Leadership Advice & Tips

You could say HR is going “agile lite,” applying the general principles without adopting all the tools and protocols from the tech world. It’s a move away from a rules- and planning-based approach toward a simpler and faster model driven by feedback from participants. This new paradigm has really taken off in the area of performance management. (In a 2017 Deloitte survey, 79% of global executives rated agile performance management as a high organizational priority.) But other HR processes are starting to change too.

In many companies that’s happening gradually, almost organically, as a spillover from IT, where more than 90% of organizations already use agile practices. At the Bank of Montreal (BMO), for example, the shift began as tech employees joined cross-functional product-development teams to make the bank more customer focused. The business side has learned agile principles from IT colleagues, and IT has learned about customer needs from the business. One result is that BMO now thinks about performance management in terms of teams, not just individuals. Elsewhere the move to agile HR has been faster and more deliberate. GE is a prime example. Seen for many years as a paragon of management through control systems, it switched to FastWorks, a lean approach that cuts back on top-down financial controls and empowers teams to manage projects as needs evolve.

Via The Learning Factor

Exceptional workplace doesn't happen by accident.  It starts with a clearly defined vision that includes the company's core values, a detailed description of what each of those values means on a day-to-day basis, and a system for measuring  whether or not the people in the organization are living those values.

I refer to this plan as a culture blueprint, and it's critical to the creation and scaling of your company's culture, just as an architect's plans are to the building of a skyscraper. Done correctly, it serves as a North Star to the senior management team as you hire and manage the company's workforce. Without it, you'll end up building something that's likely to collapse under its own weight.  

Via The Learning Factor