Hacking HR to Build an Adaptability Advantage

High level of adaptablity in resposne to government policies required. Role is all about multi-tasking through the day.
HR should model adaptabity that moves into creative responses to issues and adaptablity should be a key part of recruitment job specs.

The role of HR in spurring adaptability is to focus on developing the adaptability and solution focus of people's thinking. Without good possibility thinking skills, people will be unable to adapt.
No doubt the hackathon will produce lots of mini-hacks & management hack actions/methods for taking action. These will need to be underpinned by a robust shared "thinking system" for organisations to adapt. Thinking-Action-Results.
Happy to help & give free access to Go MAD Thinking methodology & iCheev technology when the time is right.

I'm really excited by the opportunity provided by the CIPD hackathon, but slightly disappointed by the way it's begun. Is this focus on experts and coaches really the best way to innovate HR? What has happened to innovation from the periphery?

It relates to the comment I made in the previous hackathon - http://www.mixhackathon.org/content/mix-20-real-community - we need you to be facilitators rather than providers of insight. Why not let us blog here and comment on OUR perspectives. Management 2.0 needs to come from a more 2.0 oriented approach than this!

HR need to change employee perspectives of change from fear to excitement in the new opportunities which lie ahead. Employees need be encouraged to come away from their comfort zones on a regular basis to better coach them in being adaptable and identify hidden motivations.

HR has the role for to serve as the organization’s trustee to provide a high level of intuitive insight about the ways the past and the present connect to the future. The role is part historian, part contemporary analyst, and part prophet to create foresight. This foresight creates the adaptability to perceive the significance and nature of events before they occur.

I believe the focus of HR should be on enabling experimentation and on making sure that experiments are exploited not only for immediate renewal but for learning as well. Learning through doing is the goal.

A company does not need to change, a company needs to have a lean and flexible organization able to anticipate environmental changes and adapt before they become operational.
Is it a utopia?
No! and the lever of action is redesigning attitude, allocation, training and management of human resources.
After all, years ago, we spoke of the transition from "personnel management" to "talent search" going from "human resource management", but unfortunately we stopped to human resources management: it is time to move forward!

Really interesting initiative and looking forward to great discussions and inputs. Having been in the middle of and still in major transformation efforts/change initiatives from an HR perspective, love the thinking here about changing the way we change.

I would like to raise a couple of fundamental questions on Gary's notes -
1. Can there be change without trauma?
2. If major change that is automatic, reflexive and spontaneous - difficult to sustain at an individual level from a human behavioral perspective, would one of the fundamental challenges be changing organizational behaviors?

If HR can be credible partners (term borrowed from Dave Ulrich's work) to leaders, and work with the organization as an organism that's undergoing change requiring specific/unique attention (not standard, generic change processes, solutions), the competency requirements from HR talent and leaders grow tremendously (probably very different from the normal expectations).

Interesting point raised by Tojo about change without trauma. Organisations exist in a complex environment, and many organisations are themselves highly complex, possibly creating difficulties in the change process. Change and innovation needs to be driven throughout the organisation, not just through HR practitioners. Complexity theory suggests that trauma stemming from change or innovation is beneficial to organisations as they emerge into a previously unknown state. The role of leaders and HR practitioners is to shape and direct change and innovation in response to external influencing factors. Complexity theorists suggest that an element of chaos should be allowed to exist within organisations to fully enable effective innovation to take place at all levels.

We must not make the mistake of redesigning the HR function without anchor it in a new type of business organization that provides a decentralization of human resource management with the delegation of many skills to middle managers.
But for an adaptive company that is not enough, we have to design a section which deals with predict what will be the future, and identify and implement the necessary changes.

Kudo's to the MIX and CIPD for this initiative. Essentially HR can play a pivotal role in spurring adaptability by creating the systems and structures in the organisation to drive and support innovation and knowledge management....2 key ingredients for adaptation. They will encourage and manage adaptabilty by ensuring the right policies are in place to reward and reinforce this. Learning and Development of the workforce, from bottom to top on the need to to be flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing business landscape will also support.

Dear Gary
I don't share yours, and the hackaton, basic assumption about the organization "still" and the environment around it changing fast. This is a side effect of the environment "left alone" (that is organizations not steering them) but at same time influenced by the forces that companies in any case put in place.

What organizations need to learn today is an upside down viewpoint: NOT ABOUT CHANGING THEMSELVES IN ORDER TO ADAPT INTO THE ENVIRONEMENT but CHANGING THE ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO ADAPT TO THEIR WISHES.

The history of humanity is featured by this trend. The world is (almost) better and safer place than one million years ago because we have changed (probably too much!) the environment where we live in, not because we have adapted to it.
Back to business every successful company is an example of this approach. Beside the over-mentioned Jobs (he did not adapted Apple to the tablet marketplace, he created it. Samsung adapted to it.) consider the enterpreneurial adventure of Enzo Ferrari, the worldwide italian racing and luxury sport cars manufacturer.
When he decided to start the production of cars for the market, and not only for the races, he designed only 12-cylinders, very expensive fast cars. It was 1946! Can you figure out what place was Italy and Europe at that time? A mass of ruins. Neverthless he contributed to create, despite the social environment, a new market, not adapting to it.
Now we need to help Corporation, starting from HR department (that are a staff department, not living on their skin the real daily business issues. Are we sure that they are the best player for such "revolution"?) about:
1- Breaking the glass house where they live and show them that the world is full of opportunities waiting to be "shaped" in business and markets (and it is not a dictator pace and rule setting)
2- Providing them business languages and tools (and processes) to design properly the environment they want to build (Corporate strategy is the discipline where gathering them).

We have designed tools and process starting form this perspective

I find this an interesting discussion but agree with many that it needs some clear-cut direction. For mine, I find Malcolm O'Neal''s comments spot on ("HR has the role for to serve as the organization’s trustee to provide a high level of intuitive insight about the ways the past and the present connect to the future...").

The part for me that's missing in most organisational change is that change is led by people who aren't there when the change is supposedly "finished" -- the experts and contractors leave, the management focus fades, HR goes back to putting out fires and any legacy of change evaporates, sometimes overnight...

For mine the reason this happens is that HR spends far too little time developing middle-management leaders.

One look at how a successful military force has operated at anytime throughout history shows the importance of middle managers to drive change in the heat of the moment, preserve the culture and "walk the walk."

I'd welcome anyone's comments on these two aspects of how organsiations should be geared for rapid change...

I concur with Stephen, in the sense that people are aware of evolution and changes that has affected them in their lives socialy, politicaly, economicaly etc the fact is that change is happenning everwhere at any given time, as i am sitting here what i know now is changing somewhere , somehow.

My point is, people need to be the owners of the process, HR and Business leaders should not create awarenes, but should invite awareness from people ask them what change they want to see now and in the future and how are they prepared for it, then engage them from that point or themes coming from them, instead of us posing change to people that already exist in their mind, lets unleash changeability potential in them, the only biggest fear in anyone on change process is how bad or good the change will affect us, if change has been created by us instead of being imposed on us is much better adaptable.

With reference to " Peter F. Drucker he once said i quote " The best way to predict the future is to create it" which i also believe if people create the change they are more prepared to face the consequences either good or bad atleast it does not come as a shock or trauma and they will develop tactics to overcome any challenges during the stages of change i.e boundary spinning, making a choice,developing up to intergration of change.

Siviwe you get the point!
Future MUST be created, this is the answer to the adaptability challenge, reversing the viewpoint. The next issue is: how to do it committing everybody: without endless discussion, reaching operational result (a strategic plan that is not a plan but, if designed by everybody, a "manifesto" already implemented), in a reasonable time.
So the focus move from "adaptability" to a process delivering the above.

Stephen foresee a critical success factor of such a process: it must be run by the organization itself, not by "outside" (management, HR, consultants, etc.) players who are not part of it. The role of HR must be "the consultant" for the organization, selecting on the marketplace the best "knowledge", assisting every boss at each level to be the owner of such a process.

The era of singular ownership is ending.

HR can't be gatekeepers, because we can't have gates. Bottlenecks are disappearing and the fresh energy of innovation will find other paths and players if HR is too stodgy, risk-averse, or steeped in bureaucractic caution.

What role should HR play? HR should function as connectors, integrators, and enablers.

HR individuals should be equipped with the skills to deepen thinking, draw alignment, and facilitate business vision and execution in a participative, conversational approach.

As a function, the HR value add should be to enable the optimization and alignment of the "creative economy" within an organization, and even with its adjacent external stakeholders.

This means connecting people and ideas; integrating processes, systems, and silos; tending to the ecosystem of values, vision, and execution enabling delivery against business strategy.

In order to be adaptable HR must reimagine their role not as a set of tasks, policies, or processes, or isolated areas of technical competence, or systems familiarity, but as stewards of the organization's "creative economy" and business value.

Business value does not simply mean facilitating the monetization or delivery of the business model, it means facilitating the conditions of wellness and engagement for employees - the creators of value - and then facilitating alignment of created value, and of management support capacity (to coach and serve employees) to enable progress.

Were this to happen, HR could catapult from being misunderstood or outright questioned to being an essential force in the realization of successful change.

I would like see our hackathon facilitators , after these conversations and discussions to put together old and emerging "Themes" On each discussions and proposed conclusions to each topic so that when we move over to the next topic there may be a roadmap towards achieveing the same understanding and goals , if things evolve on this topic when we are somewhere we can still maintain it from the core understanding.I am not sure who is getting my point.

I approach this discussion from the perspective that enterprises benefit from considering continuous transformation as the "As Is". I see a key role for HR being the safeguarding / evolution of core values in addition to the full spectrum of talent development activities needed for ever more agile enterprises.

As Gary stated, change should not be an episodic event. Rather change should be viewed as evolving and dynamic. Change must embrace a whole systems approach. That is, involving key aspects and behaviours of organisation life in terms of the way it thinks, the way it does things, and the way it behaves. Concepts such as leadership, engagement, diversity & inclusion, strategy, collaboration, measures and learning must all link together so that there is coherence in change and change is not seem as a nomadic and isolated event that is happening to us rather than us coming together to make it happen.

Gary says "Today, the most important question for any organization is this: are we changing as fast as the world around us?" If "change" is part of our every day life as HR Managers/Coaches ... I would ask: are we enjoying change? Change is a mean, not and end. We know that change is permanent, so… are we enjoying this journey through change? Is the possibility of changing/adapting deep in our roots as an organization? In the previous posts people say that we need adaptable procesess, structures, etc. If the organization is made up of people, is PEOPLE who have to be flexible, adaptable, focused, etc. So HR should spur adaptability within individual people first, then withing groups and finally through all the organization. If you encourage adaptability, you encourage creativity, flexibility, solution focused approaches, etc.

I am joining this a few days into comments being generated, I am working with a number of small and medium sized organisations at present having recently started my HR consultancy service focussing on SME's who do not have in house HR teams, I will be really interested to learn how I can support the SME's I am working with on their change journey's both now and in the future.

The world is changing and will keep changing, so there is no finish line. Change is already a permanent state, and today´s organisation has to be adaptive and innovative. Embrace the dynamics of creative collaboration.

It’s time to reinvent HR because in its current role, HR doesn’t add value. Today, it’s plunder the possible or walk the plank. If you want to make change happen and get people going, make it fun and take action. Just do it!

HR should create a culture where employees work together both online and offline, exchange information, and encourage exploration in new ways of working. It’s all about creating a new mindset and making innovation part of an organization’s DNA.

Reading an excellent Economist review on the future of the car industry. So many ideas to play with. One that struck me was the concept of "range anxiety" . It relates to the concern about the range of electrically powered cars. You can see parallels with organisational change and innovation. When change is envisaged and implemented we all wonder if our programme have the legs or could it run out of puff? The key thing in electric cars is having the infrastructure to support it but there are big upfront investments to lay out. So how do we make sure we have the investments in order to have the range for change. Think about it!

Like Kim's point about change being about plundering the possible or walking the plank. In CIPD's Innovation research we looked at innovation which exploits existing stuff and gets more value from it and the explore element where its about trying new stuff. plundering the possible and walking the plank is an exciting and edgy way of thinking about exploit and explore innovation that so thanks for sharing.

Guido's point is a fair one. Yes some people are afraid of change. But if we look at the idea of people being afraid of change as a given we can't position change as an often positive and dynamic force. Sometimes the idea of people being afraid of change becomes a thinking shortcut or heuristic. But if we take the ideas of Hackathon and move away away from change as trauma or transformation we can begin to change that way of thinking about change. Lets think about what we can do to help that along.

The role of Human Resources in 'spurring adaptability' is to:

* Ensure the experiences of people at key interaction points with the organisation adapt effectively to change – from recruitment through to exit.

* Work with the organisation's leaders to help them navigate through the implications of change for people.

* Encourage leaders to empower everyone in the organisation to adopt an adaptable mind-set: sensible risk taking, learning, experimenting, new ways of thinking and sharing by having an open, honest dialogue.

* Take a balanced and realistic position regarding change when acting as a 'trusted adviser' to leadership.

* Keep abreast of external factors and use key information to influence decision making.

@John: I TOTALLY agree that we have to "move away away from change as trauma". You propose "Lets think about what we can do to help that along"... I already thought about that and it has to do with what @Edna suggests: going from problem to opportunity. My personal (registered) Hack that I use in coaching/trainings is transforming "problems" into "challenges". Challenges create a different brain chemistry that make people to move, rather than feel stranded against "problems".

John, it's good to know that you are a fellow coach that uses NLP. Reframing is a great technique to use, also aligning attitudes and beliefs within a team. The issue arises when you want to embed change in a whole organization. You can't do one to one coaching to everyone. We have to find a broader approach.

Its a really good point you make. Are we paying enough attention to how systems and structures and technology can impact both customer and employee experience. incidetntally (and not wanting this to turn into a rant about railways) some of them are excellent. I had the a disrupted journey last week on another company where the train manager acted like an entrepreneur and found solutions for every passenger who was "inconvenienced"=." That said automated announcements are a technology designed to routinise and standardise information but the paradox is no one gets any useful information. Lets think about that one when we think of change programmes and the commns process especillay if we are using technology!

Some really interesting stuff on this first open session. It will be interesting to see how it develops as nuclear themes as the hackathon (I hate that ugly word just for the record - why is our profession so obsessed with jargon?) develops.

HR really needs to adapt itself to continue its evolution from organiser/manager to facilitator and leader. Smoothing the edges of what will be very different inter-generational cultures in organisations is going to be more challenging than at any time since the changed youth expectations of the 1960s or the emergence of women's expectations in work starting with those who staffed the factories during the second world war.

It isn't just a question of knowledge gaps as it was when computers first become endemic as organisational tools but of the boundaries of the worlds in which people exist, communicate and meet. Coupled with the rapidly changing customer trends which Gary exposes in his article, this discussion couldn't be more timely. Having your head in the ‘cloud’s these days is a winning edge, not a disciplinary warning!

Encouraging connections between potential and actual customers and all employees, not just those referred to as front-line, will be the key to adapting to change. HR will not drive that change whatever we may think but they will be required to handle traffic management better!

They could start by asking where and how customer-empathy is encouraged. How many questions in recruitment focus on what the organisation's service offer is and how the candidate understands it? How much training is devoted to customer-focus and adding value? How many of your engagement survey questions are about the customer experience? How well does your 360 degree appraisal system draw in the end user perspective? How many of your HR team really understand the product and have they spent time making or delivering it? How often do HR staff talk to real customers and how are they engaging people in the internal customer-supply chain that feeds outputs through the organisation’s processes? Is your business and its meeting regime built on process lines or functional silos? How do they recognise and reward empathic behaviour? As an aside, my partner recently made a phone call to her local Boots chemist to check on some reactions she was experiencing from antibiotics. She received advice but at 5-30pm the pharmacist rang her to ask how she was doing as she was worried about her. That’s empathy. I don’t remember a GP or nurse ever doing that for many years.

Adaptability is critical to our organisation (local government) as the organisation needs to respond ever more creatively to budget cuts whilst still being able to deliver public services. Our CEO said at the staff conference last year that the only constant in our organisation over the next few years will be constant change. Over the past four years I have seen teams restructured several times and how change fatigue can set in.

I think the role for HR at least partly needs to be about recruiting and developing staff so they themselves have the resilience, skills and capability to thrive in an adaptable organisation, rather than feel tossed about by winds of change.

Are companies missing the point in offering external coaching support to managers only to support change?
I think so. Your head can look somewhere else but if your feet don't move, you'll not go far...

I agree that organisations and people need to adapt to change around them. With the changes brought about by globalisation and a shift to market leaders coming from Asia rather than Europe not seeing that change is necessary would be foolish and fatal to business. However creating change and adapting to change are two very different things and business (rather than organisations which are inanimate but for their employees) needs to decide where it sits in this global world. Not everybody can or indeed should be innovators. Some businesses are good entering already established markets and adapting and streamlining their systems to achieve success on others ideas.

This of course is only one aspect of what is meant by change and adaptability. The other is people. If we accept that learning environments are the ones which best support and encourage change and adaptability then creating organisations that best fit this model by definition will be the most successful in accomodating change. Others have talked about the fear factor and aligned this to uncertainty, threat and coersion all of which will ratchet up defensive, resistance and rejection mechanisms of staff towards change. This is more likely to apply to older workers who see their careers been shortened by new technologies, ways of working, thinking & expectations and who therefore go into survival (resistance) mode. Maybe one key change in HR approach therefore other than excellent training and development offered to all is the removal of agism not just in word but in deed and develop open systems that identify the skills and experience and the potential in all age groups both currently working and available through the labour market.

A system that shows recognition and evidence of individuals having (the required) skills on a global scale could do a lot to target what the individual can bring to the job rather than immediate exclusion because of age which works against available workers on both ends of the age spectrum. Qualifications helps if universally recognised but the skills developed over time less so and how these are interpreted as a standard varies between organisations as well as Countries and Industrial Sectors. Within the UK maybe not so much of a problem moving away from there and into none Western cultures it definately becomes more so.

Adaptability is something that needs to be tied to sound data collection and analysis efforts - micro adjustments in strategy and structure and tools that make working smarter and not harder easier for all staff. Organisational/cultural/behavioral change occurs in the "how" we do things and too much time is spent on large-scale change, the "why" and the long-term goals of the organisation. It's a marriage between the art and science that makes the difference in creating lasting change and setting the stage for rapid change. Engagement and motivation are wonderful things to know about and learn, but if we don't tie performance to systems to behavior and close that loop, all of the surveys and workshops won't make a dent.

Whilst I agree I also feel that being too scientific and not organic can mean that nothing happens because people are waiting for justification and the evidence for change or improvement before planning any action. My experience is in leading change management and I have found that engagement which puts communication and sharing information at the top of the list of activities goes a long way to achieving ownership and committment from staff and management. The most difficult is getting all the appropriate pieces (including managers) in place at the same time or working to support the proposed outcome, as there are not sufficient levels of expertise in organisations able to cope with the demands of strategic and operational change management.

Could somebody explain how I can get my photo in place to replace the shadow, I have no time for anonymity but each time I try to do so through my account it just doesn't happen! Technology is fine until it doesn't work!

How do you manage the emotional aspect of change?

''The term self-organization refers to a spontaneous emergence of collaborative behavior among elements in a system. The whole idea of what we might call Newtonian organization, or the Machine Metaphor of organization was that the existing order that had been created was perfect, and workers were there to implement it. In Tayloristic (Newtonian) organizations, it was spontaneity at all costs, as it involved a breakdown in the established order. Self-organization, on the other hand, involves the emergence of order out of spontaneous interactions in response to disorder. It is interesting to note that Taylor insisted on making sure individual workers did not communicate, or form into groups.Their whole purpose was to perform their pre-established isolated assembly-line function. Spontaneous interactions were precisely what Taylor wanted to avoid, and the workers were organized from the outside, never self-organized. Edgar Morin has argued that a more accurate and inclusive way to describe the process of self-organization in open, dynamical systems is as “self-eco-re-organizing systems” (Morin, 1990, 2005c, 2007a).

A system does not merely organize itself, independently of its environment. The environment is in the system,which is in the environment. A family is in society,and society is in the family (culturally, economically, through the media, and so on). But a system does not merely self-eco-organize. It self-eco-re -organizes, as we shall see below (Morin,2005c).

The order out of disorder that emerges in an open system’s interaction with its environment is subject to fluctuation. When certain levels of fluctuation are created by increasing complexity,a critical or bifurcation point is reached. At that point the system can move in any one of several directions until a new and more complex order may be established after a period of turbulence. If a higher order of organization does not emerge, the system returns to a previous,lower level of organization. Many developmental psychologists report a similar pattern for evolutionary transformation (Guidano, 1987; Kegan, 1982). We might therefore think of evolutionary transformation as an ongoing process of self-eco-re-organization.''

http://www.academia.edu/213724/Edgar_Morins_Path_of_Complexity

An adaptable organization is one which is continuously capable of embracing the 'critical junctures' and emerge into a higher order of organization. It metaphysical terms, a higher order is one with greater truth, beauty and goodness than the previous order.

I'm new to this and have read the comments and they fill me with excitement. What I want to know is how I get my organisation filled with the excitement and HR being the catalyst it should be. I'm an L&D Manager feeling frustrated ...... so many opportunities for the organisation and not knowing how to get some of them started.

Some great comments here and shows a really strong start made for this exciting venture. So for my contribution on why I think adaptability matters now, I want to look into me, you, us as human beings who happen to be in professional sphere fulfilling some sense of destiny and purpose.

From the beauty and skill of art to the paint by numbers approach, we have an amazing ability to connect, share and proliferate learning. Learning that helps others with different psychological make up, intuitive drive and applied cognitive ability. Helping others to succeed is one of the more glorious aspects of human nature that appears to be lacking in the world of work, corporate being and professional pursuits. We seem to have become fixated on personal satisfaction through achievement only and not on shared, positive and generously-natured impacts we have on others. We need to adapt personally to the challenge that this personal-only success has become vacuous and seems inappropriate at a time when we need more collective effort.

This personal and then collective adaptability matters now more than ever as we head on in to both a richer bounty of opportunities yet a shadow of challenges, a drain on resources (natural and monetary) and a feeling we've peaked about this thing called work.

Adaptability is a key attribute in ever faster absorption of insight; an enhanced rate of deductive analysis and a splicing of intuition and experience.

We need to be personally adaptable in every day life. Complex societal problems - often appearing in cyclical and despairing circumstances - have impacted on how we view work.

Work has lost much of its feeling of being a craft, a purpose, a calling. It feels like work itself needs to go way beyond transactional existence to earn a living to pay for your way in life. We as individuals need more from work than a paycheck.

Work therefore needs more stimulus for us as we become ever more used to wealth and opportunity that has come with improved standards of living for many of us. Our striving to belong, make an impact and leave a mark manifests itself as much in our professional endeavours as it does our wider being.

So we - personally - and then - us professionally need adaptability to become our truest "norm". The pursuit of stability as a goal is surely no longer feasible (the "it'll be ok when all this change has settled down" mentality). So I guess we all need to refocus ourselves individually and collectively on the epitome of being adaptable.

I for one view this opportunity now as the chance to refocus. Be positively disruptive about the way we operate as ourselves at work and the impact that has on the place / entity we call work.

Finally, adaptability for me is about the firmest grasp let the loosest grip on ourselves and what we do as a calling. It's time to hack our thinking and influence our actions and be adaptable by nature not by exception.

HR needs to be the reality-checkers holding up the mirror, calling out inconsistences and dishing out tough-love by challenging everything. Many of our leaders today don’t have the skills needed to create and sustain adaptive environments and even worse; they don’t realize their own shortcomings. This is not fully their fault. We talk about the new ways of working as if it is completely clear – it’s not. What does ‘run faster’ mean if you think you already run fast?

HR must play the role of the coach or trainer – clearly defining what ‘leading adaptive organizations’ looks like, and ensuring espoused theories match theories- in-use by speaking with data, objective observation and most importantly creating “practice session’. Practice sessions (PS) are opportunities to execute the new concepts/skills, see how it feels, get feedback and perfect the new skills. And practice sessions must reflect real work and real problems that leaders/teams face. Practice sessions are not feel-good away days led by an expert explaining what they should do. Instead PS are actual teams working through existing problems/concerns using new ways of working that are facilitated by a coach who can provide feedback and build competence.

What could HR be doing to 'design and facilitate change programs'? I believe flexibility in approach. Understanding that we do not come with a built in book of answers, and that sometimes the pieces we hold do not all fit the same puzzle. Organisations because of their organic nature can be likened to a chowder - it has every kind of sea living creature in it, but it still can taste good when the fish are complementary in taste and texture.

As each organisation has it own individual culture based on the component intellectual and emotional minds, HR would need to give up the idea that there is an ideal fix. This form of positioning is that HR uses its knowledge and tools only as a platform for formulation of programs. Any solutions it could design which fits an 'ongoing company wide dialogue', by necessity would need the dialogues to flex to its 'ongoing' nature and to be fluid so that the key stakeholder rather than key players (this group may not intentional be interested in the survival of the collective) can input.

In terms of building a 'nimbler and more fluid organisation structure' where a 're-org' isn't something that happens at short periodic pulses seems to have a notion that many organisation are running deliberately missing opportunities, in favour of remaining blinkered, with strategies which move them from crisis to crisis. Is ignorance at Board level really a chosen pattern of operating?

I think if HR had the positioning and power which the sector has being striving for, not only would the iceberg be seen, but the Captain (CEO/boards) would take advice on the need for timely course corrections. So, the question is, how nimble is HR?

We can often assume were an organisation is not nimble that the key decision makers are the critical factors and fractures necessitating any org change where missed opportunities occur causing an overwhelm or an underwhelm in productivity, competitive edge or bottom line. Ergo, a nimbler and more fluid organisation requires a head that uses its faculties to twice hear and listen to the Critical Friend (HR), use it's mind (the Board) once to analyze and evaluate the information which is coming through. Once all information is had a decision should be made quickly and changed slowly. And, to communicate the new instructions, tasks or objectives clearly and widespread.

However, nimbleness, sound decision-making and communication can only happen if HR is spending time or resources as the Critical Friend to the CEO and Board.

We assume that 'change' is a bad thing, but think on this. What things in nature of an organic constitution will survive if it does not go through any change (whether that change is expansion due to growth or, retraction due to death)? Anything that does not permit change become deformed, atrophies and becomes malformed or dies. It could be that part of the role of HR is to consistently iterate the message or organic organism.

If HR can remain flexible and in the position of Critical Friend, there will not be a strong desire to be formula driven and protective of the role believing its self to be an oracle. Foresight and Far-sight are not the same thing! One uses a cognitive ability, the other a crystal ball.

Secondly, change should never be resisted, it is this very resistance which causes the trauma. The beauty of change which is permitted to happen is the exponential innovation and creativity that it will bring to the critical thinking process; the customer focus; the willingness to serve and the excitement to share or greater camaraderie.

Wow - this is a bombardment of fresh and liberated thinking ... I'm really excited about learning from this process, and from the people actively contributing to it.

My main concerns are:

1. I think this group represents a narrow niche of liberated commentators who are / can afford to be brave and free-thinking ... most 'coal face' HR professionals typically don't share these qualities unfortunately (identified business realities, specialist HR educations with limited commercial awareness, well documented transactional vs creative mind-sets, etc.); so Hackathon outputs need to practically shift some of this ‘HR community DNA’ to be meaningful and to create something of tangible value to those who feel that they are at the coal face.

2. I agree with John Ingham's point about this channel being too systemically narrow - I would love it if a high proportion of Hackathon participants were, say, young, early career stage but ambitious HR professionals locked into HR call-centre-type HR jobs, second or third language English, but seriously wired in to the power of social networks and peer-to-peer technologies, and hugely ambitious and creatively disruptive. Not sure that this will be the case. Great if the registration process could be more organic to allow this – particularly actively encouraging participation by non-CIPD members. How brave can the CIPD be ?

3. The main acid test with ‘high-five’ HR thought enablement initiatives is whether business leaders care. This is not cynicism without an objective, but a mobilising thought. How to convert Hackathon ideas to tangible commercial common sense that serious business leaders 'buy'. What would S.D. Shibulal, Martin Sorrell or Richard Branson say about how to sell the final core Hackathon ‘big ideas’ to those who run our businesses?

Just some acid test stuff...

I'm re-reading Tom Peters' "Talent". When I had heard him in San Francisco in 2006, I was not ready for his messages. But, what he was saying then is becoming our reality : "Brand You World". That's talking about Agility, at an individual level... and spreading it back , bottom up to the corporation… or elsewhere.
"What can HR do to foster Agility ?" is the question.
I have several questions.
- The first is : what is HR ? Here, we talk of HR as being a function without a second thought.
When you listen to HR, they are "aspiring business partners", and jargon their way through complex procedures around Talent Development. When you listen to employees, it's the function you turn to when you have a problem, and you have reasons to whine about the anonymous service you have in return. For managers, they may be counselors, or people in charge of labor relations, guardians of equity, and providers of payroll. For candidates, they are the people that can get you a job. To simplify, you have already four different visions. But at the same time, you can be manager and employee… The result is that you get a confusing image of what HR is or should be.
In essence, what we do is sort (people), administrate (a wide range of information concerning them, but never accurately picturing them), and impersonate the frontier between the (mean-outside) world and the company.
-is it HR’s role to foster agility ? difficult to be a guardian of the temple and a change agent at the same time…
I keep going back to Vineet Nayar who told an assembly of HR Directors that he had chosen to be leading the change himself. ‘That’s the CEO’s job, not the HRD’s’, he said. He was talking about fostering engagement through shared vision.
-Agility is about doing things differently than what we have been doing before.
Maybe HR’s role should be helping an empowerment of others to do the job : top managers should lead, middle managers should share the vision, and have a clear role to play (and yes, be helped along the way), and everyone should feel empowered …
-What can HR do? Question evaluation processes, question talent detection, re-invent learning, lobby for contract simplification and labor legislation adaptation, negotiate a more direct dialog with employees, rethink what’s being in the company or an outside help (and work with others : Purchasing, Legual, … ), and also what value we create. How are we contributing to increasing the company value, improving it's reputation ?

A re-invention of our role is at stake. Do we really need to be called HR ? Should we be doing this reinvention on our own? Are we still legitimate to do it?

I totally agree that HR should be helping to drive change capabilities. However, HR doesn't always understand or have the capacity to develop their resources to truly understand the business sector needs.

Maybe we shall not rely on an organization to generate change - maybe we shall work in creating the conditions where change occurs itself. Maybe we shall create the conditions where change is the daily routine, the core activity. A purpose driven company where exist the conditions of self motivation ? A company that has no HR because HR is every body's duty, a company that has no predefined organization because every one can be, at a given moment of time, a leader ?

Thanks for all the food for thought!

Two aspects that continue to feel unresolved for me:

1. the emotional experience of change - a binary discussion about whether change is experienced as 'traumatic' ('bad') or 'transformative' ('good') seems slightly limited. I agree that directionally we're trying to get our organisations to accept the reality of change with as much positivity, even delight, as possible - and yet can't that experience be a bit tinged with trauma without that necessarily being a problem? If we take life as an analogy, some of the best life-transition moments also contain some sorrow - graduating is both the start of a new career and the loss of a university context etc etc. I do think that traditional organisations prefer to deal with reality as binary. We win or lose, make our targets or don't, are 'talent' or ... not. One of the earlier exchanges (Edna/Kirstie) talked about moving away from 'right first time' to 'good enough first time' and I personally think that the mark of an adaptable organisation is going to be one that's ok with some ambiguity and with their people reacting and performing within a range of 'good enough' while they get used to their changed environment.

2. I wonder whether we have a bit of a preference to frame the change debate between 'transformation' vs 'status quo' as being essentially between fluidity vs structure. I work for a bank (**pauses to allow the booing to subside**) and through all the necessary change that my sector is going through, one thing that should remain, although it will need to look very different, is enough structure to allow people to engage in economic activity as protected as possible from fraud etc. The need to change is incontrovertable - towards accountability, towards fairness, towards responsiveness - but not into 'anything goes' anarchy.

Wow, it took me some time to read through the comments and as Chris suggested a summary of the patterns that emerge may be a good idea. When I think about the original question 'What role do you think HR should play in spurring adaptability' there is one specific quote of Einstein that comes to my mind: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
I have the same feeling about this question and about all the aspirations that we attribute to HR. More than half of the bullets of Gary's list are qualities that cannot be attributed to HR.
From my experience HR has other qualities than being an agent of change or a stimulator of adaptability. Sadly enough these are qualities that are less 'sexy' to mention or to write about. In essence HR is agent of stability and a very good one.
Since this phase is called orientation I would like to underscore that the qualities of HR could be different than the ones that were given to us by the authors / coaches of the initial assignment. All my respect for the coaches, but this is a hackathon, right?

I have a real empathy with Luc's comments and viewpoint. I remember reading the article on Google being the 3rd largest company and that it's success amongst other things, was down to its metrics which drove every aspect of the HR function. Yet I didn't think it was a company I would like to work for (though I could understand why those passionate about technology and systems would) and wondered where the human aspects of running the business emerged. Reminded me of Orwells 1984. I wondered whether there was room for the soft skills that are so important to effective HR and encouraging but giving time for employees to grow and develop and find their own level of committment, motivation, learning and performance. One size does not fit all, that is true of people as well as organisations and it's the job of HR to make this reality work.

Hi all, interesting thread.

I can't help thinking though that "organisations" are after all artificial constructs. To empower them with such human or natural traits as agility, adaptability, innovation capacity, etc. is misleading. Organisations do not innovate... people do! In fact, organisations are there basically to stop innovation happening so that they, and the power structures within them, can prevail. Which is why they all ultimately die, unless they manage to find a way to impose a monopoly situation of "no other choice" on the customer, which gives them an extended life.

I guess the best type of organisation - given that apparently we have to have them despite their obvious destructive force - is one which sees itself as a loose network of individual innovators. The job of HR in such an organisation is to promote local initiative but also to try to ensure that despite the individual nature of agility, adaptability, innovation etc, there is a sense that "the organisation is more than the sum of its individual parts" - to promote the "we" rather than the "I".

Apologies for that perhaps rather dire vision! :-)

Every organisation shoulf empou a philopher who sits in a room with a coffee machine and an open door and just talk with anyone about how we might move forward- pose the right questions and you get the right answers. Cut the culure of hirearchy and ppwer poitics- we can learn from how young chilfren learn and interact and experiment in nursery schools. Look too at the Transition Town movement for a cooperative model of change. This discussion should think right out of the box if it is to be worth while and energising.

Just been through everybody else's points. One thing that stood out for me (not just on this page) was the amount of 'I hate HR' rhetoric. OK, we may be a long way from delivering on Gary's suggestions currently. But that's the point of doing this. And I think we should recognise that there are a lot of great HR practitioners out there already making a lot of this happen. In fact, in my experience, it is mostly HR that gets this agenda. The issue isn't generally practitioners wanting to stick to stability and administration, it's that the rest of the organisation isn't / won't pay attention to what they've got to say (yes I know that's sometimes about HR capability too but you can't make someone listen no matter how fine your skills.) I think that's a key issue for HR. The wider point (which absolutely still applies to HR) is that organisations need to be more sensitive to different viewpoints and perspectives, not requiring everyone to speak the same language / act in the same way.

To the following quote, I don't think its possible to facilitate, empower, encourage, reward and incent change without it coming from a senior leadership imperative and shift that begins with the way in which we hire and hold executives accountable through to who and how we hire the organizations managers and they the employees that innovate, create daily improvements and bring their perspectives freely to the workplace.

Secondly, the language we use creates barriers in how we facilitate, empower, encourage, reward and incent change and adaptability. Even the word 'manager' implies ownership or control by one vs. all. We do need leadership and we do need leaders and we do need managers. How those roles and those they support are defined and look for an organization that truly behaves adaptably, should be part of what we consider and potentially reframe.

Finally, we have to measure what adaptable, agile, flexible looks like and begin to objectively frame organizational change that happens either through liberating structures or other more organic paths coming from complexity science as an example, so that we are process and outcomes focused, not just one or the other. We need new management pioneers at the helm which is likely the intent of this collaboration. If so, we all need to challenge ourselves to be cautious about replacing constructs with constructs if those are in fact the reasons for our lack of agility.

"...our organizations were never built to be adaptable. Those early management pioneers, a hundred years ago, set out to build companies that were disciplined, not resilient. They understood that efficiency comes from routinizing the nonroutine. Adaptability, on the other hand, requires a willingness to occasionally abandon those routines—and in most organizations there are precious few incentives to do so."

The way I see it, HR can play a tremendous role in spurring adaptability, not precisely by supporting organization's functional areas, being this its historical -and rather passive- role, but by "showing" the door to change via its personal (and radical) renovation. If you think of it, the term HR (human resources) represent itself an anchor from the past, which is holding it back. This happens because words matter, they carry a profound meaning, and trigger powerful associations and images (i.e. if I tell you: "don't think about aliens singing pop-rock songs" you'll think of them anyway). Hence, unless HR gets rid of its legacy title and come up with something else, its efforts in supporting change across organizations will be less than effective.

Adaptability matters in my organisation as we need to be able to respond at pace to changes in the external environment in which we operate to continue to achieve our organisational goal. HR's role in spurring adaptability is to help leaders design organisations and create the culture to allow organisation to change on a continuous basis. HR can help organisations embrace a culture that has a focus on innovation and is prepared to take risks to achieve sustainable performance.

It's tough to change the culture/realign/innovate/insert-current-buzzwords-here when your organization has 100+ years of history, a complex structure, multiple businesses and as many opinions as employees. Or maybe it's just as difficult for relative new-comers. In any case, what I'm hoping for is torque that can be applied.