Best practice is old practice

Best practice is old practice

Is best practice now old practice? The reason HR is being so successful right now is that we have made a significant shift. One of these key shifts is from best practitioner to best problem solver. I recently ran a series of workshops with a range of HR practitioners from different backgrounds and businesses, and […]

Stuck in the middle with you

Stuck in the middle with you

It’s time to invest in our middle managers. We’ve invested heavily in our executives, and in our front line leaders. We’ve invested in our new leaders, and in our future leaders, and in our future senior leaders. But what about those who are not on this list? The ones who are established leaders now; definitely […]

Why it’s important to stay targeted

Why it's important to stay targeted

The reason HR is being so successful right now is that we have made a significant shift. One of these key shifts is from busy to targeted. By ruthlessly deprioritising HR’s busy-work, we’ve been able to focus on fewer, more targeted initiatives and are delivering them really well. If you’ve got more than 5 problems […]

3 talent team tactics to think about right now

3 talent team tactics to think about right now

In the talent world you typically Buy, Borrow or Build talent to get the work done. BUY: We’ve had over 20 years of McKinsey’s ‘war for talent’, and untold investment into Talent Acquisition as a result. You might argue that it’s working too well: Gartner tells us that 65% of people think it’s easier to […]

The simple secrets of great leadership comms

The simple secrets of great leadership comms

If you can’t explain it, they won’t get it. If they don’t get it, they won’t buy-in. If they don’t buy-in, it won’t get done. As leaders, it’s our job to communicate in a way that informs, inspires, clarifies, and motivates. One mistake I see often is when a leader communicates with technical accuracy, rather […]

Surprisingly, now is the right time to reskill your workforce

Surprisingly, now is the right time to reskill your workforce

The World Economic Forum met at the beginning of this year to discuss the urgent need for global reskilling. Then they got upstaged by Covid-19. But the argument hasn’t gone away. In fact, with recessionary conditions looming, one could claim the argument has been strengthened. The increasing talent shortage we were experiencing throughout 2019 wasn’t just […]

The ugly truth: can you handle it?

The ugly truth: can you handle it?

We often hide the truth of org change in order to protect our people from the ugly truth. Did you know that this beautiful sentiment of employee care is actually counter-productive? The truth is our people can handle it – and in fact, when we’re worried about putting too much on them, we could actually […]

Are you talking in the wrong language?

Are you talking in the wrong language?

Dan Coyle’s ‘Culture Code’ talks about the signals and language of highly successful groups, and most leaders already know the importance of the verbal cues and phrases we choose to use. This has never been more important than it is today. Language is code for culture. To enable our workforces to adopt greater adaptability and […]

Last month was a hell of a year wasn’t it?

Last month was a hell of a year wasn't it?

Many of us will look back at March 2020 for the rest of our careers.  For me, March felt like getting caught in a rip after swimming nothing but laps for years. Frankly, a bit of an SOS moment!  For most companies, HR was there to lead us into calmer waters, and I for one am […]

What happens when you make this one little change to your comms

What happens when you make this one little change to your comms

Like all of us, I’m still stuck in Corona-mania. I recently discovered that to find out what was really going on in Wuhan, people had been turning to Tinder. It made me recall 9/11 when people were watching citizen reportage via Youtube and Facebook before watching the News. Then I listened to the HR priorities […]