Category Archives: MBA Questions

Difficult questions in HR Strategy and EB-HR that I have either set or plan to set for my regular MBA class.

The Alternative Theory Theory

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How many of the things you plan to do today are based on sound theory?  If you work in HR you might be running an assessment centre, organising an employee survey or developing a competence policy.  Each one of these is working to an implicit theory – the theory of employee assessment says you will make better selections; satisfied employees perform better; competence development means effectiveness.  You might have assumed that someone, somewhere must have tested these theories out at some time, and that the practices you are following are already validated by evidence.  You could pause to check whether these theories exist and what evidence they are based on.  Alternatively, you could come up with a different theory yourself.  I call this the Alternative Theory Theory.  It states that for every theory that tries to explain human behaviour there is an equally plausible alternative that adopts exactly the opposite perspective.  Let’s try it out.

The most obvious contender is the employee-customer-profit chain theory.  It predicts that if you have engaged and satisfied employees they will look after the customer better and you will make more profit.  This theory, based on false correlations between employee engagement and company performance, led to the exponential growth in employee surveys over the last 20 years.  The obvious alternative theory is that good companies with good business models, providing customers with what they want at the right price, will be nicer places to work and employees will be more satisfied working there. This theory predicts that unless and until you get your business model right you might be wasting time and effort on trying to engage your workforce in a poorly managed business.

How about the theory of management education?*  The theory goes something like this, I think – management education has to be taught by management academics and the best management academics are those who do lots of research and write lots of papers, peer reviewed by other academics, none of whom has actually proven themselves to be great managers with clear evidence.  Actually, that does not sound like much of a theory at all does it?  OK here’s an alternative theory.  If you are a very ambitious manager you need the best CV to further your career.  The best CV’s have the best business schools on them and I know they are the best because ..…. hmmm, no I don’t like where this theory is heading either.

Let’s have another go at explaining why managers go to business schools.  Here’s a better alternative theory.  It does not matter what you learn, if anything, from your business school as long as everyone else regards it as one of the best business schools.  That means image is more important than substance so business schools play whatever games they have to in order to come top of the league tables of business schools. So the league tables are based on measures such as “faculty with doctorates”, presumably because there is a theory somewhere that having a doctorate not only makes you a better teacher but also, presumably, that you teach managers how to perform better?  I would be very interested to see the evidence that backs up that theory.  Or you can see “salary increase” or “career progression” as indicators of how good the business school is.  Hmmm, this is already starting to sound like another one of my favourite Alternative Theories, the Circular Argument Theory.

The problem with circular arguments is that eventually you disappear up your own orifice.  In fact Harvard’s traditional ‘case method’ of teaching was such a glaring example of the Circular Argument Theory that they have abandoned it.  Funnily enough though, they are still No.1 in the latest 2013 US News ‘Best Business School Rankings’ where no mention is made of Harvard’s break with its past and, as yet, unproven future.  Harvard itself makes no mention of whether Evidence-Based Management is on its new curriculum either.

Last but not least, what about the theory of why CEOs employ HR people?  The obvious theory is simply that they need HR but that does not explain why they need HR.  There are at least two alternatives. One is that it makes the CEO look like he or she gives a damn about their people.  Another is that they employ HR departments purely to keep them out of court.  A third, which gets a bit closer to the truth, is that managing people well takes a lot of thought and consideration and is damned hard work, so they would rather get someone else to do it for them. My personal choice of Alternative Theory is the simplest of all and is the one that explains absolutely everything – CEOs simply don’t have a clue why they employ HR.  That is because the business school they attended never presented any evidence as to HR’s real value.  Oh dear, we’re back to the Circular Argument Theory.  So who is going to help us all break out of this pernicious cycle with some evidence? Hmmm.

*PS. If anyone knows of an evidence-based theory of management education could they please let me know where I can find it?

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EB-HR is designed to manage the illogical behaviour of rational people

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News of the UK’s recent experience of the panic-buying of petrol (gas) by motorists will probably be of little interest to anyone outside of the UK but for students of organisational behaviour and EB-HR there is a very important lesson here.  It is usually assumed, especially by economists, that most individual human beings of reasonable intelligence will act rationally but, collectively, they often act illogically.

The rational motorist who fears that there will be a shortage of fuel will want to fill up their tank; encouraged to do so by the sight of very long petrol station queues.  The same rational being will equally realise that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if everyone follows suit the fuel will run out much sooner and some motorists will have to go without. This subjects all of us to that classic dilemma of personal survival: weighing our selfish interests against the common good.

The same dilemma faces many employees on a regular basis.  When a rational employee makes a mistake they know they should let everyone know and try to ensure it does not happen again.  The same rational employee will take into consideration the behaviour of everyone else in the organisation.  If admitting your mistakes is generally regarded as career-limiting the same, rational employee will reason that it is not in their interests to own up, knowing that if everyone does the same this will inevitably lead to disaster, either for the individual concerned or the organisation as a whole.

Anyone wanting to be an HR director that actually makes a significant difference will have to have a strategic solution to this dilemma.  If they don’t there is plenty of evidence to show that the survival instinct is always going to triumph over the greater good.  So it might be instructive, if only from a risk management perspective, to consider collecting evidence of how individual rationality is being crushed by collective illogicality.  How about trying to measure how many employees -

  • fiddle their expenses
  • are afraid to voice what they believe are great ideas
  • turn a blind eye to bullying, harassment etc.
  • accept poor performance
  • buy toxic mortgages books to make their bonus

… actually this could turn out to be an extremely long list.

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Did Jack Welch ever square the people-profit circle?

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The perennial debate about whether to put profit before people, or vice versa, has been reinvigorated in the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008 amidst growing anxiety as to how Western capitalism might evolve in the light of emerging alternatives.  Yet at the very heart of this debate is the very obvious point that profit and people are always in danger of being diametrically opposed.  Profit often appears to come at the expense of people when jobs are cut.  Shareholders may think their investments are not best served by putting people first.

Equally obvious to most rational employees is that they are multiple-stakeholders themselves by virtue of simultaneously being citizens and customers as well; dependent on each other for wealth and welfare.  This is not that complicated a formula is it?  So why do so many CEOs seem to struggle to convince both their employees and their shareholders that this formula can work in everyone’s interest?  Maybe it’s because they have not convinced themselves yet: they have not managed to square this particular circle in their own minds, never mind those of their shareholders.

Jack Welch, who became infamous for being ‘neutron Jack’ and ‘forced ranking Jack’, certainly looked after his GE shareholders very well for many years so how did he eventually come to the conclusion in a Financial Times interview in 2009 that

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world”?

Was this really a Damascene conversion at the end of his career or just a very obvious and natural conclusion that anyone as logical and business focused as Jack was bound to reach at some point?  Of course pursuing shareholder value, to the exclusion of everyone else’s value and values*, is a dumb-ass idea.  Why the hell would rational employees want to give their all to shareholders?  What is in it for them?  How many of us jump out of bed every morning fired up by shareholders’ selfish interests?

There is no doubting that Jack Welch has to be regarded as one of the most talented managers of the 20th Century but what of his legacy?  His views are expressed in a 2010 You Tube interview (9 years after he left GE) along with those of his successor, and current Chairman of the Board, Jeff Immelt.  Does their reasoning convince us that Welch and Immelt have revolutionised management thinking from a human capital perspective?  Welch’s management methods became standard fare on most MBA classes so students should be asked what lessons can be drawn for the future?  To what extent was GE’s business strategy (and therefore its HR strategy) focused just on narrow shareholder interests?  Have Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt really unearthed any new management secrets (apparently not if we read the comments posted on the You Tube clip)?  If Jack Welch were to run GE again today how would he do it any differently?  He is further quoted by the FT as realising that

“Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy …. Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

So would he convince today’s shareholders that a different HR strategy would actually result in even better returns?  Would this necessitate a GE strategy that treats its people as both employees and citizens, thereby truly reflecting the society it serves?   After all, what form of capitalism can ultimately prevail that does not satisfy society at large?  Society can only be expected to wholeheartedly support organisations that have society’s best interests at heart.  This is surely the only virtuous circle that can possibly be fashioned from the one-cornered square currently occupied by those shareholders with a narrow field of vision?

The greatest lesson that may yet arise from the present malaise is the realisation that many of our erstwhile ‘leaders’ actually have no idea how to help produce a more enlightened form of capitalism; one that can continue to compete successfully against any variant on the horizon. Perhaps that is Leadership Secret number 30 that will eventually rise to the surface on MBA and leadership programmes?

*See also ‘The Value Motive. The only alternative to the profit motive.’

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Kill the ‘Leadership Team’!

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No, of course I am not inciting anyone to literally go out and kill their ‘leadership team’ – I mean let’s kill off the notion that any group of executives or managers should ever be allowed to call themselves the Leadership Team.   What arrogance!  What brass neck!* The sheer, barefaced cheek of it!  There is so much wrong with this ridiculous title it is difficult to know where to start?  Perhaps a bit of humility would not go amiss?

After the hubris before the crash of 2008, and the body of evidence exposing the mismatch between executive reward and performance, surely we need to herald in an era of leadership humility.  ‘Leadership team’ should be legally banned; just as one might ban CEO’s ever referring to themselves as king, emperor or tsar.  Oh no, I’ve said it now, and probably made it worse by giving the madder ones an idea.

Look guys (and gals) – get this into your heads once and for all (they are certainly big enough) -

Great leaders don’t need to call themselves leaders. 

Leadership is one of those words that can never be self-referential; like integrity, honesty, professional, trustworthy.  It has to be earned; it can never be conferred.  It is in the eye of the beholder – these things are for us to decide -  we who have to suffer you.  The trendy academics might like to refer to us as ‘followers’ – an awful term that suggests we are mindless – but we are not.  In fact leaders with mindless followers is the last thing we want – you know what sort of behaviour that leads to, don’t you?

We will probably never reveal whether we are being led by you, or whether we trust you.  In fact we may well change our minds on a daily basis: leadership and ‘followership’ are not constant.  Even if we do your bidding it is just as likely to be an accurate indicator of how much we really fear you.  You will probably only find out what we really think of you when you are dead – if you know what I mean.  Oh no, I’ve done it again, I can just see the narcissistic, ultra-egotists employing their PR experts to plant false rumours of their demise to find out what the reaction might be.  That way lies madness.

Great leaders just lead, by definition.  Pretenders might have executive accountability (if we are lucky) or just management responsibilities but that does not automatically infer leadership.  It is an imprecise and over-used term. If you mean ‘executive group’ or ‘senior team’ then fine, just say so.  But ‘top team’ is not acceptable.  Top of what?  Top dog?  Top in what sense?  Oh yes, of course, top of the pyramid, like some ancient pharaoh.  The bigger the pyramid the better the leader?  Mine’s bigger than yours?  The very antithesis of leadership – if you’re on the top then we must all be at the bottom – that’s just what we all want to hear and feel – very motivational, very inspiring.

Maybe top profits?  Well if leadership = profit be careful whose company you keep and make sure you get your timing right.  If the ‘top people’ are such great leaders why did only 16 out of the FTSE 100 CEOs survive the first decade of the 21st Century?  Hardly long enough to lay the first foundation stone is it?  Of the ones that did survive there is at least one self-proclaimed micro-managing, detail obsessive, control freak among them.  Take my word for it, hyper-management is not a pretty sight, nor is it leadership.  Enough already – just kill the ‘leadership team’ bit.

If anyone would like to start a drive to remove ‘Leadership Team’ from their organisation charts here’s my blessing and a random sample to start.  Please write to the chairs of these organisations either to express ridicule (the perfect antidote to false gods) or just pass on this suggestion.

3i

Citizens Bank

Goldman Sachs

Laing O’Rourke

WPP

*no sense of shame

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Is profit the best way to motivate and manage people?

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At a time when the fundamental tenets of capitalism are being closely re-examined  this question is now more relevant and urgent than ever.  So those interested in EB-HR should welcome a unique, real-time experiment that is now underway in the UK’s NHS (National Health Service) because it will inform this debate like no other.  Here, a privately-run, profit-making business will be running a ‘free’ health service, in a taxpayer-funded hospital, within a not-for-profit health system.  What an unusual mix of systems and ethos?  Yet its success could fundamentally re-shape our notions of the most appropriate organisational entity to create the greatest value from the motivation and capabilities of human capital.

At the very least it challenges the simplistic distinction usually made between the profit and not-for-profit sectors; which creates a false dichotomy suggesting very different motives and psychological contracts at play.  Such a distorted view was always in danger of reinforcing misguided assumptions about the different levels of performance and value achievable by different types of organisational entity.  In private companies the goal of financial rewards is expected to drive high performance while in the governmental/public sector employees are expected to have a vocation and be more publicly spirited: the two do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Recent events have certainly reminded us that whilst the most powerful drivers of ambition and greed can result in very successful and valuable businesses they can equally cause huge failures and misery.  But there is also plenty of evidence, certainly in the UK, that public sector management often performs particularly poorly.  It is unfortunate therefore that there are so few examples to show us what non-profit organisations are really capable of or whether they can offer a better alternative to compete with the best of the private sector.

If you read the article you will see that reference is made to the ‘John Lewis Model’, which is one of the few examples where a more socially-inclined enterprise has competed directly and successfully with ‘hard-nosed’, market driven, publicly quoted companies for nearly a century.  It is based on the very obvious notion that employee ownership (or at least partnership in the John Lewis case) should create an environment where employees have the greatest personal motivation to give of their best. This is why some politicians are heralding it as not only one way forward  for companies but as a model for economic progress and social cohesion

Of course the world will be watching this experiment with great interest and, if it succeeds, most management textbooks will have to be re-written to cope with a completely different type of organisational entity, founded on a very sophisticated psychological contract, that can see great good coming out of the combined goals of profit and public service – otherwise known as value to society.

For a more complete answer to my own question see The Value Motive

Postscript.

Union resistance to NHS plans

Decline in nursing compassion?

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Hating HR is easy – coming up with a better alternative is damned difficult

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HR is a very easy target.  I should know, I have worked in it for over 30 years and taken as much abuse as anyone else; usually from those who haven’t got a clue what they are talking about.  But I can also dish it out, openly criticising HR, in the hope that it will change for the better.

I do so in the knowledge that supportive ‘families’ will take criticism (and ridicule) from other family members that they will not accept from outside.  This was the fundamental problem with the infamous ‘Why we hate HR’ by Keith Hammonds back in 2005.  Keith is an outsider and has done nothing to resolve whatever problems he thought he had identified.  He also failed to recognise that the ‘we’ he refers to (every operational manager I have ever met), who apparently ‘hate HR’, are as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

Don’t get me wrong Keith, you certainly possess a keen intellect, a sharp sense of humour and the accuracy of a sniper in picking off many of your HR targets.  You also made some positive suggestions, repeated in a more recent update of your views, showing that you went -

“beyond criticism to offer five ways to work well: Say the right thing; measure the right thing; get rid of the “social workers”; serve the business; and make value, not activity.”

So what sort of mental process led you to conclude that ivory tower academics like Ulrich (who talks about value but never defines it), Gratton, Boudreau and Lawler would know the ‘right’ thing to do?.  They are a main part of the problem – teaching methods that just don’t work in the real world.  As one might expect from a journalist this is a classic case of talking the talk, rather than walking the walk.  How do you define value Keith?  Your current LinkedIn profile tells us that you are now working for Ashoka, which “envisions an Everyone A Changemaker™ world“, and you are -

“Starting up an initiative, with core funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to identify, support, and connect entrepreneurs whose innovations promise to inform, engage, and connect people in powerful ways that advance democratic society.”

Sorry Keith, but to borrow one of your own phrases aimed at HR – “I have no idea what you’re talking about”.  It all sounds like a lot of activity and that key word ‘value’ does not feature.  Perhaps, in the deepest recesses of your psyche, you are really just another pink and fluffy HR type of guy desperate to come out of the closet?  Such empty rhetoric would certainly make you feel at home in any HR department that would have you.

I’m sure your colleagues at Ashoka have very good intentions – just as many of the HR people I have worked with do – but turning good intentions into value is a tough challenge; especially when the system that we are all subject to says the only thing that really matters is profit rather than value.  Not-for-profit organisations do not change that system, even if they make the people who work in them feel better about themselves, and social enterprise is, to say the least, a very shaky concept (see ‘The Value Motive’).

Constructive criticism is always valid and should be welcomed but only the right actions create value.  Number one on the current HR to-do list is not saying the right thing but doing the right thing and, as I am sure you would concur Keith, that has to start with ‘measuring the right thing’.  I will be the first to admit that is easier said than done; especially when organisational leaders (sic) don’t know the fundamental difference between profit and value.

By the way Keith, if you are listening, hating people who don’t know what they are talking about does not help them to understand or learn – the two reasons I came into HR in the first place.

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Harvard Business School finally wakes up to learning by doing

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For anyone interested in progressive management education at the highest professional standard there is a must-read article in the Economist (December 3rd 2011 p.75) entitled “Field of dreams – Harvard Business School reinvents its MBA course”. It features the next stage in the strategy of its new Dean, Nitin Nohria, to achieve the same level of professional kudos for management as that already enjoyed by medicine and law.

In one sense it heralds a complete break with HBS’s convention of classroom-based, case study teaching by injecting the principle of “Learning by doing” into the curriculum.  This is only an experiment at this stage under the acronym FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) because the academics have not welcomed this development with open arms but the aim is simple – to help MBA students “with the practical application of management studies”.

Any manager turned teacher (like yours truly) will wonder why it has taken HBS so long to wake up to the notion that management can only be a practical subject – it does not exist in a text book and case studies always come with several Catch-22 provisos – they are out of context, come with a ‘not-invented-here’ tag and any competitive advantage they might have offered has already been exploited.  It is for these reasons that I can only applaud Dean Nohria’s efforts to fundamentally change the curriculum – but he needs to go much, much further.

Apparently “what happens in the second year of the new course is still being worked out” but the first year already includes –

  • team-building exercises
  • a week’s work experience
  • seed money of $3000 to launch a small company

So far nothing new – even though it adds “10-15%” to the already very high costs – but if Dean Nohria is looking for ideas for the second year here are a few suggestions –

  • A special addition to the programme – Evidence Based Management – starting by asking whether the team-building exercises actually worked?
  • A course in humility to run alongside the “Leadership Development” element – pointing out the mistakes made by previous Harvard alumni as well as their successes
  • An extra week’s work experience focusing specifically on ‘human being’ management – working alongside ordinary people and listening to their perspective
  • A refresher course in the latest thinking in behavioural economics, particularly the management issues around irrational behaviour (watch the video to see how irrational even the Economist is)
  • A week’s work experience for the teaching staff to remind them what it is like in the real world

Of course one key stipulation is that all of these suggestions have to be checked for practical application by the students, with honest feedback given on the results achieved.  By doing so I am absolutely confident that all of these would help HBS to restore its reputation and improve the professional image of management enormously.  I will be closely watching this experiment for, as the article concludes “.. where Harvard leads other universities may follow”.

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Organisational Maturity 3 – Off the scale, on a road to nowhere

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If you are interested in improving your HR maturity level visit IHRM -  The Institute of HR Maturity

The Learning and HR Maturity Scales explored in Parts 1 and 2 only apply to organisations that really mean what they say about making the most of their people.  They have been designed to offer such organisations a clear and coherent direction of travel towards a strategic, systemic and holistic approach to human capital management.

Of course some organisations, even if they understand the concept of organisational maturity, would not necessarily choose these particular models, which begs the question – what do they use instead?  If no model is followed it is no wonder that so many HR functions are chaotic and reactive.  Presumably some do have their own evolutionary and developmental continuum but where do they get their ideas from?  These Maturity Scales have been developed from the very best organisations I have ever personally encountered (see The Top 10 in HCM); they were not conjured out of thin air and have been road-tested for well over 15 years.

The most obvious alternative candidate is the one that HR functions already suggest they follow, Dave Ulrich’s.  For an introduction to what this looks like try viewing Ulrich’s “Master’s Class” (sic) presentation and note the date – March 2008 – and a question raised on slide number 4 under – “Your questions – HR”  -

“What does he think of RBS’ HR model given its probably the truest representation of the Ulrich model in Scotland?”

One month later – April 2008 – RBS imploded, so I would be interested to hear what  Ulrich said then and compare it to what he might say now.  I wonder if it would prompt Ulrich (or his consultancy arm – RBL) to change a few of these slides, or possibly re-visit the basis of their theory?

Whilst speaking at a recent conference in Norway I had the opportunity to hear Ed Lawler III for the first time.  Ed is held in some esteem in certain HR circles and declared Ulrich to be a good friend and collaborator.  His own presentation consisted of his ‘research’ using, what appeared to be, unsupported correlations between HR and organisational performance.  Ed did not raise the difficult question of causation and I didn’t see any reference to the collapse of RBS, or any other bank for that matter, and how that might influence future HR ‘research’.

Ed also remarked how PepsiCo had set out to produce the best HR people in the world.  Some of these have washed up in the UK.  Clare Chapman, ex-PepsiCo and Tesco, who flailed around aimlessly at the NHS, getting nowhere fast before moving on once again (a classic trait of the non-evidence-based).

These people are the epitome of immaturity – refusing to look at evidence, failing to learn and carrying on blindly rather than stopping for a moment to ask whether inflicting their dubious methods on unsuspecting (and unquestioning) victims has added any value or not.

I am sure PepsiCo is still a very ambitious and very successful business but one thing is for certain – they are very immature when it comes to strategic, human capital management.  Arguably they have managed to produce some of the very worst HR people in the world who have left untold damage in their wake.

If you need help in assessing your organisation’s HR Maturity contact info@paulkearns.co.uk

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Organisational Maturity 2 – HR is toddling around at Stage 2

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If you are interested in improving your HR maturity level visit IHRM -  The Institute of HR Maturity

In Part 1 of this 3-Part assessment of organisational maturity we considered to what extent organisations are designed to learn.  This can only ever happen as part of a wider HR strategy that aims to create a competitive advantage from managing human capital as effectively as possible.

Such a lofty ambition can only ever be achieved in an organisation that is grown up enough to take a realistic view of its situation: understanding and making the most of its strengths whilst acknowledging its failings and limited capabilities.  Maturity is not a rose-tinted view of the world but an acceptance of the truth.  The HR Maturity Scale reveals the HR function to be a toddler that has not quite dispensed with its comfort blanket and needs to hang onto something for support while it stumbles around at Stage 2.

HR people at Stage 2 like to call themselves ‘professional’ even though this is only about one third of the way along this continuum.  They use lots of professional support mechanisms (CIPD, job evaluation, psychometrics, competence frameworks) but they have not yet reached a Stage where their advice is really valued (Stage 3) because their systems have not grown sufficient teeth for them to add much value (e.g. competence frameworks that do not remove the incompetent).  Much of this immaturity is down to their deep-seated, lack of confidence in their own methods and capabilities.  However, organisational maturity does not come from any specific function changing, it is about the whole organisation growing up and developing together.

From an Executive perspective it starts with a full and open acknowledgement that they have no clear understanding of what managing human capital actually means (shown on the Scale as the Human Capital Barrier). There is no common language in the boardroom to discuss the value of people and no way of auditing the organisation’s human capital management.  Unless and until these issues are addressed the organisation is incapable of getting the best value out of its people.

Similarly, any employee (Generation Y or any other generation for that matter) who thinks the world owes them a living; or the organisation exists to further their career; or that somehow they are indispensable; needs to realise that however talented or important they might be the value of the organisation, long term, will be dependent on how they work together – systemically- holistically.

Of course, this all assumes that the organisation has an ambition to be as good as it can be and realises that the only forward is a more strategic approach to managing people – all of them.  As we will see in Part 3 though (‘Off the Scale’) to make such an assumption would be very simplistic, not to say immature.

You can find out more about the HR Maturity Scale and where you are along it by watching the explanatory video here, reading a short descriptive extract from HR Strategy or visiting the Consummate Professional Series for online tuition.

If you need help in assessing your organisation’s HR Maturity contact info@paulkearns.co.uk

 

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Organisational Maturity 1 – All organisations are immature when it comes to learning

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If you are interested in improving your HR maturity level visit IHRM -  The Institute of HR Maturity

Do you remember something called the ‘learning organisation’?  It was all the rage about 15 years ago.  All of a sudden everyone was calling themselves a learning organisation because if you were not a learning organisation then what were you – a stupid organisation perhaps?  It was a no-brainer that you had to jump on this particular bandwagon irrespective of whether you had any understanding of the concept and regardless of how many miles you were away from the reality of what a learning organisation looks and feels like.  No one wanted to be left behind but 15 years later banks, pharmaceutical companies, retailers, manufacturers, universities – you name it – everyone is more in need of effective learning than they ever were.  So let us re-visit what was always a noble aspiration once more and hope that this time around more organisations start to learn what it means to be a true learning organisation.

In effect, all of the early efforts were doomed from the start because organisations were too immature to understand or implement the concept.  Instead, training departments re-badged themselves as learning departments and pretended they could bring about learning across the organisation when, in fact, a learning organisation needs very little input from any department, particularly conventional trainers.

See also Part 2 – HR Maturity and Part 3 – ‘Off the scale’

So where are you and your organisation in terms of learning maturity today?  Try positioning yourself along the Learning Maturity Scale – you can watch the explanatory video here, read the article or visit the Consummate Professional Series

If you need help in assessing your organisation’s HR Maturity contact info@paulkearns.co.uk

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