Future Space’s three pillars for designing the workplace, Angela Ferguson MD Future Space
Despite an onslaught of thunder and lightening on Monday 27th October 2014, the Changemakers of Melbourne made it to the Dare Festival to hear from a vibrant set of thought-leaders, giving practical tools and advice to help change the future of the workplace, as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week.
Until this point, my observations had been that HR had been merely tagged on at the end of social technology and change initiatives in the organisation (e.g. as rules and governance are carved out for employees or a certain new breed of talent changes the recruitment procedure required.) Dare Festival (which is also known as Spark the Change in the UK and CA), was therefore about ripping up this old HR stereotype and throwing it out the window.
And to be fair, it did a pretty good job.
A New HR Model
To start with, James Law, Head of HR at Envato proudly introduced the audience to the “New HR” model as the new business imperative, and its role being “to develop the heck out of everyone”.
There were further positive signals, as this is what the “new HR” model is also supposed to entail:
• Support the mission and values
• Create better leaders
• Be human
• Understand the individual
An altogether different audience profile
It was also encouraging to note that the audience of Dare Festival had a different feel to it than conferences I have attended before in the UK.
Hosted in a dome-like lecture hall at the University of Melbourne, there was a mix of Academic, Business, Tech, HR, Marketing AND Operations – instead of the normal social media types you always find in the room who are wired to talk about new things.
And let’s be honest, the level of change required for businesses to be more people first – profit second; to embed a culture of innovation and collaboration in every pocket of the organisation; AND to break down silos and hierarchies…is BIG and takes a combined effort for every stakeholder to work TOGETHER. So the right set of people were there, which was encouraging.
So these are five take-aways that I came away pondering about, that I believe can get us there faster:
1. We are all on the same page, but yet we are talking in completely different languages
There are a myriad of terms out there including ‘social business’; “social enterprise”; “digital transformation”; digital disruption”; “Management 3.0”; “Agile Management”; “Change Management”; “Responsive Org” that are all working towards defining a new strategy for the future of business, each with their own communities and thought-leaders.
We need far more cross-collaboration amongst these networks to get everyone’s angle on the challenges we face and the strategies we can adopt. Otherwise we risk even further fragmentation of the ideas that can change the way we think about work, of which Steve Sammartino gave an animated synopsis of, at Dare Festival.
(Perhaps if we are combined in our thinking, our clients won’t be so baffled when they cut through the sales pitch or methodology and realise we are essentially all selling/ coaxing them towards the same thing – change, to be a better business!)
2. HR should not just be supporting its leaders, it should be empowering its employees and giving them the autonomy to manage themselves, so there is less management – more teams.
As Creative Networker, Jurgen Appelo, said in the closing of his talk, “the world needs far fewer managers”. I also believe, that if we reduce the number of managers and actually TRUST people to do their job, we start rebuilding a non-hierachieal, collaborative culture where people come to work minus the paranoia of holding on to their egos. However, this works for the pro-active of us (the Type A’s if you like); as for the Type B’s – who rock up to do work so they can go home at the end of the day, we do need smarter tools to help employees manage themselves and be productive.
Helping workers (and the many workaholics) make healthier decisions has become my new purpose and I am therefore building a business, to help employees understand the type of employee they are so they are better equipped with understanding their individual needs (to self-manage themselves). In addition, I want to look at changing the way the employee benefits package is designed so employees are empowered to co-create with their employers and tell them what they need to create a work/ life balance (on every level).
So far, I have an open business plan and blog to capture my research in this area which I invite your feedback on. Please do email cat@typealivingcompany.com if you have anything you would like to input/ discuss.
3. The term ‘Resources’ has so many negative connotations and implies the throw-away work culture that we have come to expect. We should be nurturing, building and growing people and building a culture that makes them better, not an environment that by default, works against them.
Managing the ‘studio resources’ may have become typical agency speak, but I don’t believe it is very helpful or very human.
Project Managers have been trained in the art of ‘resource planning’, or pulling in people and dumping them when they aren’t needed, and now the new freelance market-places like Elance and Odesk work on this basis and see people as services rather than…well people.
So how about, in an ideal world, we view everyone simply as a consultant? Whether you are an employee or an outside contractor working on a project?
A consultant who will be collaborating and networking to do business with like-minded people, all working towards the same goal. (This is the overall premise of the global community Responsive Org, and our events are designed to harness network intelligence and build awareness of the changes needed across businesses of every size, and together, find ways to act and implement.)
Where a consultant is bought in as part of the overall working group, right from the start, with an explicit ownership of the process and outcome (making the PM/ watchdog job largely redundant), you can bet they will feel more accountable for their work – which leads to better work.
Giving autonomy to the group also empowers all members to work out who is needed and when, in order to make the most of their combined skill-sets and value. So rather than USING people for a service, you are UTILISING them for their contribution to the wider project; working WITH them – rather than FOR you and everyone taking accountability of each other (not via a manager).
Finally, there is the added by-product of having less people to deliver/ report into, which starts to take away the external sources of stress that workers are managing on a daily basis….
…leading to a healthier, more motivated employee/ freelancer.
4. Every company should have a ‘lab’ that is constantly in beta to test new ways of working. Product innovation is a discipline, so why don’t we see experimenting with culture and people development as something we should also put time and investment into?
Real Estate Australia are light years ahead of other businesses in the property sector, due to their constant commitment to innovation and change – which includes holding regular hackathons to find new products and ideas.
Big corporates can learn so much from start-ups. Not least, their ability to respond to risk and opportunity, and their hunger for constantly making things better – and never, ever standing still.
I am increasingly convinced, that the strategy for survival for any company today now lies in technology. Which means that it should therefore be a central part to any business, with the appropriate level of investment required to create bespoke tools for themselves.
However, too often, companies rely on off-the-shelf products that are built for en-mass needs and don’t necessarily take into account any unique elements of culture and the people who are required to use them.
And so often oodles amounts of time and money are wasted as a result..
So rather than seeing it as a distraction from the day-to-day business, perhaps companies need to start thinking like a start-up- be agile and create their own tech innovation lab which is embedded as atop priority on their strategic plans (no matter their primary product area), with its own products and services and revenue stream.
If this were to happen, could this mean that we might see a day where tech-companies-for-enterprise don’t exist per-se…because it is the corporates themselves that have started to take the reign on innovation made for them, constantly designing, experimenting with a new set of tools?
5. The B corporation is a new type of business model that is measuring culture and benchmarking ethical standards of practice. All companies should aspire to this.
Homegrown in Australia and New Zealand and now in 36 countries, the B Corporation is about celebrating businesses that are conscious to the needs of society and providing a platform for this inspiring and growing, global community.
At the heart of the model is measurement and being accredited for being a ‘good’ business.
Much like the Fair-trade symbolism for consumerism, B Corporation has its own jobs board for anyone looking to work for a corporation and plenty of other tools to support the growth of its members
A commitment to ethical values is expected in every facet of the business and there is a rigorous qualifying benchmark to ensure this upheld, along with an annual benchmark report to sense check how a business fares against the best-in-class on: worker impact; environmental impact; community impact; and an overall performance B score.
This new business model, community and tour-de-force, revealed to Ben & Jerry, the Ice Cream makers, that they were lagging behind in their supply chain compared to other retailers. Forcing transparency and action, that may not have happened otherwise. It also helps Etsy, differentiate itself as a makers community with a very honest integrity that runs all the way through the business.
For start-ups, this certainly delivers a feel-good factor for creating a business, and further provides the perfect roadmap for change for any corporates out there needing to turn a new leaf in 2015 (of which I suspect, there are lots!)
