One of my favourite types of project is when I can work on the 'People Strategy' for a company. Probably in part because of my mixed business/HR background – as a People Strategy goes hand-in-glove with the Business and Financial Strategy of an organisation – and...
I was recently asked by a consultancy if I could help with their bid to a client who, as part of the project, wanted to set up competence frameworks. Did I have a couple of slides to explain how one would develop such competence frameworks and some examples of...
I have written earlier about benchmarking in connection with the talent management project at the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA were interested to learn what other similar technological companies did in regards to talent management. As I wrote at the time though,...
One of the executives I am coaching in Russia has recently helped set up a new department on Sustainable Development. This is a new area for him (his background is commercial) and also for the chemical company for which he works. Consequently there are many different...
It seems that at almost every Russian or Kazakh company for which I work, I end up helping them design their Executive Coaching programme and process. I am of course more than happy to help. It’s pleasing to see Executive Coaching becoming more acceptable and...
A simplified risk management methodology - and especially the risk matrix of impact against likelihood - can be extremely useful in HR and other projects, even when your company does not officially require you to use them. Having had business, leadership and project...
I’ve had lots of jobs, either as line manager or the senior HR person, in technical organisations. Where most of the people are engineers and/or scientists. And I am very aware of the difficulties involved in the identification of high-potential people (‘hipos’) in...
My current Russian client, a large and very successful petrochemicals company, has had many reorganisations in the last couple of years. One of these that they are implementing in all their production locations, is a systematic delayering. I recently designed...
When I was head of the Corporate University in Kazakhstan, one of our ‘best sellers’ was Teambuilding. And my people were pretty damn good at it. Which I guess is the reason that we had so many companies as clients and return as clients. I have always had mixed...
Two recent events have reminded me about work I did almost twenty years ago about the differences between teams and groups (and even bigger ‘teams’ like communities and networks). I was coaching a young lady recently promoted to manager in one of my new clients in...
In the last few years I’ve been involved with setting up high-potential identification programmes in a number of companies, both in ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries. Recently we held a workshop in Paris for a client who wanted to review best practices, to help...
I seem to have been involved with job grading, job evaluation, job promotion, whatever you want to call it, on and off for most of my professional life. And it keeps returning! I was lucky enough to be taught job evaluation at Shell (a version of the Hay Group system)...
I do not normally read lists in HR, management or leadership blogs. Which is ironic given that some of my blogs here appear to contain lists. However one caught my eye recently and I ended up reading it. It was ’21 executives share the daily routines that help them...
We have recently developed and used the concept of Learning Agility in the HR Consulting group, which reports to me in my current role, possibly for the first time in Kazakhstan in a Kazakh company. I had used Learning Agility a couple of times in previous companies,...
The HR Consulting group within my current organization has a range of expertise including carrying out online engagement surveys for all of the National Companies. When we report the results it is often to the CEO of the company and their top leadership teams. This...
I recently ran a two half-day’s workshop for the extended leadership team of the national chemical company. We dealt with strategic thinking and looked at how their two-year old strategic plan might need adapting due to the transformation plans of our entire group of...
One of the subjects with which I helped my Russian company in the two years I lived and worked in Moscow was leadership development, and more specifically, executive coaching. In addition to coaching myself, I’ve met and interviewed about 35 external coaches whom had...
Last week I ran a half-day interactive session for high-potentials at NIS, the Siberian National Oil Company in Belgrade, Serbia. They wanted to hear how corporate values can drive culture and result-oriented performance management. My case studies were three...
Whenever I have been involved in a change process, whether a major reorganization, a reduction round or the introduction of new processes, I learned very early on that "communication" will always be an issue. However much you think you are communicating, it will never...