I read with interest journalist and author Philip Whiteley's last post on regulation in British business at http://felipewh.wordpress.com/.
''The arguments over more-versus-less regulation are often not the most important ones to have, because the things that really matter are to do with leadership, workplace competence, engagement and trust''
I found myself nodding along as I read. Regulation is not the sexiest of subjects, but like it or not it increasngly effects my role every day at work. We recently moved around the structure of our office and some of us were in at the weekend moving desks around. Theoretical Health and Safety risk. We have some fabulous working Mums (and some soon to be Mums) in our office. Maternity leave requires a PhD to understand. Let alone the procurement systems that some FTSE businesses would judge a suitable first interface to put together a partnership-orientated approach to scale change!
It is not just my core Lane4 role that I feel this pressure. Wearing my European Sponsorship Association hat, European regulation of alcohol, betting and tobacco sponsorship among other areas is also a hot topic. On one level this is understandable, and yet on another my frustration is that the lobbying becomes an industry in its own right. Six years ago I spoke at a European Union conference on the subject in Brussels. It was run by a private company in a swanky hotel with chiefly European Union Member speakers and evening ''lobbying'' aplenty. There was a distinct sense that nothing at all of any importance would be discussed or debated (let alone decided), apart from which champagne was the best on the menu.
Despite all of this I support sensible regulation in business leadership. I support it in the world of sponsorship. I particularly support it in an industry such as learning and development where no qualifications are required to call oneself a coach. However I also support common sense. Any business leader who needs to get out the small print to wrangle through a conversation about accrued holiday with a a new Mum returning to work has more fundamental issues in their organisation than the odd day of holiday. Any sporting organisation who genuinely wishes to accept a sponsorship which is ethically dubious will only erode their value in the long term. Equally any HR Director who is prepared to bring in unproven and unsupervised coaches will soon realise that the risks outweigh any potential benefits.
I believe in regulation to help us look after the vulnerable in society and business, but I also believe that ultimately the ethical, sensible and emotionally intelligent prevail way before it is needed. Regulation in business is similar in many ways to the best negotiated commercial contracts between two organisations. It is important to have in the desk drawer as a guide, but if it ever leaves the desk drawer, it is probably too late!
The Daily Telegraph carries ‘exclusive’ news today that Greg Searle is returning to competitive rowing. He is aiming to compete at London 2012. He would be 40 years of age at the time of the rowing finals. There is also a strong chance that the final could be 20 years to the day since he won gold at Barcelona.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/rowing/6818615/Greg-Searle-on-comeback-trail-to-date-with-destiny-at-London-2012-Olympics.html
This is not quite as ‘exclusive’ news within Lane4. We have known Greg was getting back in top class shape ever since Greg romped home to victory out of the blue at the Lane4 Grand National – our 5 quarterly mile handicap running race. There is still a long way to go of course, but we know Greg well enough to know he will leave no stone unturned.
Happily Greg will continue to work at Lane4 and with his clients as he moves along his journey – just as our Paralympian Clare Strange does. I have had the pleasure of being with Greg when he has shared his news in confidence with groups from two London 2012 sponsors. It has been fascinating to see their reactions. Although several of the individuals in the room work in and around the Olympic Games every day, the personal connection this news has created in the room was really compelling. Greg and London 2012 are already part of these organisations’ everyday working lives – Greg’s journey will bring these two elements together on a very personal level.
Sport meets business elsewhere in today’s Daily Telegraph. The header in the Business section has a shot of Tiger Woods, and reads, ‘With Friends Like Accenture…Tiger finds out the Hard Way’. The article criticises Accenture’s decision to pull out of their relationship with Tiger on the back of recent press revelations. It suggests Accenture’s investment has been spurious, and yet also that Tiger does not now deserve to be deserted. Whatever you make of the recent news, this is lazy and naive journalism. Accenture’s investment in Tiger to date has reaped Accenture massive dividends, but they are smart enough in a competitive market-place not to shout about it. They also have a brand to protect. They were right to be in the deal, and they are now right to pull out.
Modern sport at its best and worst in one edition of the Daily Telegraph. Good luck Greg - but don’t expect the same handicap in the Grand National next time mate!
Last night I attended a HR Magazine Leaders Club event somewhat provocatively titled ‘Is the Marketing Director the new HR Director?’. It was an excellent event.
Those who have visited this blog before will know this is a subject close to my heart. It is also bubbling up as a hot topic. Ironically I was facilitating a session not more than two months ago for the European Sponsorship Association where the discussion turned to whether the ‘HR Director is the new Marketing Director’. There’s clearly a little insecurity both sides of the fence!
Navjot Singh, Global Marketing Manager, Recruitment and Global Communications Manager at Shell talked compellingly about how marketing know-how had been integrated into Shell’s recruitment strategy to take them from also-ran to leader in high potential recruitment among their competitors. He shared how the use of behaviour models (as marketers would use every day to model customer activity) were used at Shell to predict the behaviour of job applicants through the process. Shell can not only predict the potential revenue that any new recruit would bring into the organisation, but also predict each individual’s performance once in the organisation.
On one level, yes, these are tools which are now beloved of the bigger marketing departments. For ‘job applicants’ in HR’s world, read ‘potential customers’ in marketing’s. For ‘performance once in the organisation’ in HR speak, read ‘lifetime customer value’ in marketing. However, on another level none of these skills are purely the preserve of HR, or marketing, or both. They are exactly the same techniques one might use valuing a business for acquisition, or deciding whether to spend money on a new factory or product launch. They are simply good business practice in a lean, less indulgent business environment.
For those of you who were good enough to read my last post, you may feel there is an inherent contradiction in this view given my criticism of the ‘commodity trading’ I witnessed at the CIPD Fair. I do not mean to criticise the process of using data to make decisions (quite the opposite in fact). I mean to criticise the laziness of organisations who use the data as not just as the rationale, but also the principle means of communication. To cite an example given last night, the organisation that recruits online, but never sends a tailored, thought-through rejection letter to the unsuccessful candidate with some insightful feedback. I was party to another conversation last week with a friend, where restructuring decisions had been communicated only within the context of total headcount reduction figures. No rationale for the change, or compelling thoughts about what the future might hold.
In my view, good business management practice is the insightful use of data to reach a conclusion. Good business leadership equates to be able to share the story behind those conclusions in a credible and authentic way with each and every stakeholder group - whether the leadership comes from HR or marketing.
Navjot painted a picture of a world in the future where companies are applying to prospective high potential employees for their service, rather than the other way around. We are definitely seeing that the HR and Marketing communities need each other like never before. The biggest challenge, however, is that both these groups need access to a third set of skills – that of world class 21st century business management. Neither HR nor marketing will lead until they can manage – otherwise each simply offers a world of empty promises.
After the Lane4 Conference on 11th, last week I was at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester. I have been to the conference most years since joining Lane4 just over 5 years ago. On one level it was a little sad to see the accompanying Exhibition this year – probably around 50% of the size of the event at its height. We are definitely seeing a market-place in transition. Jim Collins was discussing ‘How the Mighty Fall’ in the plenary session. Quite.
On one level I could take consolation from the fact that there were far fewer outplacement providers than recruitment providers unlike the HR Director Event in January. However, this time recruitment solutions were mostly delivering the search process online. James Caan was sharing ideas around how to maximise your online recruitment search. Ironically for an HR exhibition, it did a good job of communicating a feeling of ‘commodity trading’ people.
Against this fairly depressing backdrop, Wil James from Lane4 did a cracking job talking through the TUI Travel (Thomson and First Choice) merger integration process with Jacky Simmonds, TUI Travel’s Group HR Director. This was anything but a transactional piece of change management, as I will come back to.
Beyond the Lane4 session, the highlight for me was probably seeing an introduction of the CIPD’s ‘Next Generation HR’ work shared by the likes of BT and Nationwide. This picks up among other things on an emerging trend towards the blending of HR and marketing functions. To quote Andrea Cartright from Nationwide
“Over the past six months you might as well have called me a marketer. I have been wholly immersed in the marketing team redeveloping what the Nationwide brand is going to look like.”
This is a much needed development which our thinking and work in the sponsorship space plays directly into.
It was ironic given this to see that the latest CIPD report published is ‘The impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Employer Brand’.
http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/empbrand/_impact_employer_brand_summary.htm
While I think CIPD’s approach in the Next Generation piece is laudable, personally I think the notion of creating an approach for an employer brand is complete nonsense. Your company’s brand is simply the way people (employee or customer) talk about your organisation. If the HR and Marketing Directors are doing their job well, employees and customers are able to engage in a personal dialogue with your brand. If they are doing their job excellently, this results in positive word of mouth and referral. It is simply impossible to paint a different picture for employees than customers.
To this point, in the Lane4 / TUI session Jacky talked compellingly with strong supporting data about the pride with which TUI employees (whether they originated with TUI or First Choice) now talk about their organisation to friends and family. A caring and empathetically managed change process created more external ambassadors than a thousand pieces of stilted internal communications or 30 second television ads would have done. Each business has just one brand. HR and Marketing and both its custodians. Perhaps in five years time the empty stands at the CIPD Event will be filled by Martin Sorrell from WPP and his swathe of marketing agencies.
It’s been a few days now since our Client Conference, ‘From Fragile to Agile’ on Armistice Day, 11th November. It was our fifth year, and our client feedback is suggesting it was our best yet.
We try to schedule the day in such a way as to offer our clients the chance to design their own day. What continues to amaze me year-after-year is the sheer variety in the individual schedules which people select. Even clients who I think know personally very well!
For example, I was part of a session on the subject of the parallels between the London 1948 and 2012 Games with Rob Clarke, the Head of HR Operations from London Organising Committee for Olympic and Paralympic Games. Rob and I spoke at the same time as our clients from CRH shared their approach to investing in leadership development in a building products sector in the eye of the economic storm, and Mark Richardson with Greg Searle (both from Lane4) talking from personal experience about maintaining self belief under times of intense personal pressure and media scrutiny. It would be hard to find a more varied set of subjects, even for Lane4!
This blend also relates to how we position Lane4’s offer in the market-place. We aim to offer a hybrid of a world class leadership development consultancy (CRH). Our approach is driven from personal insight and experience (Mark and Greg) coupled with cutting edge research which marries both our understanding of elite performance in sport and business (Rob and I).
Interestingly when choosing their day, our clients spread themselves almost exactly evenly between the three sessions. No one area of our positioning or approach is more important than the other. We have the priviledge of working with a brand which sits at the intersection of these areas. It’s really gratifying to know our clients really valued the day. Roll on 2010!
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