The End of Coddling

Resilient organisations, trusting your team and unleashing productivity

I live in Melbourne, Australia. When I speak to customers overseas they all sympathize with the restrictions imposed on us as a result of COVID-19. We are the State that that just can’t seem to take our eyes off the numbers, being used as an invisible algorithm to drive decisions like when we can see our friends and families again, go to the footy, or have a drink at the pub.

Scott Galloway talks of Covid-19 being an accelerant, not a change agent. Organisations who were already on the path of disrupting their own business models have surged ahead. Those with unfit practices might have been able to do a fun run, but what we have now is an ultra-marathon.

Organizations need a new playbook. We humans need a new playbook.  COVID-19 is transformational for organizations, and it requires transformational thinking and responses.

The lack of deep thinking on this is reflected in the exhaustion we are all feeling right now.  Many of us find ourselves spending 12 hours a day on back-to-back zoom calls. We are missing out on the key benefit of flexibility, which is unleashing productivity. Which means doing more in fewer hours, not doing more by working longer hours.

Asynchronous Work

Few of us have made the transformational changes required to accommodate true remote work. One of those changes has to be to embrace asynchronous working norms.

Asynchronous work needs asynchronous communication. This simply means that work doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone. Productivity and flexibility for employees come when we don’t all have to get in a room, virtual or otherwise to do our work. This usually means communicating in writing, not video.

The other change that needs to happen is less vertical decision-making, less requiring decisions to ‘go up’ to be made – and more pushing them down to the individual level as much as possible. It’s time to really empower your people. Leaders need to set the vision and trust their people to solve how to get there. This means creating cultures of trust and leaving behind cultures of control.

The good news is that a by-product of remote work will be a natural increase in accountability for performance.  The reality is you can’t fake it or fudge it as easily when your actual work output, not your personality, is what is most visible to everyone. The talkers vs the doers are quickly exposed. The big ‘P’ personality types won’t survive as long as there is no place for them to entertain us with their stories and their charisma.

Our New Reality

This new reality won’t work for everyone and demands transparency around performance and expectations from both sides. For many, this may lead to a loss of confidence and validation that they would normally get from being part of a visible tribe in the office.  When you don’t have a team or a manager around you to mentor you, notice your good work, or your bad work, you need to do the noticing yourself. Self-awareness becomes crucial. As does self-motivation, the discipline to see a task through without much pushing or oversight.

Organizations need to give way more attention to hiring and promoting these qualities that will enable individuals to be independently productive. It may even mean evolving your values to reflect those kinds of new survival traits.

What makes that shift especially tough for many organizations is that we have all been doing the opposite for years. To coin a phrase from Johnathan Haidt, we have been guilty of coddling our kids and our employees. Haidt, author of “The Coddling of the American Mind’ notes the impact of all that coddling and the resulting culture of ‘safetyism’, which stunts the development of that life skill- resilience, a trait critical for all of us right now.

Simon Sinek, a speaker/writer on cooperation, trust, and change says developing better managers can help young people build better resilience.  This becomes harder in a world where you’re not spending time with your manager.  Rather, the individual needs to take on more responsibility for their own learning and for their own motivation and engagement.

Creating Resilience

So how do you create more individual and organizational resilience? How do you hire for and build the skill of accountability?

It requires creating an expectation via explicit conversations about the need for you to own your own work, your own career. It demands hiring people who have heightened self-awareness,  to know what they need help with, to ask for what they need.

Which jobs are better suited to me? What am I good at, not good at? How do others see me so I can better manage my relationships at work or at home? What part of me is helping me or hindering me in life?

The problem is that not every type of person will do that comfortably and this is where Covid-19 risks creating another privileged class of people who do better in that environment. This is where I advocate for technology as an essential co-pilot for employees to understand themselves better and help coach them to level the playing field. Technology that can draw out the best in people and help them find their strengths and agency.

The new playbook already has a few chapters written by some well-known disruptors. For example, Jeff Bezos banning PowerPoint from meetings, Google’s money-ball approach to hiring and promotion, virtually inventing people analytics. The text-only interviews of Automattic,  the company behind WordPress, with 1000+ remote workforce in 73 countries.

In short, to leaders of all domains: move to the new playbook.

Get on with experimenting with fundamentally new ways of working. And, recognise that technology will be your co-pilot in that change.

Source: Barbara Hyman, Recruiting Daily, 1 October 2020

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When technology is used in the right way it can enhance and improve our lives

During this seasonal holiday a great many of us will start to create plans for the forthcoming New Year. We’ll think about events, occurrences and happenings of the year gone by and many will commit to doing things better next year.

Even though studies have shown that only 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions , we still make (and subsequently break) them. But the intention was there, so good work!

Have you ever stopped to think about the processes your brain undertakes to enable you to set your goals for the New Year? No? Well, luckily I’ve done that bit for you. To make that resolution you combined your current and historical personal data and produced a future outcome, factoring in the probability of success, based on your analysis. A form of predictive analytics, if you like!

Predictive Analytics.

Using historical data to predict tomorrow’s outcomes

Thinking about those things you did (and didn’t do) this year and predicting/projecting for next year.

So now you know what it involves and we are (loosely) agreed that you’re on board with predictive analytics, when better than to tell you now that 2016 is going to be the year when we really start to see the benefits of predictive analytics within our jobs and people functions at work.

I think it’s now universally accepted that when technology is used in the right way it can enhance and improve our lives across every sector and industry. Most fields have seen significant developments over the last 20-30 years as technology is increasingly used to further our understanding of the way things work, enabling us to make better decisions in areas such as medicine, sport, communication and, arguably, even dating (predictive analytics is used in all of those sectors by the way!) so why not use it to help us find the right people for the right organisations?

Did you know you no longer need a top-class honours degree to work at Google?

Every employee is put through their analytics process allowing the business to match the right person with the right team, giving each individual the best environment to allow their talent to flourish.

Companies such as E&Y and Deloitte are using different methods to tackle the same problem – removing conscious and subconscious bias attached to the name and/or perceived quality of the university where applicants studied.

Airlines, retail, BPOs, recruitment firms a growing number of businesses within these sectors are using or on-boarding predictive analytics to achieve upturns in profits, productivity and achieving a more diverse and happier workforce.

Predictive analytics helps us make people and talent decisions to positively influence tomorrow’s business performance without bias, so I guess the question is this – if it’s already a proven science to achieve results, why isn’t everyone doing it? How long until everyone starts to use, and see the benefits, of predictive analytics?

Which logically raises the question: what are the benefits?

• Time efficiencies – wouldn’t it be great for all parties in an interview to know that the data is indicating this role and person are a good fit before the candidate walks into the room? Hopefully reducing the reliance on both parties to be having a “good day”.
• Diversity, inclusion removing the optics so often associated with a role. No more stated, or implied, previous sales / retail / PR experience but instead you can attract people from as broad a spectrum as possible knowing the data will help identify those candidates who have the foundation for success within your business and could well be your next superstars!
• Churn/attrition – wouldn’t it be great to know that you can fill your 10 / 50 / 2000 seasonal/part-time roles from a pool of candidates who will have a higher chance of staying with the business longer, becoming successful brand ambassadors for your company leading to happier staff and customers alike.
• Unique to your business – wouldn’t it be fantastic to know that all of these predictions are tailored purely for your business? For example, knowing that a candidate not overachieving in their previous role at one of your competitors isn’t reflective of their potential and that you can take advantage of their previous training and knowledge because the data says they’re going to be a better performer within your business.

Data can be big and it can be daunting, but it can also be invaluable if you ask and frame the right questions and combine the answers with human knowledge and experience. You will be surprised by the insights, knowledge and benefits that your business can obtain from even the smallest amounts of data. Data you probably already collect, even if it’s unknowingly or unwittingly!

List of Recruiting Resolutions

So as you start rummaging through your brain trying to remember where you filed your finest seasonal outfit(s) (that might just be me!), start prepping for the new year budgets, or start writing your list of resolutions let me help you frame a few questions:

• Does your sector suffer from a skills shortage?
• Would your company like to know which candidates from another sector have a higher likelihood of success post-training?
• Would your business like to see an upturn in performance or people metrics such as increased sales, decreased absenteeism, longer tenure for better performers or a more diverse workforce? Would your Finance, Talent or HR head of department like to see an improvement in the variety of measures that indicate a better, more productive and happier workforce?

Statistically, your personal New Year’s resolution is unlikely to be on course in 12-months time so instead, why not make a resolution to bring predictive analytics into your talent processes in the upcoming year?

You’ll see the benefits for years to come, and that’s a promise we can both keep.

Happy holidays!