Filling hollows

Day 30 (Friday 30th December 2016)

30 and 35 times the mass of the sun were the sizes of the two 

black holes that were observed merging in June 2016 (and making a 

feeble bird-like cheap when doing so, when the gravitational waves produced, 

as they spiralled ever closer and then combined, were converted into sound waves). 

This momentous discovery demonstrates Einstein's prediction that spacetime can ripple 

and verifies astrophysicists' calculations for how black holes can fuse). 

This has been hailed by many scientists as the greatest scientific finding of 2016.

I love the lull before the New Year - a chance to reflect and plan, even when you have to be back at work during the few days between festivities. Today's post by Mark Hendy might help you to reconsider your life and whether you have the right focus and priorities. Mark is an inspirational and proud proud Welshman. He lives in south east Wales in an area that for centuries has been famous for iron and coal. Mark is a respected HR professional - he started as in HR at Tata Steel before taking on various roles in a range of companies and industries, predominantly in the UK, but with stints in North America. He cares about HR and its role in enhancing individuals and organisations, which inspired him to found and now chair the South Wales HR Forum.

When not focussing on HR, leadership and change management (he is a strong advocate of Authentic Leadership and the value of Evidence-based HR/Evidence-based management), he can be found being a great dad to young Oscar, cheering on or ranting about Swansea FC, boxing or playing music. He is an accomplished guitar player and member of a band. He is quick witted (can be quite sharp) and a writes an interesting, HR focused blog - Hendys HR Blog, as well as being active on Twitter (his handle is @markSWHRF). I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.

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Filling hollows 

I’ve always anticipated a career being some sort of progressive, transcending elevation following the traditional routes, taking the anticipated hits of responsibility, occasional discomfort and situational stress with the obvious benefits of job satisfaction, excitement and salary enhancement. That’s how the last 15 years in HR has been for me and I’m extremely grateful and dare I say it, proud of what I’ve achieved.

I reflected this year on where I was at. Career-wise it was at ‘Head of HR’ level, managing a team of HR Managers, delivering strategic work and, I felt, making a real difference. That’s the ‘Heights’ elements of this. I felt I was “almost there” career-wise for where I aspired to be, but it was coming at a price and I didn’t like it. Things just didn’t feel right, and I guess that's the ‘hollow’. 

My role at the time, along with feedback from a CIPD membership upgrade had made me realise that I had some gaps, particularly in OD where I needed to strengthen my experience. I also missed the heavy industry environments that I had spent most of my career working in, more so than I thought I would when I stepped out of that world. I was no longer convinced that I could plug those professional gaps that I needed to in my role at the time, despite working for a great organisation with fantastic people. It was a huge and extremely difficult personal decision but I needed to move on, step out of that career path that had served me well for the last 15 years and find a role that was going to help me plug those gaps. And that new role, for the first time in my career, was not going to be an “upwards move” as I often heard people say in the corporate world.

But what was more important than this, was I wanted to be home more. My previous role had me all around the country with regular overnight stays in soulless hotels, with minimal interaction with anybody. Meanwhile at home, was my wife and my son. A 2 year old, growing up so quickly, often enquiring where I was (thank goodness for FaceTime by the way). When I wasn’t away from home, I worked in the capital, often getting home 30-60 minutes before my son’s bed time. 

When people asked me how old my son was, they often followed up with “make the most of those early years, they go so quickly, the children grow up so fast.” So far that seems factually (if not literally) correct. I knew things had to change. 

And so fast forward 6 months. I’ve found the job I needed. I’ve started to plug those gaps and It’s filling that hollow. 

I no longer work in the city and I get to spend a lot more time with my family (i’m not bragging, but I’m home by 2pm on a Friday!). 

A great reason to get home by 2.00pm

I needed the change, it was made possible, and I feel infinitely better because of it, despite my initial reservations about how it might affect my career progression. Professionally and personally, sometimes you just have to listen to your heart. The heights can wait.  

Possible Paths - Day 25

Day 25 (Christmas Day)

25 is the transmission rate of pictures per second (FPS) used for television
anywhere but in the U.S. or Canada (where the power grid does not run at 50hz).
British photographer Eadweard Muybridge created slow motion photography
that enabled "moving pictures" using his zoopraxiscope, after being
 asked to prove that a horse could have 4 feet simultaneously in the air.
His work was published by Stanford but not credited to him.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London, A galloping horse and rider, 1887.

Welcome to Christmas Day - as I am sure you know, a traditional Advent Calendar stops on the 24th December, but there have been so many excellent submissions that this series will continue well into 2015. I am delighted to provide you with some special reading to enjoy today during a moment of calm.

I would like to take the opportunity of wishing you a very happy Christmas, regardless of your faith. May you enjoy a day filled with love and laughter.

Antique postcard

It seems appropriate that today's post is by the lady who founded this series in 2011, Alison Chisnell. Alison is an exceptional HR Director, mum, wife, friend, marathon runner, mental health champion, role model, inspiration, and a host of other things. She was one of the first to warmly welcome me into the Twitter HR community (her handle is @AlisonChisnell) and I responded when she asked for contributors for the first Advent Blogs series in 2012. We are friends and I have huge professional and personal respect for her. If you have not read her blog, I suggest you read this post before galloping on to her comments below.

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Thank you to Kate for running the Advent series this year, I'm genuinely honoured and delighted to be peeking out from door number 25, Christmas Day...and am enjoying the series immensely so far.

"The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination" - John H Schaar

It turns out, I rather like certainty, or at least, more accurately, the illusion of certainty. It hasn't always been so, I was never one of those teenagers who knew exactly what they wanted to do - far from it, I was determined to study something I enjoyed and that was intellectually interesting at University, rather than focus on what my career would be at the end of it. I figured it would become clear nearer the time....and, with a few well-chosen summer placements along the way, a bit of help from friends and family and a fair dollop of luck, it did. 

Mist clearing - painting by Lauren Johnson, 2012 

Until recently I've always shuddered at the idea of a 5 year plan, resisted inclinations to impose certainty where there was none, other than a fluid sense of direction and intuitive instinct. Relying on instinct and intuition is fine as far as it goes, but when the when the landscape shifts dramatically, as it did for me earlier this year when I found myself unexpectedly facing redundancy, I rapidly ran out of road on that pathway. Temporarily I floundered, unable to envisage a path different from the one I had been on, in hindsight realising I could have done more to lay the foundations of a potential new path, plan more for where I wanted it to take me, who might help me to get there, how I could create bridges to different paths. 

Foundation stone programme for laying of Foundation Stone of the Victoria & Albert Museum

It takes a surprising amount of energy, patience, determination and resilience to create a new path, as well as the ability to accept and live with the complete lack of certainty....or indeed the removal of the illusion of it. At times it can feel like a game of snakes and ladders, when on a good day I move a few spaces forward with an interesting new opportunity to look at, an interview or a new, promising connection; on a less good day I slide down a slithery snake as potential roles come out of scope. Sometimes, it's a case of chip, chip, chipping away at where I know I want to go and trusting that the path will open up. Trying to be patient and accepting I can't dictate the pace on much of this journey, trying to avoid that fact becoming a source of frustration and irritation. I'm reminded of some yoga classes I did years ago, when the teacher encouraged us to still the monkey in our minds, to visualise training it to climb up and down a very tall tree, to occupy that wildly distracting, disruptive force to enable us to focus better in the here and now. Simply that could easily take a lifetime’s work…!

1930's Brooch of monkey climbing a palm tree

And yet, there are so many new possibilities, so much adventure to brand new paths, so much permission to try different things, to invest in myself in new and different ways. I'm thinking creatively about what I want for a change, where I want to be, how best to get there. I'm forming new, valued connections, stretching and challenging myself more than I have done for ages. I'm learning, I'm planning, I'm exploring and discovering. In the process of reassessing, somehow I emerge stronger, surer, empowered. 

I'm also trying lots of new things outside of work that I have wanted to for ages, but never made time for: learning to swim better so I can attempt my first triathlon next year; one to one pilates coaching so I counterbalance the impact of running and strengthen and improve as I train for next year's London marathon. Planning a memorable family trip to Australia that we have always talked about doing someday and making that someday a reality in early 2015. Seizing the moment, in the realisation that there may never be a better time than now and feeling genuinely excited about what's ahead, treading an unknown path, allowing the exploration and creation of it to change me and my perceptions. 

The illusion of certainty continues, of course it does: I think to all intents and purposes we need at least a little bit of that to function effectively as human beings. My Mum often quotes a lecture she listened to as a young woman, where the speaker proclaimed that “if we knew what lay ahead of us in our lives, none of us would ever have the courage to live them.” Perhaps that’s true, perhaps said gentlemen was simply a "glass half empty" kind of person, given to dramatic statements. What I do know is this: we can’t predict the future, none of us truly know where our paths will lead, which ones will stop abruptly and which ones will lead to unimagined wonders. It’s no life at all to be so caught up in the “what ifs” that we neglect to make the most of the opportunities that come our way and close our minds to the endless possibilities that lay ahead, forget to simply look up and around us.

Sunrise - endless possibilities ahead

 

So this Advent, I'm thankful for the unpredictability, the preciousness of the pathways that we consciously choose and the life-affirming adventure of those that we find ourselves unexpectedly on. Thankful for courage, for determination, for positivity, for choices, for luck, for new experiences, for friends, for family, for connections, for health, for laughter and support. Thankful even for the uncertainty, that I still occasionally inwardly rail against, which I know holds depths of unexplored possibility and opportunity. It is, after all, a very small price to pay when weighed up against what is at stake.

Wishing you joy, peace and wonder as we move into this festive period, tread familiar pathways of seasonal traditions and make a few new paths too. 

I'll raise a glass of mulled wine and drink to that!

Catching Stars

We should be more careful about the ways in which we utilise Helium, and probably not waste it in frivolous party balloons when we need it to cool the large magnets in medical MRI scanners, according to Tom Welton, a professor of sustainable chemistry at Imperial College in London.  There is a finite supply of Helium on earth and it is swiftly running out (or floating away to be more accurate as, being lighter than air, once it is released it drifts upwards and into space) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19676639 .  One could argue that we should be equally careful with top talent in our organisations – there are a finite number of star performers and, if we aren’t careful, it is easy for them to drift away either emotionally or literally by moving to another organisation.  In these tough economic times, few businesses have the budget to undertake significant recruitment and “throw bodies at a problem”, indeed many organisations are reporting that they are trying to do more with less.  How can we ensure that we keep our stars engaged and striving to enable sustainable business growth and success?

Engagement is currently a hot topic in HR and broader business circles.  There are numerous articles (both on and offline) extolling the importance of having engaged employees and highlighting the direct correlation between employee engagement, customer satisfaction, business performance and overall results.  Rather worryingly for the businesses concerned, a recent Towers Watson survey seems to show that employee engagement is falling http://www.towerswatson.com/research/7177  , despite managers encouraging their reports to respond.

 

Another often stated fact is that an employee’s relationship with their direct manager has a significant impact on their personal engagement levels.  Most employees’ experience of management and leadership at work is through their day-to-day manager who oversees what they do and when and how they do it – moment-to-moment interactions impact how the employee feels about their boss and therefore the organisation for which they work.  As a result, managers are encouraged to:

• make time for direct reports;
• discuss their performance and what’s expected of them;
• say “thank you”; and (perhaps)
• take them out for a drink or meal to make them feel valued. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am strongly in favour of managers making an effort, but interactions need to be meaningful – an employee feeling trapped in a meeting they don’t enjoy or want to attend, where they believe that the other person with them is “going through the motions”, not actually listening and/or where there is no genuine connection or understanding, can result in good employees becoming disengaged and even lead to subversive conversations with others (which could have broader repercussions on engagement and morale).  Managers are crucial within the work environment and the little things do count – managers should:

• show appreciation for efforts made by their team to achieve results;
• make sure that they don’t keep their reports waiting (doing so risks making people feel that they are not important or valued, especially if a tardy manager is noticeably punctual for meetings with their own superiors);
• be responsive in a timely and appropriate manner (no matter how well researched or crafted the response, an emailed reply over a fortnight after a simple request is made is probably too late to be pertinent); and
• lend an ear, show genuine interest and give people consideration and/or support when they need it.

 

Although the above listed approaches can improve employee relations and hence foster engagement, they are unlikely to provide sufficient long-term, sustainable levels of morale building nor to encourage a unified drive across the workforce to realise and exceed objectives.  Increasingly people want to feel proud of what they do and where they work.  To achieve this, employees need to believe that the people they work for are genuine with a real sense of purpose behind what they do.  This can be on a personal level, such as an appreciation that they and the organisation have them on a career path (as opposed to just doing a day job) or it can be feeling that they are part of a bigger plan and that their values are aligned with the vision and ethics of the business.

 

Never mind Kate Moss’s vain boast that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” - I know firsthand that the best feeling in the world is achieving something you feel proud of with other like-minded people.  Organisations with the highest engagement scores are ones where empowered employees, united with concurring colleagues, work in an environment that inspires them and where they are passionate about attaining shared goals.  The power of having a collective common vision of what could and should be done can be extraordinary. I have co-founded a couple of highly successful businesses, one of which recently held a well-attended a reunion to celebrate a decade since its inception.  Without exception all of us nostalgic alumni who attended said that it had been “the best place we had ever worked at”.  When we analysed why, we agreed that it was because of the shared

• sense of pride,
• ownership,
• knowledge of what each of us was doing to enable the bigger plan to be achieved. 

We worked hard (really hard at times), but we knew why and we were proud of what we were doing - we each felt part of a team that were changing the world and building a better future.  How great is that?  It will make an inspiring tale to tell the grandchildren (when/if I have some and I have finally slowed down a bit).

 

Humans have traditionally used stories to raise awareness and spread ideas and/or values, as well as to engender a sense of community amongst groups of people.  Increasingly within the business environment we are telling stories to engender a sense of pride in our organisations and to showcase what we and colleagues have achieved.  Many companies now host regular awards for the people who are “stars in our eyes”, “helpful heroes” and “Gems” who Go the Extra Mile.  The tales of their accomplishments are publicised, often videoed and shared.  Stories are potent – they help us learn; we use them from an early age as a lens through which to interpret the world.  Powerful concepts are depicted in traditional fairy tales, including good and evil, the basis of human relationships and the commercial ways of the world.  Many universals and scientifically grounded truths can be found in tales and legends (for example, there are sound psychological and evolutionary reasons as to why step mothers are often “wicked” and, as the disappearance of Megan Stammers and her married maths teacher Jeremy Forrest perhaps testifies – one should never underestimate the power of a pretty face). 

 

Amongst the most influential Western fairy stories are the Grimms’ Fairy Tales which are celebrating the 200^th anniversary since their first publication.  (You might be interested to know that The Brothers Grimm’s book “Children’s’ and Household Tales” is the second best-selling book in the German language after the Bible.) 



Original 1812 Frontispiece



Many of us have been delighted by these traditional fairy tales, when told to us as children – admittedly Disney has given us sanitised versions of Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel, as compared to the originals published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, but, regardless of the version, the main strands of the stories are familiar to many of us and have provided swathes of society around the globe with a shared culture and outlook.  Leading global authors, such as Sir Terry Pratchett, Angela Carter and Philip Pullman, admit to drawing upon familiar stories, such as those compiled by the Grimm brothers, using them a familiar shortcut to aid comprehension in their own tales.  Stories can shed light on the past as well as potentially illuminating a path for our futures and they are often well founded.  Scientists have found genetic and psychological reasons for why step mothers are often wicked and evolutionary competition encourages tricksters.  I like the fact that similar stories are often replicated across cultures, for example, many societies have tales about a blacksmith with magical powers (he also is often handicapped) and accounts of a “Great Flood”. 

 

As an aside (whilst on the subject of “Great Floods”) - also in the news this week is the fact that scientists have reviewed almost two decades of satellite data to create a new map that depicts changes and trends in sea levels.  In general, the oceans are rising (by an average of 3mm per annum), but it is a complex picture with significant regional differences (such as an average rise of 10mm around the Philippines) and more information is needed before definite conclusions can be drawn.

 

As Richard Ward the Chief Executive of Lloyds of London (the heart of the global insurance market), commented on the radio this morning, we have seen a significant change in weather patterns over the past fifteen years.  We are in a state of change and flux.

Monmouth Flood 1607

How often do organisations reassess what drives employees?  Like those coping with sea levels and climate, businesses are experiencing significant challenges within a changeable environment and this impacts their people.  I suspect that one of the reasons why traditional surveys are showing a marked decline in employee engagement is because we are no longer asking the right questions.  We need to make pertinent enquiries that strike a chord with the respondents.  As the world changes, so do individuals’ expectations and motivations; what was right a decade ago may not be so apt now.  Increasingly people want to know not just what they should do, but how they should do it and why.  Integrity matters, values are required to ensure that value can be made and sustained. Enough meaningless hot air!  We need to decide between the merits of projects and aspirations (in other words to choose between our own forms of balloons or scanners) and spread the word to ensure that what we do appeals to those we require to work with us to create the future.  You need a good and true story to attract, inspire and retain stars.