People Develop and harness your people's abilities and attitudes in a planned and productive manner, through a clearly defined programme of challenges, experiences, team involvement, and training. Companies that have endeavoured to develop and draw out the best from the people in their organisation appear to have established a strong focus in a number of the following areas: Build Capability They take every opportunity to develop the individual and collective abilities of their people   Harness Potential They enable their people to fully realise their potential through challenge and opportunity   Empower People They build a culture of empowerment, and ensure their people's authority grows in line with their competence   Provide Inspiration They inspire and motivate their people to their best performance through a true spirit of teamwork Manage the HR Process They design HR policies, appraisals and rewards to actively support the vision and culture   Ensure People Satisfaction They systematically ensure their people remain happy and fulfilled   To understand these in more detail please click on the relevant image above, or scan through the explanations below Build Capability Take every opportunity to develop the individual and collective abilities of your people How capable are your people? Do you have the means to quantify it? And is that capability increasing or declining? What do you do to actively manage the growth of your net capability? Principle Most work provides tremendous opportunities to combine the potential of people with the potential of processes to enhance the performance of both. Management is essentially about maximising the short and longer term benefits of this flow of opportunities. The development of process performance has for sometime been seen in this way, but the development of people is often more ad-hoc. Building capability is about actively using the flow of work opportunities to manage a balance between today’s operational performance improvements, and the improvement in the capability and potential of your people for tomorrow. Benefits Building capability in this way provides a continuous and focused flow of training to your people and reduces your dependency on isolated training courses, or buying in capability through recruitment. In addition, while the added value makes your people more interesting to the poachers among your competitors, it makes them less likely to leave since they will recognise that the benefits from working for your company are far from purely financial. Finally, the ‘process’ nature of development makes your people far more flexible and the business less prone to the disruption caused by staff leaving. Approach Any systematic approach to building the capability of your people has to be rooted in a clear model of your people’s current capabilities. You need to have a clear and appropriate competency model against which you can measure current capability, target growth in that capability, and plan the assignments that will enable you to reach that target. This can be almost as onerous as the planning required to make the process improvements your require to meet target, but then the benefits are at least as great, and the two tasks can easily be combined. Some of the capability you will seek to develop will inevitably be specialist, but there is also a great need in most organisations to develop and hone the general skills of problem solving, managing improvement, teamworking, influencing, management etc. [Return] Harness Potential Enable your people to fully realise their potential through challenge and opportunity How well are the skills and competences of your people harnessed into adding real value for the business? How well does your team selection and management process ensure that people are harnessed and developed to the full? Principle In many peoples minds the paradigm of success being related to status, and status being related to the number of levels below you in the hierarchy is still prevalent. This paradigm has a severely limiting effect on growing and harnessing people, because of the expectation that responsibility goes with status and a management or supervisory position. Delayering has helped to combat this but also exacerbated the problem by reducing the scope for such ‘promotions’. Harnessing potential is about smashing the paradigm and harnessing and rewarding people in such a way that formal ‘promotion’ is no longer the preferred route. Benefits By separating kudos from hierarchy we can do much to reward, develop and retain our star performers without promoting them to a role that they don’t like and we don’t benefit from. Further it gives us a means to reward and give status to all our people without overloading the hierarchy or inspiring resentments or hidden jealousies. But most of all it gives us the potential to get the very best out of our people on an ongoing and sustainable basis. Approach A key element of the approach is to shatter the paradigm that progress is position. Reducing it is not good enough - to succeed fully you will have to reverse it - you will have to clearly link benefits and rewards and kudos to something other than hierarchical status. This will overcome the aspirations for structure. The next step is to replace rigid structures with fluid teams which can flex to meet the needs of the changing markets and processes, and to harness the full potential of team members. This can be helped ironically by introducing different forms of structure: - clearly defined team processes and protocols - the development of team skills and people development skills - team assessment and self-management routines. [Return] Empower People Build a culture of empowerment, and ensure your people's authority grows in line with their competence How well does the authority you grant your people match their competence? How do you monitor the extent to which your people are empowered, and how do you ensure that there is continuing growth in empowerment? Principle Empowerment is about pushing decision making responsibility down through the organisation, to the level where the best information exists. Empowerment is a process which culminates in authorising individuals to make the key decisions associated with their role. But the authorisation is just the last step in the process (a point that is often missed by those who are attempting to empower). Empowerment is a process which firstly ensures the capability of the individual, which ensures the relevant supportive structures, which sets boundaries and terms of reference, and then authorises the individual. Benefits There are many benefits from empowerment, providing it is approached correctly, and is not just an abdication of authority. Good empowerment: - makes greater use of your peoples skills and abilities - removes bureaucracy and makes managers jobs easier - establishes responsibilities and removes the excuses for failure - provides for growth and development outside of a rigid hierarchy - increases job satisfaction and motivation - increases the flexibility and creativity of the organisation Approach As has been stated previously, empowerment is a process, not merely an action. The main steps in the process are as follows: - evaluate the scope for delegating decision making authority in each role - understand the incumbents current capability and development needs - agree a contract for development which will culminate in increased authority - and agree boundaries and reference points for the authority - ensure the development is delivered through training, coaching etc. - establish supporting structures to help the incumbent with the decisions and to make them aware of the need for them to take responsibility - confirm that the incumbent is fully able to make the decision in the best way, and work through any necessary improvements - authorise (and officialise) the incumbent in their expanded role [Return] Provide Inspiration Inspire and motivate your people to their best performance through a true spirit of teamwork How inspired are your people, and what by? How do you, as leader, provide them with the inspiration to do their very best in their role, and in the challenges they face? Principle Much is talked about leadership, and how managers need to become leaders. Perhaps the principles outlined in these pages encourage you to realise that there is still much we can do to improve our management, and not to abandon it. But that should not detract from the need for management to provide leadership. Sometimes a moments inspiration can be worth hours of perspiration. Leadership is about getting your people to catch your vision. Its about inspiring them to take responsibility for making things happen. It's about building an energy and enthusiasm in them that makes things take off. Benefits When your people are inspired and enthused about the right things, their energy and creativity is aligned with your plans, and the organisation can really move. You can feel part of something that is really alive. As a result, you will need to spend less time pushing and encouraging, and picking up the pieces of half-hearted work. And your people will work harder and longer, but feel that their work is quicker and more fun. Approach Providing inspiration is essentially about lifting peoples eyes to see their own potential in the context of the opportunities of any situation, and about making them feel responsible for it. We can begin to develop and provide inspiration by careful choice of the questions we ask people. By inviting them to explore the opportunities that their situation might have, by getting them to see their potential in that, by inspiring them to develop a vision for their future (even short term) and by building in them the confidence that they can do it, and that they want to do it. Great orators can do this through speeches, but this is not the best option for most of us. Although it looks like a short cut to the above, we miss the bits that really inspire our people and pay for the mistake through continuing to have to supply the real energy ourselves. Questions may take us around the houses, but if we ask them well we will hit all the right buttons. [Return] Manage the HR Process Design HR policies, appraisals and rewards to actively support the vision and culture How does your HR (Human Resources) process add value to your people? How does your HR process encourage consistency, and a flow of people for the challenges the company will face tomorrow? Principle If managers are taking responsibility for the development and coaching of their people, why do we need an HR process? An HR process should exist to look after the links between managers and the flow of development for the business as a whole. Done well an HR process will understand and use all of the development that can take place within each area of the business, and will develop an overall strategy to ensure the company as a whole has a flow of the people it needs. It will also provide the tools, the strategy, the mechanisms and the interfaces to individual managers in their own work to develop and grow their people. Benefits By having an HR process for the business as a whole the company can maximise its use of its resources and opportunities to develop its people for its future: - It can ensure a rounded programme of development - It can work toward consistency and a common compatible culture - It can economically develop tools and approaches for general use - It can provide a source of specialist support and guidance - And it can stimulate a vision and a strategy for people development that the managers can buy into and work toward. Approach The main tools available to the HR process in achieving the above are: - Measures of growth and people satisfaction - Policies for the development and growth of people - Integrated fast-track programmes for certain individuals - A vision and targets for people development - Central training programmes and resources - Standard procedures and processes for appraisal and development - Consultancy support for individual managers [Return] Ensure People Satisfaction Systematically ensure your people remain happy and fulfilled How happy are your people? How do you assess the satisfaction of your people, the main factors that contribute to that, and the impact of that on the quality of their work? Principle Your people spend at least seven hours a day physically at work. If they are satisfied they are likely to spend the vast proportion of that time being there mentally as well. The principle of ensuring people satisfaction is about measuring it, and then using the data to change factors which will increase their satisfaction. Benefits Satisfied people work with more of their attention on the opportunities of the job. People who enjoy their work tend to do it better, particularly where some degree of judgment or creativity is required. In addition, higher people satisfaction means that your ability to retain your people is increased. And satisfied people are generally less resistant to, or fearful of change. Approach The approach is essentially one of undertaking a regular sampled survey, and using the results to guide your policy decisions for the future.   [Return]   Home - Load frames - About us - Resources - Contact us © Tesseract Management Systems Ltd 2003

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