Pilar Jerico

What lies in store for people management in the coming year? In this post, I’d like to share those ideas which I think will have the greatest impact on human resources management this year. Of course, some of these ideas will be more appropriate for some sectors than for others; and only time will tell if these predictions turn out to be prescient…

1. Leadership 2.0: A new style of people management, more open and less distant, is gradually making headway. The creation of this new culture is being helped by Web 2.0 applications that focus on cooperation, new ways of perceiving value in companies, and the presence of a digitally literate workforce. However, this culture change will not be achieved primarily because of technology, but because of a different conception of managing people; in particular, a more cooperative, transparent and less distant type of leadership. As happened with Internet at the beginning, some companies will be quick to embrace new styles of management facilitated by technological advances, while others will be mere passive observers. When we talk about a 2.0. approach, we do not just mean having a blog (!), but far more profound changes in management style.
2. Change and transformation management: Many companies are embarking on profound changes, and will need to implement a shift in the company culture for a variety of reasons: they are entering the 2.0 world, they will have to keep on downsizing their workforce, or they’re trying to recover after a bad 2009. No one knows what will happen in 2010, but one thing is for sure: we won’t go back to where we were before the crisis. Therefore, the need for change and transformation is inevitable.
3. A NoFear style of management: Many people are feeling dejected because of the crisis, and it will be a real challenge to manage them in such a way that they stay motivated. Unfortunately, fear is on the increase, and many managers who previously nurtured their staff’s talent are now returning to more coercive practices. However, such a management style is incompatible with creativity and with a state of mind which allows people to give the best of themselves.
4. Mentoring: Many less-experienced managers are finding the current exacting circumstances very difficult to negotiate. For this reason, companies such as Banesto are implementing talent development programmes which use more experienced members of staff as guides, or mentors.
5. Informal learning: A few years ago, one of the difficulties of e-learning was the lack of access to Internet, or people’s lack of ability to use it. This problem largely no longer exists, and we now have the opportunity, and the challenge, to provide cooperation-oriented resources which enable people to develop professionally.
6. A client-focused approach: Human resources departments need to fully understand they are at the service of external and internal clients; they should also think about using basic marketing skills in their communications with the rest of the company, as their internal image often leaves much to be desired. All of the foregoing will serve to place the human resource department more in line with the basic aims of the business.
7. 2.0 communication: Social networks are assuming increasing importance in intra-company communication. Indeed, some of the more innovative companies are now replacing intranets with this type of tool. Communication needs to be increasingly horizontal, and in all possible directions, both within the company, and externally.
8. The end of rigid demarcation: Divisions between departments will be gradually diluted thanks to technology and the need to work as a team. As complexity grows, rigidly separated departments make less sense. Detailed lists of functions that are set in stone will gradually become meaningless owing to the rapid pace of change.
9. More performance-related salaries: The percentage of total remuneration which is allocated to meeting objectives may increase, especially in times of crisis like the present. While it is true that companies cannot afford to lose talented people, it is equally true that they are not in a position to pay the salaries offered before.
10. A better work-life balance: An increasingly popular way of improving employee motivation is to implement policies that help staff meet the demands of their professional and personal lives. Such motivation-enhancing policies are all the more important in an environment where salaries may well stagnate.

I really enjoyed the Japanese film Departures, directed by Yojiri Takita, and winner of the 2009 Oscar for the best foreign language film. It blends sensitivity, a good plot, wonderful acting and, above all, it makes us think about the worth of any occupation when it is carried out with dignity and respect. The main character in the film prepares the bodies of the dead for their final rest. His line of work is rejected by those around him. However, he prepares the corporeal body for life beyond with such elegance, grace and profound respect that he acquires the stature of an artist.

We can apply these same qualities to any type of work, regardless of what we do. In the society we live in each person plays a fundamental role in the working of the whole; I cannot understand why we insist in seeking self-fulfilment in climbing up the corporate ladder when possibly we should focus more on what we do, and on finding meaning in carrying out our jobs as if they were a work of art, whether they are management positions, auxiliary functions or we work in a funeral parlour. We are bent on finding meaning outside of ourselves when, very probably, real strength is found within ourselves. This is precisely what differentiates some workers from others: on the one hand, those who really live and enjoy their job and see it as a service to others, as opposed to those who consider it a mere routine. In the troubled economic times we’re immersed in, it’s not so easy to change companies or position. Perhaps this is an opportunity to find fulfilment in the small details of our jobs, whether we’re writing a report, cleaning or managing people.

Departures is also a reflection on death. In the film, death is shown to be a natural event and is presented without melodrama. Although the death of a loved one is seen to be extremely painful for those left behind, the film also conveys how life goes on in spite of this pain. Unlike certain Far Eastern countries, in Spain we tend to be more histrionic when faced with death (up to a few decades ago, people still hired “professional” mourners), and there is a certain taboo associated with it. In the film, however, life and death flow in parallel, silently. It’s really worth seeing, and experiencing.  

I have been informed that the Spanish version of this blog is one of the finalists for the Blogosfera RRHH 2009 (2009 Human Resources Blogosphere Prize) which is coordinated by the Observatorio de la Blogosfera de RRHH (Human Resources Blogosphere Observatory). The Observatory has come to this decision based on a qualitative ranking, carried out every fortnight, of articles selected from Spanish human resources blogs. This blog was placed in the top 10 in the ranking of articles published up to 15 September of the current year. I am extremely grateful for this recognition as the other nominees include colleagues and friends whose work I greatly admire.

The other finalists are:

• Liderazgo en la era de la colaboración
• Optima Infinito
• Jano 2.0
• El blog de los RR.HH.
• José Luis del Campo Villares
• Diversidad Corporativa
• Bitácora RH
• Congestión de personas
• Yoriento

The members of the jury are:
Jaime Montalvo – Former Head of the Consejo Económico Social.
Mayte Sanz – Publisher of the magazine Revista Observatorio de RRHH y RRLL.
Senior Manager – An influential blogger in the field of human resources.
Carlos Martí – Research fellow at the IESE and a blogger at Trompazos en la Red.
Isabel Sancho – Managing Partner of Interban Network
Francisco García Cabello – Director of the radio programmes Foro de RRHH y Líderes.
Helena López-Casares – Publisher at LID Editorial
Ricardo Alfaro – President of AEDIPE Cataluña
Eugenio de Andrés – Managing Partner of Tatum y Director of the Observatorio de la Blogosfera de RRHH.

Once again, my thanks for this recognition.

You happen to walk past a colleague on the street, you say hello but he doesn’t answer.  Your first reaction is to feel slighted and think that he has deliberately ignored you. You then try to explain what’s happened: “It’s because I didn’t back him up in a meeting the other day”. You continue: “Whenever I disagree with him, he always gets angry and ignores me.”  You then decide that the next time you see him there’s no way you’re going to say hello. However, it turns out that the real reason that he didn’t say hello was simply because he wasn’t wearing his contact lenses and he actually hadn’t seen you!

When something like this happens, we are going up the “ladder of inference”, to use the phrase coined by Chris Argyris. The ladder of inference is a way of explaining one of the principal problems in communication: when one person speaks, the other interprets his words in the light of his own prejudices, past experiences and personal opinions. You see, our brain doesn’t like ambiguity and, when faced with something it doesn’t understand, it tends to look for an explanation. The problem is that it often gets the explanation wrong. Just think how many times we misinterpret emails!

So we need to be very careful how we process information. If we want to go down the ladder of inference rather than up it, we should ask ourselves if our interpretation of what someone says or does really reflects his intention. And if we’re not sure, we would do well to check with the person in question. Unfortunately, many of us unwittingly become Hollywood scriptwriters and create a lurid plot in our minds when the reality is usually much more mundane and simple.

Few subjects arouse such interest as leadership. There are millions of entries devoted to it in Google, and hundreds of courses and books, some of which provide the ingredients for becoming a good leader in the best style of the traditional cookery book. And yet, leadership continues to be a problem area for many organizations, despite the fact that it is quite possibly the key factor in fostering the development of talent, the achievement of targets and the elimination of fear.

Before approaching such a broad subject, we need to state a basic premise: we would do better to speak of leaders rather than leadership in the abstract. Now, the necessary but not sufficient condition of being a leader is to have followers. Let us be clear, being recognized as a leader does not mean that we have to become a combination of John Wayne and Albert Einstein, in the words of Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordström, the authors of Karaoke Capitalism. The essence of being a leader is much simpler than that, although no easier. Whereas managers are in charge of teams who follow their orders, leaders have people who want to follow them. This fundamental difference has two implications. First, we all have been, or may in the future be, leaders in a particular situation. Secondly, leadership is above all a question of the emotions. In point of fact, the best leaders I have known all have one thing in common, judging from what people who work with them have told me: the utmost understanding of each person they work with, the utmost awareness of their colleagues’ strong and weak points, and the ability to inspire the utmost trust. Their colleagues want to follow them not only for rational considerations but also for emotional ones. One last point on the subject of leaders. There are as many types of leaders as teams to lead. There are leaders whose strong point is their expert knowledge (like Gil Grissom in CSI Las Vegas, to take an example from TV), leaders who base their success on their ability to influence people while yet others who are very charismatic (such as Jack Welch, ex-Chairman and CEO of General Electric). Leaders of all types share common characteristics, one of the most important being the ability to communicate.

All organizations need to have efficient channels of communication if they want to avoid becoming a parody of the game of Chinese whispers, where a message is passed along a chain of people only to emerge completely distorted when it reaches the last person. To avoid a company falling into this trap, leaders have to communicate clearly, to communicate frequently and to check that their staff really understand what they’re trying to get across. If they don’t do this, they can suffer the same fate as Captain James Cook, the Englishman who discovered Australia in 1770. On disembarking to explore the newly-discovered continent, he saw a strange animal jumping around. He asked the Aborigines what it was called. “Kan-ga-roo” they replied. And so he called it a kangaroo. Years later, philologists began to study the Aborigines’ language. They discovered that “kan-ga-roo” actually means “I don’t understand”.  I wonder how many kangaroos are jumping round your office…

On-going communication can be extremely tiring but it is very productive. It helps to transmit emotions, values and the company culture and it also stops people wasting time trying to find out what’s going on in the corridors. Let us not forget that humans, according to psychologists, are informavores (consumers of information). If leaders do not provide all the necessary information, their staff will go and look for it in rumours, the number of which is always in direct proportion to the opaqueness of the organization.

To sum up, if we want to become good team leaders we need to develop excellent communication skills, regardless of what type of leader we strive to be. We need to communicate what we want, what we think and, of course, check that our message has been received loud and clear.