The Working Week 19: Lisa Haneberg
Wayne’s guest on The Working Week this week is author, blogger and podcaster, Lisa Haneberg.
Lisa has three blogs - Management Craft, 2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough, and Chile Pepper High - and says that reading and writing blogs helps her stay fresh and current.
She is also the author of five books, including High Impact Middle Management and the most recent, Two Weeks to a Breakthrough, which explains how you can make major progress toward any goal in two weeks.
0:12 – Wayne Kicks off by highlighting two pieces of research on CEO pay, one of which reveals that American CEOs make in a day what their workers do in a year and the other which found that boardroom pay in the UK has risen by a third over the past year.
1:12 – Wayne moves on to two recent blogs by regular contributor Charles Halliwell highlighting just how poor HR departments are at addressing the strategic and people challenges facing their organisations.
2:22 – Wayne welcomes Lisa Haneberg who the brains behind www.Mangementcraft.com. Lisa has picked up on a piece by Brian Amble which looks at how to deal with crisis situations - and in particular, why you shouldn’t rely on the advice of so-called experts.
3.36 – Lisa agrees that experts cannot predict outcomes any better than novices. Intellectually we probably know that - but expert consultants DO have their uses, most notably in helping us to focus.
3:48 - The key issue for Lisa is that people need help with focus. That’s where the expertise of the outside person comes in. However, predicting actual outcomes is more questionable…
4:30 - Does this work on an individual level rather than on an organisational level Wayne asks?
4:53 Lisa – Lisa explains the `chaotic system` at work. People can be helped to be smart, and nimble as well as to build the skills that they need for the future – especially where dealing with change is concerned.
6.03 - What are the things that companies and individuals can do to build focus asks Wayne?
6:12 - Often we are not aware of change yet it’s important to notice when conditions are changing. The discipline of aligning and tweaking what we do through change is key Lisa explains.
7:26 – This ties into another issues, that of
the changing role of the HR function.
7:38 – Lisa says that she is getting a bit sick of all these “why HR is failing” articles – many of them do not move the issue forward constructively. The real issue is that most HR functions are not set up to be strategic power houses.
8:32 - Wayne agrees that HR should not be set up to be tactical and then receive flack that they are not being strategic enough.
8:43 – Lisa also points out that we also fail to look at the role of executive management teams. Often they are not willing to put muscle behind creating an engaged workforce and HR cannot do this if they don’t have the buy-in of the Board.
10:19 – So how can we look at research like this and gain something that will move the discussion forward asks Wayne?
10:28 - Well, these studies do highlight the issue and can be used as a catalyst. How are we doing for instance? Even printing out an article like this and sharing it with colleagues moves the discussion forward.
