The messy mindset needed for People & Culture

There’s a comfort in the ritual and routine of events like national holidays and summer vacations. It brings people together, sharing traditions and creates a pattern in our otherwise chaotic year.?

This comfortable predictability is harder and harder to find in our VUCA, BANI, RUPT or TUNA (no BS yes TUNA!!) world. Whatever acronym, the best way to describe the world at the moment is?messy?– rapidly changing, hard to understand, unreliable and unpredictable.

The mental models that we use in HR and business, come from a time when the world moved slowly and predictably. Often when people held quite similar views. Action A would lead to the expected outcome B, in turn, lead to outcome C. We could see and understand a pattern. Write it all down, draw a swim lane diagram and you have a repeatable process. Voila, a new process is born.

People & Culture is more than a change of title?

People & Culture requires a completely different mindset. People are not predictable. They’re messy, complicated and chaotic. And they are all different. A training programme that helps one person learn, doesn’t resonate with someone else.??Today I feel like eating chocolate, tomorrow kale.

Culture is a massively complicated, interconnected system. Any model of culture that predicts you can pull a few levers and drive cultural change is na?ve (though often these are peddled by consultants). So many variables, so many potential outcomes, so many complex interdependencies.

Embrace complexity but keep it simple

Working with unpredictable, complex systems means a new way of?seeing?and?acting. A mindset where you acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers and can’t predict the future.?

Instead, we need to learn to work in new ways:

1. Gather perspectives??- cross functions and stakeholder groups to see issues from all angles.
2. Experiment – try out an idea on a small scale eg pilots or test cases.
3. Incremental change not a Big Bang??– small adaptive steps rather than the massive project plan.
4. Rapidly adjust – nothing is set in stone, keep continuously improving

If you want to move from the manager of processes to a leader of People & Culture, then you need a switch of mindset to?embrace the messy.

Creative ideas from LEGO

For new mindsets, it’s no surprise that LEGO is putting the HR bricks together in a new way. A short (5-minute)?read suggests 3 ways they deal with the messy new world of People & Culture:?

1. Communities of Interest from across the business instead of HR Centres of Excellence.
2. Digital Product Management for developing a digital mindset in HR.
3. A fluid pool of HR partners instead of a traditional HR functional structure

Wishing you fun and joy working in the mess.

And don’t forget to?Work like a Human!

Jane

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