. This shows how difficult it is for HR organizations to train their staff, stay current with new practices, and create a culture of business partnership among their HR leaders.”

Bersin & Associates’ new HR practice was created to meet these challenges in several ways: it delivers research-based tools and proven strategies that help HR teams prioritize their efforts, stay current with modern approaches, select the right solution providers, and stay fully aligned with business leaders.

“Today, HR professionals in almost every industry are grappling with an array of huge new problems: the growth of global markets, rapid proliferation of new technologies, skill gaps in critical positions, and increased productivity demands,” said Gwen Callas-Miller, executive director of global talent development for Textron. “With its new HR Practice, Bersin & Associates will provide HR professionals with the research, support and industry-level standards that leaders of other business functions rely on for guidance. These are the foundational building blocks that will help HR leaders deliver the best possible people-related business decisions.”

Bersin & Associates evaluated a total of 140 individual human resources practices to identify the top 10 HR best practices that produced the highest impact. Among the additional findings from this research:

• Companies that empower key HR professionals to take on a “strategic business partner” role create HR teams that outperform the average HR organization by 25 percent or more. Such companies typically outsource HR administrative functions and realign their HR business partners to work with line executives on hiring, coaching, leadership and collaboration.

• Most HR organizations are poorly prepared for the future: they are not fully familiar with social networking, new career models, global recruiting and leadership, or enterprise change management. As a result, HR organizations that focus heavily on more advanced internal HR skills outperform those that do not.

• HR’s strategic ownership of knowledge-sharing, collaboration and social networking drives greater business impact than many traditional HR strategies. Companies that focus on these modern tools for empowerment are delivering twice the business improvement of those that focus on traditional HR strategies such as pay-for-performance or new HR information management systems.

• Engaging in the leading-edge practice of workforce planning, including enterprise forecasting and skills-gap scenario planning, is one of the greatest drivers of business results. For example, companies that excel in workforce planning drive four times the value of those who focus on the consolidation of HR technology systems.

• HR must still excel at the basics. Payroll, benefits, administration are still critical factors in business success, and today these functions must be globalized and deal with a highly contingent workforce.

The research also demonstrates that companies with fewer HR professionals per employee outperform those with larger teams if they focus on the right skills and partnering model. Bersin & Associates HR practice is designed to help organizations make up for this gap — by focusing on building skills, knowledge, and world-class expertise — instead of focusing only on hiring more staff or cutting costs.

“The challenge for HR professionals today is living up to the high expectations that come with a seat at the table — expectations to drive business results through people and culture,” said Harris.”
For more info: http://www.bersin.com

GE was nominated as the Leadership Champion for 2010, GE has been nominated for this title 4 times since 2005 and only Proctor and Gamble who was ranked No 2 this year has rivalled their dominance during this period being ranked No 1 on two occasions.

Technology giants Apple, IBM and Google all received honorable mentions but failed to make the elite class the the top 20 organizations.

What was interesting was the dominance of FMCG and Food related organizations, where my old company The Coca Cola Company was rated No 6 others included:

• McDonalds No 7
• Walmart No 9
• Pepsi No 13

These companies like GE have consistently appeared in the Top 20 Global Leadership organizations and it you take a deeper look at why this keeps happening you will find that at the core of this is the fact that they continue to adapt their leadership & business thinking and approaches.

What was interesting that despite all the discussion around pay for performance, bonus and dividends the large banking and finance players like Goldman Sachs was only rated No 13, however the only stand out player in this sector was Banco Santander the Spanish based bank.

This is interesting for a number of reasons because other larger regional/global banking organizations such as HSBC were rated No 5 in Europe & No 2 in Asia along with Deutsche Bank was rated No 5.

This does send a very strong message about the types of leadership cultures and practices that these organizations have been able to create right across their business lines and functions.

Lets take some time to look more closely at some of the key reasons that these organizations were so highly regarded and ranked.In reality it is quite simple as one of  the  key findings within this report  shows that there is a clear shift from leaders being considered great just because they possess high domain expertise or technical skills. These skills are now only considered to have no greater value than 40% of a leaders total  or required leadership capability and capacity, this leaves a whopping 60% being focused on a whole range of non technical skills like creativity, innovation, ideas generation, creating networks & developing deeper relationships, being adaptive and understanding how to use diverse thinking styles and practices.

Again this report serves to highlight the continued importance of  the development of an organizations right brain capability and capacity. It  is regarded as being a significant factor in allowing leading global organizations to create successful long term & sustainable leadership culture and practices…….maybe it would be worth your while to look at little more deeply at these organizations and see what is really making the difference for them and their people.

You can read more in the report snapshot the the Hay Group has compiled in their Leadership companies report, happy reading.

Just as a final thought CitiGroup ranked as high as No 4 in 2006 yet today it is now where to be seen in these rankings but Citi is not alone in this position as there are a number of other financial and banking powerhouses who too have suffered the same fate…..as Oscar Wilde said “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative”, so doing the same things well is no longer good enough.

Research conducted by Konrath and Twenge  represents some of the most interesting I have seen in quite some time. It clearly demonstrates that things are changing yet we are doing little as leaders to harness and understand both the positive and negative impacts that these trends & preferences may bring. The research clearly highlights the changes that individuals and indeed society are going through and the move to towards the power of the individual, the challenge for us is should  would be embracing and encouraging these as part of new normal or should we being trying to ensure that some of the “old values and ways” are being maintained and valued by our emerging leaders?

Leaders in every generation are and will be different from one another and that I feel is a good thing but without us understanding why this is taking place will for many different generational leaders be a constant source of frustration. The feeling is that each generation should conform to the practices and models that we hold dear to us but the fact is that something can be learnt from each new trend be that a negative or a positive value.

Konrath and Twenge indicate that narcissism is on the rise in the US and indeed across the world. The US has been classified in their research as the most narrcissitic country in the world, you need to bear in mind that the research is focused on US based college students so I would not be quick to jump to the conclusion that all Americans share in this trend but it is a worrying marker for the future.

How is this so?????

You could readily say that these statements could apply to any country in the world  and maybe this is true but for the empirically minded  amongst us for the past 30 years narcissism has been measured by an instrument known as the NPI or Narcissism Personality Inventory and alarmingly it shows that over the last 15 years or so that narcissism has increased by over 30%.

We are seeing an increase  and decrease in a number of new and old traits as a result of this trend where traits and preferences such as :

• self absorbed
• individualism.
• self promotion.
• care for self over others & their needs.
• assertiveness.
• extraversion.
• isolation.

So what is driving this change?

Just take a quick look at look at the ways in which we gain and receive information/data, technology is both fast changing and supporting the way that we interact and behave with one another, be it in the real or the virtual worlds in which we live and work in.  As a consequence of this we are also witnessing a steady decline in reading and especially the concept of reading for pleasure.

It has been reported that Americans are abandoning reading in their droves, the implications of this are far reaching as now one of the great sources of alternative thought, perspective, creativity is fast becoming closed off and irrelevant.

The implication is that our own thoughts, perspectives and beliefs are becoming our primary source of truth and relevance which means that the opportunity to learn from others is also being greatly reduced. It would seem that this is a complete contradiction as we have more information and information sources than ever before, we are better enabled through technology to share and collaborate and we can do it faster and better than any other generation but do we make the time and or have the time to really deeply think and or consider what this information is telling us….or are too involved in the now?

Peter Hatcher in the Sydney Morning Herald in his article on the 25th of January provided some really great clarity for me concerning this topic where he discussed the role of social networking and especially the influence of Facebook on the way we think about ourselves. Hatcher sees “instant recognition” as being at the core of the issue which really in my mind is a milder manifestation of narcissism. Hatcher described this process so well in his article ” sites {Facebook etc} generate for an ordinary person simultaneous recognition by hundreds or thousands of people….you do not need to perform great deeds, create great art or be a rock star”.

We can see the true power of the individual coming into its own with this example but is this just another extension of the same issue or an attempt to achieve some form of self esteem?

Hatcher sums this up so well where he notes ” that the desire for recognition may be permanent”, but I am not sure if this is essentially a new event or trend as I think through the ages that we have all strived for some for of personal recognition it is more how this is being manifested and projected as the focus is clearly on the “I” and the “me”.

This rapidly growing trend of individual and instant recognition has created some very interesting tensions and challenges to the ways that we think, plan and execute. Clearly we are using a thinking model  which is based on meeting instant and immediate needs and events, we are taking sadly less and less time to stop, step back and think about what we really should be dealing with.

A lot of people that I work with say to me  that they simply do not have the time to think, now that is really scary , it is evident that we are not making time to or we believe we do not have enough time in our days to research and learn. Ah but I hear your say what about all the time that we spend in meetings & all those discussion that we have,  well yes you are correct senior leaders are busy and  seem to be constantly in meetings which now takes up to a staggering 90% of their time…but yet there is no direct correlation or evidence that supports the number and time we spend in meetings is equal to producing effective thinking.

Here are some telling statistics for you to consider, some 25 million meetings take place in corporate America daily. Roughly half that time is wasted. More alarming according to the Meeting Resource Centre most professionals attend 61.8 meetings per month, where 50% of these meetings are considered a waste of time.  91% of people in the study admitted to daydreaming, 96% have missed meetings, 73% said they bring other work to meetings and 39% have said they have dozed during meetings.

Some organizations thankfully and bucking these trends and are taking this issue very seriously and you can readily see and measure the bottom line impact that this is having on them as a business and the type of culture that they are creating. Just look at companies like 3M, IBM and Google who actively encourage their people to think whilst they are on the job and to make time as a regular part of their work component or workweek to explore that others are doing, saying and thinking.

Paul Nunes from the Accenture Institute for High Performance in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review { Jan/Feb 2011} raised some very interesting points of view, if we are focused on just running a business is just “today mode” who is going to run the business of tomorrow? Nunes is quick to point out that that there needs to be a balance between short term and long term thinking and that teams need to be balanced in their thinking preferences and approaches and continue to develop new capabilities & preferences.

Creating balance in a team where no one thinking style of preference dominates is critical, thinking about the “whole” and not the “sum” is an important part of this challenge but are emerging and young leaders up to the challenge and more importantly do they care?

When leaders and teams are just dealing with facts and events they are only managing in the now, there is a lot more to effective thinking and planning as this at best only requires you to use well less than 50% of your brains capacity and capability.

We are seeing a result of these events the  creation of some new hard wired social and personal skills many of which concern me for it our focus is on ourselves who is going to be the one that takes time to care and to look outside the “I”?

The impacts are mind boggling, just think about the impact that this has upon teams, team effectiveness and productivity not to mention the concepts of collaboration, sharing and co-operation this might start to explain why teams well are not working as well as they can or should be.

I see this a lot in teams where skills like these are not high on the list of preferred thinking styles of leadership practices:

• empathy.
• spirituality.
• relationships.
• reading.
• generosity.

Maybe it is the types of team I work with or maybe it is because of the domain skill sets and expertise but I am seeing more and more teams facing the same sorts of issues, of special interest and concern to me a researcher is that many of the traits and preferences that we have noted  that are in decline are in fact things that given a choice many people would simply seek to avoid.

Often this is simply caused by the fact that many people and teams do not understand the value that these preferences and traits could bring to them, more importantly they do not know how to unlock these and how to leverage and apply them effectively.

Narcissism  or as I like to see it as  ” the age of individual leader” may be here to stay as it is ever increasing over the generations way to think, lead and manage, it may have some proven short term benefits as we always are encouraging our children and people we work with to be confident and to stand on their own two feet but this has to a better managed process as the longer term individual and societal costs are evident.

Despite all of this we need to constantly reshape our thinking of what good leaders should look and how they should behave as often we are working from models and values that we hold dear to ourselves and have not kept pace with the changes that we have been discussing.

If you want to take the time to read and learn more about this issue and the work of Konrath and Twenge click HERE to retrieve 28-page summary of their findings, I am sure that you will find this most revealing.

I was motivated to write this case study because of the recent events in Australia and the rise of volunteerism as a result of damage and devastation caused by the floods right across the country. I wanted  you to understand and appreciate  that we still have the ability to change and shape issues like the rise of narcissism in a proactive and positive way, things are changing and becoming far more fluid the trick for those leaders developing the leaders of today and tomorrow is how to leverage these events.

The new normal does not have to and is not  all bad but our job is to help others to see that there is a better way to approach and see things, I am sure our parents said the same things about us as I remember that they thought rock N roll was the work of the devil, god forbid we start to say and do the same things that they did.

Happy reading, but maybe you just may not have the time to read & think about this issue right now??????