Change is the only constant for organisations operating in the cyber-physical age. As a leader, you play a vital role in managing the disruption that can result from this but it’s your employees who are fundamental to ensuring that change within your organisation is successful and sustainable.

How do you engage your people to think like owners, and run with the design and implementation of change and new ways of working? Fostering an ownership mentality is an essential first step, and will ensure your team feels invested enough to voluntarily contribute to and drive change in the organisation.

Here are four ways to inspire an ownership mentality:

1. A defined state of idealism. Allow your employees the time and space to dream about what is possible for the organisation, and identify the gap between their current and ideal future state. This clarity alone can be motivating for employee ownership – people are more likely to devote themselves to a change process if they can define, and are invested in, the outcome. Uncover these insights through multiple channels, such as silent brainstorms, online design hackathons and surveys or focus groups, to maximise input, harness cross-organisation and cross-role collaboration, and generate excitement. Once the future state has been decided, communicate this clearly to the whole of the organisation. Invite and encourage your people to lead you there.

“Know who to mobilise in taking ownership for different aspects of the changes you want to make, by understanding what motivates them”

2. Intrinsic motivation for change. Know who to mobilise in taking ownership for different aspects of the changes you want to make, by understanding what motivates them. For example, those who want to prioritise work-life balance but consistently work overtime are likely candidates for trialling solutions to address this issue. Similarly, an employee who values efficiency but notices that tasks take longer than necessary might be motivated to evaluate and reinvent related processes. Understand your team’s interests, motivators and values. Considered alongside your organisation’s purpose, help them build their case for meaningful change. A sense of purpose is a powerful motivator, so it is important that your people understand how any given shift can contribute to something bigger.

3. Invitation and permission. Within your organisation lies a mountain of potential for creativity and innovation. How often do you truly tap into that potential? Encourage your team at all levels to think outside of the box, to suggest changes and new ways of working. Communicating and encouraging this kind of proactivity is the first step. Create an environment that fosters new thinking, and hire new people that perpetuate this innovative and courageous culture. Does your culture also support ownership? For example, is there a culture of holding oneself and others accountable for actions and commitments, or do employees assume that leaders are ultimately accountable and therefore shy away from responsibility?

Give your team power to determine how an outcome will be fulfilled. Introduce a clear and simple process for ideas to be raised, evaluated and refined, and make sure you build in some time for this kind of thinking to take place. For example, Google is well known for its 20 per cent rule, where employees are encouraged and provided with the means to spend around 20 per cent of their time on side projects. This is how Gmail was created.

“The phrase ‘give as good as you get’ is a golden principle for leaders, particularly when you wish to see people owning change initiatives”

4. Reciprocity. The phrase “give as good as you get” is a golden principle for leaders, particularly when you wish to see people owning change initiatives. Leaders and organisations who go above and beyond for their people are more likely to see this reciprocated in the efforts and commitment of their employees. Likewise, an organisation that is seen to value employee contribution is a beacon for employees to continue making those contributions. For an employee to take ownership over change, or an element of change, leaders need to provide autonomy, trust and resources to both enable and support involvement and drive. Some ways you can achieve this include:

• Accounting for innovation and change in team KPIs. This will minimise the risk of individuals feeling they are sacrificing their job performance to pursue an initiative that might have real positive impact for your organisation.
• Offer reward or recognition for employee contribution to change ideas or actions.
• Take the time to listen (e.g. a monthly or quarterly forum with no restrictions on seniority or role).
• Evaluate the resources (including time, human capital and technology) available to team members.

As a leader, change starts with you, but to really create an impactful shift, hand the reigns to your employees. It is your people who will ultimately see these changes through to success.

Image source: Depositphotos

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It found that boards and CEOs need a reality check around culture change and management, and in particular, there are five “hard truths” for companies around this:

1. Culture problems are pervasive
2. Culture problems are often immense
3. Larger organisations have larger culture problems
4. CEOs have trouble seeing culture problems
5. Organisations need HR as a professional culture partner

“Despite the wake-up call delivered by the Hayne Royal Commission, it is alarming to see a clear disconnect still remains across Australian businesses between the CEO’s impression of company culture and what is being felt at the frontline,” said Lyn Goodear, CEO of the Australian HR Institute (AHRI), which conducted the report.

“They have to take accountability for their company culture, culture change, and to ensure that competent HR backed by industry certification guides cultural change.”

HR team members proved the hardest critics of company culture, according to the research report which was conducted in conjunction with Insync and took in almost 1000 professionals across Australia.

The research found that 90 per cent of respondents agree/strongly agree that their organisation’s culture is critical to the successful execution of strategy, while 95 per cent agree/strongly agree that CEO and executive leadership behaviours have a significant impact on their organisation’s culture.

A further 92 per cent agree/strongly agree that their organisation should make the best use of its human capital, but only 20 per cent agree/strongly agree that their company culture currently reflects this.

Survey respondents were asked to identify where their company culture was and where it should be in relation to many survey items measuring ethics and sustainability, and around 22 per cent thought there needed to be some change and 34 per cent thought that significant change was required.

“It is alarming to see a clear disconnect still remains across Australian businesses between the CEO’s impression of company culture and what is being felt at the frontline”

4 keys to driving real culture change
The report also provided four guidelines for organisations and HR professionals to improve outcomes around culture and culture change.

1. Ask penetrating questions. It’s crucial to obtain a realistic view of the current culture, have a firm idea of the desired culture and a commitment to achieving it, according to the report, which said the organisation should be asking itself a number of questions, such as:

• How self-aware are your organisation’s CEO and executives? Do they know that most employees see a greater need for cultural change than most CEOs and executives?
• Are your board and executives united in their description of the organisation’s vision, expected values and behaviours, and of the company culture it hopes to have (in say, three years)? Do you have a robust plan to get there?
• Do your leaders communicate, reward and role model expected values and behaviours? Do they hold each other accountable individually and as a team?
• Do the Board and CEO realise the significant impact they have on your organisation’s culture and do they take accountability for the organisation’s culture and for cultural change (or lack thereof)?
• Have your leaders fully engaged your HR team in a way that ensures all people, systems, incentives and communications are aligned with your vision?
• Do you ensure that your senior HR team are industry certified and committed to continuous education in the same way as, for example, your finance team?

2. Conduct an internal reality check. The next step is to get qualitative and quantitative data that will provide a clear description and measurements of the current state of culture.

• Employee surveys and digital tools that provide real-time or longitudinal feedback are useful, but in isolation, are not sufficient to get true visibility. The data should serve as the motivation for change and be used as an ongoing benchmark for measuring shifts in cultural change.
• Responsibility should be assigned to key stakeholders from all layers of the organisation, who can offer ongoing insights and champion change.
• Culture is about how employees behave. Digital tools can provide insight and evidence, but skilled people are needed to understand, assess and manage the change process.
• Don’t do lots of measurement unless you have the resources to deal with and are also committed to change. Less measurement and more change are preferable.

“Recognise great behaviours and demonstrate visible consequence management of poor behaviours”

3. Set a vision and commit to change. Regardless of whether you already have a vision, there are key things to keep in mind if change is to be sustainable:

• Customers should be at the centre of your thinking and decisions.
• Aim for a worthy purpose that provides meaning and fulfilment. Don’t take this for granted, find out if your staff think you have succeeded.
• Tell stories and set up signs and symbols that help reinforce your vision.
• Ensure all systems, processes and incentives support the vision and the behaviours you expect.
• Recognise great behaviours and demonstrate visible consequence management of poor behaviours.
• Company culture must be a Board priority (the Board can be provided with a cultural report alongside financial reports).
• Most people value sustainability over short-term goals, so organisational purpose has to be core to cultural change.
• Measuring and role-modelling are great first steps, but a continuous and sustained leadership commitment will be required to show all staff that an ethical culture matters.

4. Make sure you have the right team

• To achieve all of the above, culture partners with the right expertise are needed to work alongside organisational leaders.
• It’s not enough to just have an HR team, it needs to have up-to-date skills and training because company culture is complex.
• Certified HR practitioners provide employers with the confidence that their HR partner has a high-level HR expertise and proven capabilities to support them in driving positive cultural change.

Image source: Depositphotos

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When most of us think about structure, we think about the hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority. Basically, we think about the ‘org chart.’ This is a simplistic and incomplete view of structure. Imagine if, starting today, the only way we could get work done in our organisation was through the formal lines of authority – what would happen? Nothing would happen.

We like to think of our organisation as a machine; something that can be pulled apart and put back together at will. The challenge, of course, is that every organisation is a living, breathing, ever-changing organism. As a result, there is no such thing as a perfect structure. All structures have imperfections and unintended consequences that must be managed – and this has important implications for organisational restructuring.

Changing reporting lines
Even the most rational structural change lands in a sea of human irrationality. Don’t believe me? If you want to see human beings lose their minds, just mess with their reporting lines!

The formal lines of authority are one important element of structure, but people have an exceptional ability to work around formal bureaucracies to get things done. We must also consider networks and relationships, as well as how people meet, how power and influence are distributed, how people communicate and how information flows.

Even when done well and for the right reasons, restructuring is usually demanding, disruptive and difficult for all concerned. Done poorly or for the wrong reasons, there is perhaps nothing more costly, debilitating or destructive to an organisation and its members.

We should only commence a process of restructuring if we are certain that it is needed, and that the rewards significantly outweigh the risks.

“If you want to see human beings lose their minds, just mess with their reporting lines!”

Behind the most common restructuring challenges
Unfortunately, this is not my experience of most structural changes. More often than not, restructuring is a solution looking for a problem; it’s applied too frequently and too arbitrarily, despite the best intentions of leaders. We often go through the pain, disruption and cost of restructuring, only to find that we are no better off.

When this happens, it’s usually because structure was neither the core issue, nor the right solution. Below are the five most common examples of this phenomenon:

1. New leader: many of us have been trained to believe that structural change is inevitable and these beliefs are amplified when we find ourselves in a new role. As a result, structural change is often nothing more than a new leader, in a new role, believing that they should.
2. Lack of strategic clarity: when people are not crystal clear on their organisation’s goals and strategy, they struggle to execute. This poor execution is misinterpreted as a structural problem. Structural change is made at great cost, only to find that execution remains poor.
3. Ineffective leadership: leaders become frustrated with passive behaviors in their organisation – such as avoidance or dependency – without realizing that their autocratic leadership is the root cause. At the other end of the spectrum, leaders don’t make decisions, or confront poor performance. Needless to say, structural change only exacerbates these issues. All leaders get the team they deserve, whatever the structure.
4. Poor standards: a leader desires collaboration among team members, but the historical norms of behavior encourage conflict and competition. A leader desires innovation, but the behavioral norms punish risk-taking. Rather than establish new standards of behavior and reinforce them, the leader makes structural change. Unfortunately, standards eat structure for breakfast, so the old behaviours persist.
5. Overreacting to a specific issue of decision rights: a decision conflict arises between two functions, such as sales and marketing. This could be symptomatic of a larger issue justifying significant structural change, but very often this is not the case. The root cause could be a process breakdown, a misunderstanding of who has what authority, or a tension that is natural and even useful in the process of making good decisions.

The core purpose of an organisational structure is to enable our aspirations, by organising our people, resources, and decision-making authority. In simple terms, an effective structure is nothing more than the right people, making the right decisions, at the right time.

Image source: Depositphotos

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Technology is driving a wave of change so great that the World Economic Forum has dubbed it the fourth industrial revolution. This change is fundamentally evolving the nature of work – what is done and how it’s done. HR professionals play a critical role in influencing and shaping how this impacts their organisation and helping executives and leaders to best thrive in this complex, ambiguous and ever-shifting environment.

To do that, the HR leader needs the optimal mix of technical and behavioural skills. Being technically brilliant is one thing, but it’s not the foundation on which to build a platform for influence. This is not self-serving influence, but influence which is focused on ensuring balanced outcomes, considering the needs of all stakeholders. Influential HR leaders, who strive to serve the greater good, do many things differently including:

• Taking the long view with relationships. They don’t sacrifice a relationship for short term, self-serving gain
• Treating everyone they meet with respect. They know that every interaction they have with a person matters because everybody wants to feel valued
• Not being afraid to take a stand and speak up against the majority on the things that are important – not just for them, but for other people as well
• Taking the time to listen to people and ensuring people feel fully heard when they are raising an idea or a concern
• Welcoming different thoughts, ideas and opinions as they know they don’t have all the answers
• Hiring people who are smarter than them. They know they need an awesome team around them if they are to make progress
• Being willing to admit when they make a mistake. They appreciate that it is only through understanding a mistake and why it happened that real change can occur
• Acknowledging the efforts of others and not taking the glory for successes that were not there’s or there’s alone

“Being technically brilliant is one thing, but it’s not the foundation on which to build a platform for influence”

In taking on board this approach and encouraging it in the leaders they work with, HR professionals need to seek to understand themselves, others and the organisational system in which they are working. If you want more influence in your HR role here are 10 tips to get you started:

1. Understand yourself. Examine the mindset you are applying to your work and relationships. Letting assumptions drive your thought processes, and ultimately behaviour, can negatively impact your decision making and interactions with colleagues and stakeholders.

2. Understand others. Take the time to understand what intrinsically motivates those around you. Having insight into others better enables you to work with them, and encourage and inspire them to secure common goals.

3. Understand the system. Know the system in which the organisation operates, and how the players inter-relate, make decisions, and secure outcomes. By understanding how the system works you are better able to navigate the complexity and find your way through the back door.

4. Maintain your integrity. Integrity once lost is almost impossible to regain. Guard it carefully and push beyond self-interest. Seek to play the better game in discussions and advocate positions that are not self-serving, but serve the greater good.

5. Get busy, on purpose. Influential people get things done. Be deliberate about how you use your time. Be decisive in how you make decisions. And lastly, be determined in the face of set-backs.

6. Play the long game. Seek to secure long term, constructive relationships which are mutually beneficial. One sided relationships – where it’s all about one person – don’t last. One person will eventually walk away.

7. Design your network. Be conscious about how you build your network. Identify relationship gaps and weaknesses, and put a plan in place to address.

8. Lead consciously. Be conscious of your actions and how they are seen by other people. Inconsistencies in what you say and do are easily seen by others. Your leadership is constantly on display, and remember that leadership isn’t defined by hierarchy.

9. Craft your communication. It’s not how much you talk, but what you say that matters. Ground your messages in reality and what people need to know. Keep it simple. Be empathetic, authentic and transparent.

10. Negotiate wisely. Strive to secure outcomes that leave all involved with their dignity intact. Build the necessary relationships early. Be ready for the negotiation process, and have the resolve to see it through.

As Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tzu said: “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened”.

Image source: Depositphotos

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There is a hard link between positive workplace culture and positive business outcomes, according to group executive – people and culture for Shape Group, Kate Evans, who explained that HR can play a critical role in successful cultural transformation through securing buy-in from the whole senior leadership team.

Shape Group is a leading commercial refurbishment specialist in Australia and in FY17 it delivered around 300 projects across Australia with a combined value of more than $500 million to clients including ASX listed firms as well as Federal Government departments across multiple states.

In the early 2000’s it embarked on an aggressive growth strategy, which saw an influx of new employees, including several leaders who had less constructive leadership styles.

Evans explained that this was a precursor to a toxic workplace culture which featured patches of aggressive employee behaviour, departments working in silos and a culture of one-upmanship.

“The influence of these personalities was palpable across several states where we have offices in Australia,” she said.

“When the GFC hit, we had to backtrack on this (largely unprofitable) growth and were forced to downsize our people numbers by more than a third; and our remaining people were insecure, vulnerable and disengaged.

“At Shape, we had always believed the organisations that thrive are those that attract, retain and inspire great people.

“We had lost our way in this regard,” said Evans, who explained that the company had two choices.

“Although we build things, the single most important thing we will ever build is a great place to work”

The first was to follow a “ruthless path of pure cost-cutting”, with all the associated fallout on its people and clients and engage in a race to the bottom, while the second was to reinvest in its people and rebuild the company’s workplace culture.

“Thankfully, we chose option two,” said Evans, and the company started the journey in 2014: “acknowledging that although we build things, the single most important thing we will ever build is a great place to work.”

Setting the strategy
There was inconsistent leadership across the business and employees’ experience was “vastly different” depending on the state they worked in, and the manager they reported to, according to Evans.

“To improve our workplace culture, we knew we first needed to increase the standard of leadership across the organisation,” she said.

“Being a construction company, we have a lot of analytical types and therefore it was important to choose a robust measurement and diagnostic tool to support this.”

After investigation, Shape Group chose the Human Synergistics LSI tool and all senior managers undertook LSI surveys, debriefs and coaching over a 12-month period.

“One of the challenges in this journey was being prepared to make the hard calls on people – particularly those in positions of influence who were not interested in being part of the journey”

Evans explained that the tool helped to set a shared vision for the standard of leadership behaviour at the organisational level, while providing each individual with awareness and development on how to improve their own personal effectiveness.

“We had invested a lot of our time in getting our senior leadership team to a consistent and constructive level, and the next step was to measure our culture to understand the impact,” she said.

A workplace culture measure was conducted in 2016, which helped identify the ways in which people believed they were expected to behave within the business, and upon analysing this data it was found that there was a strong correlation between the culture results and the business performance results of each state operation.

“Where a constructive culture existed, superior business outcomes were being achieved [and] where a defensive culture existed, less than satisfactory outcomes were the norm,” said Evans.

Not surprisingly, further analysis showed the individual leadership and state culture styles were mirrored, confirming that leadership drives workplace culture, and culture drives performance.

“This was a transformational moment for Shape and the members of the senior leadership team,” she said.

“From this point forward, culture measures became our key leading indicator of business performance.”

Challenges and outcomes
There were a number of keys to the successful transformation of Shape Group’s workplace culture, according to Evans.

“We believe behaviours filter from the top, so for us, success was ensuring we had a senior leadership team who not only shared the vision but were passionate about it,” she said.

“People who found difficulty in developing a constructive leadership style and were unable to transform their operations culture within the business were removed from the team.

“One of the challenges in this journey was being prepared to make the hard calls on people – particularly those in positions of influence who were not interested in being part of the journey.”

There have been a number of tangible benefits as a result, according to Evans, with significant changes in workplace culture measurements and the whole organisation shifting from a defensive culture to a highly constructive one over the past four years.

“With this shift has come significant improvement in traditional business performance metrics including safety performance, profit, employee engagement and customer satisfaction over this period,” she said.

The post How Shape Group’s HR leader drove workplace culture transformation appeared first on Inside HR.

The value of a strong network of contacts and collaboration at work has never been higher. Few people would instinctively argue otherwise, and there is a significant body of research that demonstrates the impact on business performance. Yet most organisations do little to enable this and activity is often fragmented and piecemeal, not part of a holistic strategy. To combat this your organisation should create a Head of Connections.

The business case for networks and collaboration
There is a range of reasons why networks and collaboration have become essential to success, both for individuals and businesses.

The amount of data – all potential sources of competitive advantage – is growing exponentially; 90 per cent of the information in the world today has been generated in the last two years. For companies, let alone individuals, to attempt retain and process the information relevant to their market or specialism is pointless, hence the shift from hiring and rewarding highly knowledgeable individuals towards encouraging collaboration and the creation of corporate hive minds through expanded networks.

The wider pace of societal and technological change also increases the importance of networking. Want to understand the implications of blockchain of fintech disruption on your retail bank? Far quicker to tap into your network or partner with a start-up than try and build that knowledge in-house.

And as the distinction between permanent employees and gig workers blurs, and technology enables global connectivity, collaborating effectively across these boundaries is essential.

The benefits are clear. One study showed that CEOs with a diverse network generated an increase in their firm’s value around 16x higher than their remuneration, and research has found that companies with well-connected Boards deliver better returns.

“As the distinction between permanent employees and gig workers blurs, and technology enables global connectivity, collaborating effectively across these boundaries is essential”

Collaboration is also a recognised driver of creativity. “Collaboration” and “Looking out” are two of the six principles Ideo identified as being vital to innovation, and teams who practice cross-pollination or interdisciplinary working are more likely to produce break-through ideas than their more siloed peers.

Current state
So why do most firms take such a fragmented and inconsistent approach to encouraging collaboration?

We worked with an investment bank that included “collaboration” as a key capability to recruit for, and emphasised this in its corporate values – but a key promotion metric was individual profit contribution. It’s not hard to guess which lever was more effective in driving behaviour.

Similarly, most professional services firms pitch to clients the chance to access their global pool of talent and then set the partners individual revenue targets, encouraging them to hoard talent and put their interests above the firm’s.

Even where organisations are taking a holistic approach, ensuring that they recruit, develop, manage performance, promote and reward their people in a way that consistently drives a network mindset and collaboration, this is not sufficient; the physical and technological environment has a vital impact on behaviour.

Encouraging the sharing of ideas is laudable, but if your firm blocks file-sharing, restricts cloud-based storage, or makes video conferencing expensive and difficult to access then you are sending out a contradictory message. And many global firms, particularly in regulated industries, will heavily limit the ability of their people to use the technology that was designed precisely to make network activity easier.

The physical work environment is also hugely important. Organisations such as Humanyze are using organisational network analysis to measure the impact of the physical environment, with one case study showing that a change in office layout to drive more collaboration led to an 11 per cent increase in bank branch performance.

“Many global firms, particularly in regulated industries, will heavily limit the ability of their people to use the technology that was designed precisely to make network activity easier”

All of this shows why encouraging collaboration is so difficult. There are so many different factors, behavioural, physical and technological, that enable it that in almost all organisations accountability sits across multiple roles and functions. No one team or person is responsible for mobile technology, office design and capability definition – unless you create a Head of Connections.

The job description?
So what should the Head of Connections do? Let’s look across the employee lifecycle, starting with recruitment.

Does your organisation’s brand emphasise collaboration and networking as a core cultural attribute? Does your marketing material reference it, and what tools are you using to screen candidates? Psychometric and AI-enabled assessments can all measure the relevant behavioural preferences, and managers can be equipped with appropriate interview questions to probe more deeply.

The onboarding experience is a key cultural touchpoint. Yes, the Head of Connections should guarantee the importance of building networks and collaboration is referenced in this activity, but the approach should be broader than this. They should ensure that inductions are organisation-wide not departmental, and there should be activities to help new joiners start to build their own networks. Managers should be tasked with encouraging and enabling this as part of the first 100 days.

Management and leadership development programs are a great opportunity to bring together peers from across the organisation and expose them to external ideas and organisations. Sessions should be designed to build cross-functional relationships, and tools such as peer coaching and alumni events for attendees can help maintain and reinforce networks.

“Once the business benefit is irrefutable – then the argument over whether the role is needed or not will surely be over”

The Head of Connections also has a vital role to play in talent identification and mobility. The definition of potential should incorporate breadth of experience and collaboration mindset. Future leaders should be identified in part on their track record of, and commitment to, working collaboratively. and the promotion and succession planning processes should include the same consideration.

Crucially, the performance management and remuneration should be aligned to drive collaboration. The law firm Herbert Smith Freehills took an innovative approach to this, incentivising their Partner community to deliver “revenue synergies“ following the merger in 2012, part of a broader drive to build and measure network performance and realise the full potential of the new organisation.

To be genuinely successful the role holder needs to focus on more than behavioural change. They need to work with the IT and Facilities teams to ensure that employees are provided with the tools and physical environment to enable collaborative working. This doesn’t mean they need to be an expert in all these disciplines but they do need to be willing to, well, collaborate and build networks to make it happen.

And last but not least, they should be responsible for measuring the power and impact of collaboration. This naturally means tracking employee attitudes through engagement and pulse surveys, but also using more advanced metrics.

Technology allows more sophisticated network analysis of email and phone traffic as well as physical movement. Changes in candidate behavioural profiles, the use of video conferencing, and career mobility can all be monitored.

And then there is the holy grail; the completion of deals or the generation of new revenue that wouldn’t have happened without collaboration. Once that is measured – once the business benefit is irrefutable – then the argument over whether the role is needed or not will surely be over.

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Few CEOs are as visible as Elon Musk. With this high profile comes a big reputation, and this, like so much else that surrounds the man, is polarised. Depending on your position he might be a charismatic visionary and inspirational leader actively exhibiting the traits of effective leadership; or he could be a loose cannon who can’t control his emotions and is self-destructing before our eyes.

Whether you think he’s good at it or not, he is undeniably a leader. And there are at least five things that you can learn from watching Elon Musk that will make you a better leader.

Effective leadership lesson 1: have a vision
Leadership, at its simplest, is about painting a vision of the future and persuading others to follow you there.

It’s a cliché to say that the pace of change has never been faster, but it’s true. And it’s not just the speed, but the complexity that is challenging for leaders. This creates doubt for investors and fear for employees.

Which means that the leader who can articulate a clear vision of the future for their organisation – and sell it to customers – has never been more important. Shareholders and workers are looking for leaders who can bring clarity and simplicity to their world.

Elon Musk is outstanding at this. He may not have founded Tesla but from the moment he invested he painted a vision of a petrol-free future that has inspired fanatical customers and passionate employees.

A leader with a vision can engage their people, inspire devotion in their customers and belief in investors. It’s a crucial skill.

“When Tesla production fell behind schedule he started sleeping in the office”

Effective leadership lesson 2: Show and build commitment
It’s difficult to persuade your people to give their best for your company if you’re not committed yourself. And if you’re going to influence a whole organisation then that commitment needs to be highly public, regularly communicated and deeply authentic.

Peter Bregman, author of Leading with emotional courage, cites commitment as one of the four critical qualities of great leaders. As he puts it, “you need to show up powerfully and magnetically in a way that attracts people to trust you, follow you, and commit to putting 100% of their effort into a larger purpose”.

Elon Musk creates commitment by demonstrating, “powerfully and magnetically”, his passion for his companies. When Tesla production fell behind schedule he started sleeping in the office. He talks about spending 100 hours a week at work. His tweets show a man obsessed with the success of his companies, and he will get involved in the smallest detail of production to try and make a difference.

This passion can inspire employees to give everything for the company, and it can attract talent from around the world. There’s a separate question about how effectively Musk channels his commitment to get the right results, but no-one can doubt that as a leader he is passionately and authentically committed to his work.

Effective leadership lesson 3: Make yourself dispensable
Jim Collins, who knows a thing or two about great companies, said that “the greatest leaders build organisations that, in the end, don’t need them.”

Few modern CEOs are quite as synonymous with their companies as Musk. As one analyst put it, “why would you invest in Tesla without Elon Musk? It doesn’t make sense.”

Not only is this potentially bad for company performance – research suggests that over-powerful CEOs are associated with more variable results – domineering leaders are neglecting one of the CEO’s primary roles, to develop their successor.

“Be confident, be realistic, above all be consistent in your messaging and you will stand a better chance of bringing people with you”

Developing the talent around you also allows you to delegate more, focus on the bigger picture and, bluntly, keep your sanity. Musk, however, is reputedly a micromanager, taking control of the smallest details.

Sam Abuelsamid of Navigant Research points out the risk: “ If you’re dealing with supply chain, manufacturing, design, validation, retail and the service side of the business – and then, in Tesla’s case, you have all the other business lines they are in – it’s just not possible for any one person to effectively manage all that.”

A key responsibility for you as a leader is to develop your people. This allows you to delegate more – in itself a great development tool – and focus on the few things that really drive results, as well as build the succession pipeline that gives investors confidence and your company more security.

Effective leadership lesson 4: Consistency of message
Effective leaders have a message and stick to it. This creates confidence among investors that you are focused on delivery, and reassures employees that they are working to a clearly defined goal.

Consistency is key. If the strategy or messaging change regularly then confidence is undermined. How can you trust that your leaders know what they are doing if they constantly alter direction or shift your priorities?

Musk is notorious for shifting direction, adjusting targets and missing deadlines. Last week he announced Tesla would close all its showrooms, less than two years after the company trumpeted plans to expanding their retail network. And one week later they have changed their plans. Tesla is infamous for regularly missing its production targets, and customers on the waiting lists are wearily accustomed to frequent delays as they wait for their cars to arrive.

As a leader it’s not enough for you to have a vision; you need to give your stakeholders confidence that you know how to get there otherwise the journey is going to be awfully lonely. Be confident, be realistic, above all be consistent in your messaging and you will stand a better chance of bringing people with you.

“If the strategy or messaging change regularly then confidence is undermined”

Effective leadership lesson 5: Role model the right behaviours
All organisations expect certain standards of behaviour from their employees. The detail of these standards varies but, some things are generally acknowledged to be unacceptable.

Responding to criticism by calling your accuser a paedophile, for example, or humiliating analysts who ask questions about company performance is typically frowned upon, and if an employee triggered a $20 million fine from their industry regulator and was then accused of flouting restrictions placed on them in the aftermath, this would most likely result in dismissal.

Leaders are responsible for enforcing such standards and by far the best way to do so is to lead by example. This is not only self-evident, but it’s also proven to lead to benefits such as reducing risk, lower rates of misconduct and less pressure to break rules.

Whether they like it the example leaders set will be followed by employees. It’s called transference, and it’s the “emotional glue that binds people to a leader“.

If nothing else, positive leadership makes enforcing company policy that much easier; disciplining a production line worker for inadvertently breaching automotive safety regulations is harder, for example, if they can point to your CEO’s track record of consciously ignoring explicit orders from a regulator.

Effective leaders need to be conscious of their position as role models and lead by example, setting the ethical and behavioural standards they expect their employees to maintain.

Elon Musk may not be the perfect leader but that doesn’t matter. There’s plenty that you can learn from watching him that will help you understand and improve your own effectiveness. Thinking about how you perform in these five critical areas will help you become a better leader yourself.

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There have been major leaps in HCM technology development in recent years, which require a different approach on the part of HR when it comes to building the business case for new cloud HR solutions.

Previously, businesses used capital/CAPEX to purchase software and then managed these systems in-house. However, cloud solutions reverse this model to being OPEX and the software is essentially leased on a per-employee per annum fee basis. Capex was traditionally owned by the CFO or CIO, but the HR OPEX budget is owned by the CHRO. So the responsibility for building a compelling business case in many instances has moved from the IT team to the HR team. This means that ownership of HCM technology doesn’t go away, but stays with HR – who needs to design, build, run and service all cloud HR solutions.

Bringing in different skillsets
Furthermore, building business cases for new HCM technology is not in the traditional capability skillset of HR, and requires a broader cross-functional perspective in order to be successful.

In my previous in-house HR roles, I have taken resources permanently out of IT and brought them into HR, because I wanted that technology capability skillset in HR. If I needed a project manager to set up a PMO like those run in IT, I would bring that resource over to establish this in the HR function to facilitate HR projects, for example. Because the responsibility for cloud HCM solutions sits with HR, you can bring in these IT resources because HR is now accountable to the executive, the CEO and the board for that activity within the business.

It is also important to utilise the skills and perspectives of other functions in the business in building the case for new HCM technology. Historically, HR has built and presented business cases from a purely functional perspective, rather than an organisational perspective – which starts with an understanding of what the business needs to achieve.

“Ownership of HCM technology doesn’t go away, but stays with HR – who needs to design, build, run and service all cloud HR solutions”

If you have a stakeholder set that covers the entire business, this is critical to the decision maker(s) who will decide on whether your business case gets executive approval. It’s not about building an HR proposal, but rather it’s about building a holistic business case which is positioned as a genuine benefit to the broader business. Then you are talking their language, because you are engaging with them on the things that matter to them about business success.

4 critical elements in building the business case
Too often, HR business cases are challenged or are not successfully approved by executive teams and there are some critical aspects that can improve the chances of your HCM technology business case getting approved.

1. Focus on business value.
Too often the HR business case is only a financial description of tangible cost to the business. Presenting your case in this light can significantly reduce potential for success. A business case is the opportunity to qualify (and quantify) the business value (Benefit – Cost = Value) of the proposed HCM solution.

Some benefit assumptions could be:

• This technology enables the organisation’s HR/HCM strategies (and the benefits/ROI already identified) to align with the executive team and business planning process
• Cloud HCM supports the development of the organisation’s digital culture transformation
• Cloud HCM provides a compelling employee experience and work interface that builds engagement, productivity and retention
• Aligning the employee experience with the customer experience digitally
• Cloud enablement of HR, finance, marketing/CRM, supply chain, project management etc – all to work together on the same application. Often HR only looks at the functional solution and misses the opportunity to collaborate with other corporate functions and develop a collaborative proposal (especially with finance), which provides an even more compelling business case (and engages the CFO and other executives).
• Releasing manager, employee and HR capacity to focus on strategic business activity rather than administration
• Establishing and reinforcing your employment brand externally and internally and positioning your business as a digital leader
• Appealing to and attracting a technology-driven workforce (i.e. millennials)

“Too often the HR business case is only a financial description of tangible cost to the business”

• Robust HR data to base HR analytics and workforce modelling to enable better forecasting, people cost management and organisational capability modelling to avoid future talent shortages
• Cloud introduces modern HR processes (internal talent management, volunteering, succession planning, workforce modelling, social learning etc.) which are new HR services that generate new returns for the business

2. Focus on technology benefits

• Data and HR technology security. Having your data and application well protected by world-leading providers with local data centres and few (if any) third party providers are all security considerations
• Rapid availability of new technology and application development with quarterly updates
• Transparency over total cost of ownership. What is the total cost of managing your current HR applications?
• Opportunity to consolidate or cease legacy technology systems, reducing licencing and maintenance costs and risk

3. Cost and efficiency

• Cloud HCM provides cost reduction opportunities (technology, HR, reduced manual processes, increase speed and reduced duplication of administration). It has been well demonstrated that cloud services can demonstrate superior ROI, and a recent report from Nucleus Research, a global provider of investigative, case-based, technology research, found that cloud application projects deliver 3.2 times the ROI of on-premise ones.

4. Project cost

• Rather than leading with project costs, the recommendation is to build a ‘benefits-based HCM case’ first, so that the executive understands the positive benefits to the business, customers and people – positioning the proposal on value (and not just cost).
  Once the benefits (tangible and intangible) are recognised it is still important to present a well-defined statement of project cost (application/licencing, implementation and internal change management costs)

“The road to cloud HR adoption is more agile and more iterative, in which you implement, evaluate and move on”

Where to start?
HR professionals are sometimes stuck or procrastinate in this process, because they don’t know how or where to start. The best thing to do is just start. With cloud HCM technology, the process is different to that of the past in which HR built up momentum to get a proposal for many millions of dollars to spend all at once on a new HR system.

However, with cloud HCM technology – the process is simpler in that it can be adopted and rolled out in stages (based on modules). So make a start now, do some pilots, get a business case together and build out a roadmap which paves the way for full adoption. The road to cloud HR adoption is more agile and more iterative, in which you implement, evaluate and move on.

It might take three years to get there, so don’t think that you have to get everything designed and perfect before you undertake this project. This way, you also reap the benefits to the business two or three years earlier, rather than waiting for funding for a full implementation. A staged rollout is a better approach, and this is what modern cloud HCM solutions allow for.

If you need help with building the business case for an HCM cloud solution, please email Rowan Tonkin or for more information on Oracle cloud HCM solutions, visit their Human Capital Management Quick Tours. 

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How strong is your HR team’s brand? Contemplate for a moment how the leaders and staff in your organisation perceive your team and the value you bring. In what ways does this reputation impact upon your ability to make a real and meaningful difference to your organisation’s success?

Based on empirical research including over 100,000 respondents, leading HR expert David Ulrich identified nine factors that have the greatest influence on the effectiveness of HR departments. On the top of that list is reputation. In other words – what your team are known for, has the biggest impact on how well your team is able to perform.

It’s an unfortunate reality however that HR teams often struggle to earn the credibility and respect needed to be a truly effective business partner. Among the most important steps you can take to build the HR brand and optimise the reputation of HR in your organisation are:

1. Know your business
Your ability to link HR priorities with business strategy is key. Demonstrate well-developed understanding of what it takes to make strategy happen. Provide data and advice that is focused on driving business results.

Be known also for your knowledge of the context within which your business operates. Knowledge of your industry and general business trends together with your customers and shareholders expectations are vital to building a strong HR brand.

2. Deliver
No matter your good intentions, the depth of credibility you earn is ultimately determined by the outcomes you deliver. Avoid the all too common excuse of busyness standing in the way of progress. While the workload of HR departments can be unpredictable, adopt a disciplined approach to balancing the demands of today with the needs of tomorrow.

“‘What exactly does HR do?’ is a question asked all too often by managers and staff”

3. Be accountable
Among the most commonly reported complaints about HR is a lack of accountability for the outcome. Offering fewer excuses and more solutions is essential to credibility. Sharing ownership of people outcomes with the leaders your support will go a long way toward building trust and in turn partnerships.

Take for example staff turnover. How often have you heard an HR professional argue they can’t be held responsible for the rate at which people choose to leave the organisation? While of course it’s true that the direct report manager has the greatest influence on this outcome, its side-stepping accountability to say the least, to suggest there is nothing HR can do.

4. Educate
“What exactly does HR do?” is a question asked all too often by managers and staff. To what extent do the people in your organisation understand the services your offer and ultimately ways in which you can support them to achieve their objectives?

Engage in conversations with leaders across your organisation about what they need to achieve through their teams and the support role you can play. Educate people about the ways in which they can leverage your team’s capabilities, by showcasing what you. Be visible and demonstrate your active engagement in the day to day operations of the business.

5. Coach
Take a hands-on role to coaching leaders at every level of the organisation to enable them to both grow and succeed. Place priority on developing the ability of managers to themselves coach the people they are responsible for. Teach leaders how to avoid the headaches they most often experience, and soon they will be coming back for more.

“Get rid of ridiculous policies that do little to protect the organisation and a lot to undermine trust and respect with your workforce”

6. Be commercial and pragmatic
Intelligent insight and sound judgement are essential to earning the trust and respect of the people you advise. Be educated about the information and guidance leaders need to reach the right decisions. Understand the context within you are being asked for advice, and what this means for the strategies that need to be applied.

Understand the difference between what is ideal and what is achievable. Be willing to look for alternative solutions if the advice you offer is met with resistance. Within the boundaries of integrity and the law, there is typically more than one way of going about something. Demonstrate a balanced approach that takes into consideration all of the business’s needs, not just a fixed HR agenda.

7. Use policy wisely
HR policies lay down the boundaries within which people are expected to operate. While essential to managing the employment-related risks of a business, HR leaders are wise to avoid an overly prescriptive approach or demanding style. Leverage policies to explain the rules of engagement, but allow room also for people to use their judgement.

Get rid of ridiculous policies that do little to protect the organisation and a lot to undermine trust and respect with your workforce. Take for example the policy of one organisation that prescribes the need for all staff to shower daily, use deodorant and present at work with clean fingernails. If the aim is to tell people they are neither trusted nor respected, this policy will work. Let’s face it; if someone has hygiene issues the only way to resolve that is through honest, respectful, courageous conversation.

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Cedric was the maintenance chief in a manufacturing plant’s five-day operation that was under pressure to get more with less. He was charged to find a way to keep up regular maintenance service of the production lines with minimal overtime and without losing any production time.

After examining some alternatives, Cedric drafted a plan for maintenance to be performed on a few lines each Saturday (normally a down day). Production team members working on the maintenance Saturday would take the following Monday off, thus avoiding their working overtime. Only a few of Cedric’s maintenance staff would be working overtime on Saturday. It seemed to be a perfect solution to his challenge. Here is a logic map of Cedric’s plan:

Monday following this first maintenance, Cedric reported a successful experience with all maintenance work completed and only a small amount of overtime. The production manager was pleased.

Forgotten systems strike back
The next day when the Saturday production workers returned to work, they bombarded the HR manager with complaints: “I will never work on a Saturday maintenance again,” said one. Another colleague offered, “There I was working side by side with a maintenance planner; he was getting paid overtime and I wasn’t. That’s not fair.” Even a well-respected thought leader, one who always advocated support of company decisions, said, “Working Saturday destroyed my family outing plans. Then being off on Monday by myself – while everyone else was at work or school – was a big waste.”

Cedric’s focus on only a part of the whole stakeholder ecosystem had solved one problem, but created several others that would take considerable time and energy to repair. In reality, here was the ecosystem Cedric was dealing with:

I use the term ecosystem intentionally to illustrate how any business operates in a system of multiple needs that coexist in a delicate balance. When we see the full map of Cedric’s well-intentioned plan, the “right” solution didn’t seem to be so right. The positive impact on cost control and maintenance efficiency was more than offset by the negative impacts on work-life balance with a disrupted family weekend, a poor off-day substitute (Monday), and no overtime pay compared with the maintenance colleagues. The production team members were anything but enthusiastic about the plan and their loyalty to the company was diminished in the moment and might erode further in the future.

Cedric was victimised by his sole focus on maximising efficiency.

Systems thinking can prevent false starts
Managers who are building a corporate culture are working with an ecosystem even more complex than Cedric’s. Any part of an ecosystem that seeks to maximise its own needs at the expense of other critical needs is jeopardising the whole system’s future.

Systems thinking is the term used to describe the requisite view of the whole ecosystem. It means you view all tasks as parts of a larger process and all individuals/departments as part of a larger team effort. With this view, you see an organisation as a system that is sustained by how well its parts are aligned to the same purposes.

History teaches us that only 25-30 per cent of organisational change efforts deliver the desired results. Many of these change architects, like Cedric, no doubt focused on the pieces of the system they believed needed to be changed to meet their objective, only to be surprised and disappointed by the result. Systems thinking can help you avoid such false starts.

Tips for systems thinking
Remember Aristotle’s principle of synergy: the whole is greater (and different) than the sum of its parts. Attempts to optimise any one part may sub-optimise the whole.

Here are five tips to help you apply systems thinking to your business ecosystem:

1. Identify the most critical stakeholders involved. Be sure to look internally (associates, teams, departments, and functions) and externally (customers, suppliers, communities).

2. Define a set of outcomes that will win the commitment of each critical stakeholder group. These outcomes should be the few critical needs that will make or break your survival in the future. Fulfil the most critical stakeholder needs better than anyone else, and you will have all the business you want.

3. Map out a process to deliver the outcomes and identify which team members need to do what at each process step. A generic example of such a process:

4. Provide process team members with the information and training they need to add value to the outcomes. This might include such things as task assignments, skill requirements, and other information critical to high performance.

5. Get feedback from the stakeholders. Find out how well their needs have been fulfilled. Plan ways to improve your outcomes continuously in the future.

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