SPEAKER_01 0:00

HR people are always looking for perfection. They're always looking for the thing to be as good as it can be. You know, performance management system or the interview or the assessment or the training. It doesn't need it. Just get MP, get to 8020. Is it good enough? Get it into the business. Make it work. If it doesn't work, it's alright. Go again.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Right then, folks, we are back with the Be Continued podcast, and this time without the train strike, so I'm back in my chair. Um, for any first timers, I'm Jess Hilton, and I'm here with my co-host Ralph Tribe. And today we're joined by our esteemed guest, Kevin Green, who is the Chief People Officer at First Group PLC. Um, today's episode is focusing on the future of HR, looking at strategy AI and the evolving role of the people leader. So, Kevin, thanks so much for being here with us.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Delighted.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Nice to sit here with you and chat. Um, just to start, can you give us a quick intro into yourself and what it is that you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Okay, so I've I don't know, I've I'm of a certain age, so I've been involved in business and HR roles for a very long time. So um I did some early HR jobs. I ended up working in an HR consultancy called QTA. That's where I met Ralph a long time ago. Uh, and uh ran that uh as MD and then did a management buyout. So it's my own business for 14 years, and we consulted with quite a lot of large organizations, so the Cabinet Office, Unilever, people like that, doing particular projects. So I loved that. I then went uh in-house, got a role as chief learning officer at Raw Mail, uh, pre-privatisation. Got promoted within six months to be the HR Director of Operations, which is 165,000 people at the time. I ended up being chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which is the professional body for the recruitment industry. Did that for 10 years. That was a great job. I enjoyed that. Quite nice to be able to get everyone in the organisation in one room, so a couple of hundred people. Uh, and I enjoyed being the chief exec as well. Um, and then basically decided to go plural. So sat on some advisory boards, a few non-executive jobs, wrote my book, Competitive People Strategy, which I enjoyed. Um, because I, you know, I spent a lot of time moaning about businesses not understanding how to do people strategy and HR directors paying lip service to it. Um, and basically that was what I was gonna do uh for the rest of my career. And then somehow post-COVID, I was asked by someone I knew quite well to go back in uh to first bus and do a big restructuring, which I helped her do. Um, and then I was gonna find her a chief people officer, and then most probably one Friday night, she said to me, Look, we've been interviewing all day. She said, You you know, you like this job and we like you, so why don't you just stay? And I thought, well, I don't know. I went home, um, told my wife, and she said, Are you mad? Are you completely bonkers? You spent a long time saying you didn't want to do corporate jobs. I eventually ended up being the chief people officer, and I've been doing that for four years, and I've recent recently taken on the group role. That's probably about six months ago. So, you know, uh first group PLC, second highest performing FTSE 250. We've doubled the share price um over the last few years, and a lot of that's to do with the culture change. Um, we're in a difficult place because we're at the centre of government policy, so route nationalisation, uh, and clearly franchising in bus is having a huge amount of change on the marketplace. So uh I'm managing sort of a cultural transformation, but also we've been doing quite a lot of work on target operating models and things like that. So that's me.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So being around seen a lot is fair to say. And I particularly like speaking with people that have um, well, kind of top of HR, have had whole careers in or around the function because obviously you've seen this giant bloody evolution. Um, if we are to zoom in a little bit, so let's say last five years, COVID to current, if you want to look at it that way, broad question, but what are the biggest shifts that you've seen for HR last five years?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Well, I've got a contradiction, a bit of a paradox here. So I would say, and there are some HR functions that are doing this, so I think we've got to think about how we operate uh differently. So at the moment, I'm doing a sort of a restructuring of the HR function, which is basically going agile. So working with sprints and scrums and doing using that technology. But what we're also doing is delivering much more through projects and programs. So less about centres of excellence, less about business partner and thinking about how do you deploy your HR people in a different way to have more impact. So, you know, I think a lot of businesses are trying to do that, thinking about products and services quite differently. So I think there's been a transformer uh transformation of the HR function, led by trying to have more impact and add more value. And I would say this is the paradox, there's lots of HR functions that are just doing the same as they've always done and add very little value. So, and that's one of the great things, you know, when we start to talk about the future of HR, I think the future of HR or the future of the people profession is profound, but it means we've got to adapt and change and get in front of that. And at the moment, I think there's like, I don't know, it's an 80-20. 20% of HR functions are brilliant and trying to things do things differently and add more value. And I think 80% are just doing what they've always done. And I think that's going to create some challenges in those organizations.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

So the changing scope of HR, I know we've explored this in a couple of podcasts already, the sort of external shifts that are building pressure for HR to change.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

So there is lots of pressure. So the the you know, the workforce is um being influenced in different ways. They have different perceptions of what they want from work. You can talk about technology and AI driving change within organisations. You can talk about, you know, the need for organizations to represent their client base. So all of those are external pressures. And I suppose the other one is the whole climate change. You know, I one of the reasons I'm at first bus is I'm a great believer in public transport. You know, what we do is important. You know, getting, you know, people that use buses don't often own cars. But also, if we're going to get people out of cars onto public transport, bus is the key to that. You know, every bus takes 75 cars off the road. That's a huge amount of carbon. And, you know, from a talent perspective, it helps us attract people, it helps us attract new customers and retain customers. So the whole thing about how you electrify a bus operation is interesting in itself. So, yes, lots of external influences, but the fundamental thing that I think HR still doesn't really understand is how do you differentiate, how do you add value to how your business competes? And I still think HR they follow fans, they follow trends. And I think if we're going to be successful, we really need to understand the competitive pressures in our organization and really be focusing on the things that will have an impact on that. And that's not what most HR functions do.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

So what so what what do they do? Well, I think what they tend to do is they, you know, as I said, follow trends. So what happens is, you know, I don't know, people be talking about it's all about competency interview, and then everyone's doing competency interviews. It will then be about, I don't know, well-being, and everyone's doing well-being. And there's nothing wrong with some of those things. But the thing for me, and they've all got value in themselves, but it's how do you deploy them to have a difference on your organization? Otherwise, you're just doing nice things for people. So actually, you've got a choice, you know, you can't do everything. So you've got to prioritise as an HR leader. How what are the things that we're gonna choose to do and what are we not gonna do? And if you're just doing following fads and trends, you'll just be trying to do more and more each year, you'll be busier and busier, and half of it, or perhaps even more than half of it, won't add any value. And you can't afford to do that in a modern business. So I think great HR leaders now or in the future are gonna be able to say, or gonna have to say no more often, gonna have to prioritize. I always remember this. Um, I always talk about the three key questions why, what difference, and how you're gonna measure it, and use that as a criteria. So when I was doing consulting, I used to go into HR functions and sit there with the top HR team and go, right, let's go through your plan. And you ask those three questions of all the activity, and half of it they don't know the answer. And so you're investing time, energy, and money in stuff you've got no idea what difference it's gonna make.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

So you just asked a question, so what have you seen change in the last five years? And you said sort of some things, but sometimes and sometimes not. But I was just intrigued, right? So I thought I'll pull this up on my phone because I saw uh, as we were planning for this sort of podcast, I saw that the corporate research forum, good outfit, yeah, done a bit of research on the uh changing face of the chief people officer's role over the next five years. Uh, and these were the things that it came up with. Uh, make sure you understand what's important to your business, uh, base your activities on evidence, analysis before action, and evaluating outcomes, be part of a high quality, relevant network, latch on to a great business school, uh, read The Economist and FT. Now, um there was I think there was make sure you know the best head hunters and some other people in your network. True, all good. But I was a bit, huh. Um, so that's for the next five years. But I'm pretty sure I could have read something five years ago and it would have said exactly the same thing. So, what why, you know, why do we just keep someone coming up with the sort of the same stuff, which isn't necessarily that inspiring anyway? I mean, some of it's pretty obvious. Make sure you understand what's important in your business. But what's going on though? Is that is that new? Is it that people didn't understand that and that they now need to? Or if it was always true, and it has been for the last five years, why why is it so insightful that this is going to be the thing for the next five years? I mean, what's what's going on with the profession here?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Well, I don't think it's evolving fast enough. I think that's the point, is I think that you you know that quote could have been said 10 years ago and could have been said five years ago. And um, you can see there are HR professionals that do get the business. But having consulted and spent a lot of time talking to HR, there are lots of people in our profession that actually don't fundamentally understand how their business competes, and that is most probably the key differentiator. So, you know, in my business, I know what the drivers of performance are, and it's about you know operational improvement, continuous improvement, and there's some stuff about engineering, there's also stuff about customer uh acquisition and personas and things that where we really want to get people to take more bus trips and and all so you've got to be able to hone in on the stuff that's really important and will make your business more successful, and then go, what do we need? What talent do we need? How do we need our culture to evolve so that we are brilliant at that and better than our competitors? And I don't think that many HR functions do the hard lifting, they basically see themselves as a follower of the business rather than a leader of the business. So I will argue with our marketing director or our chief information officer or our head of engineering about what we should be doing and why we should be doing it. And I'm not sure that many HR directors or CPOs play that role. Now, some clearly do. So I'm not sort of saying I'm unique, but there are I don't know, even if it's 50%, that means 50% of the time we've got HR functions that are just doing what they think, rather than having any data or evidence about why and what difference they want it to make, and how they can quantify it and measure it and show that it's working. And the reason why we're not taken seriously by our colleagues in the boardroom is because too often we're just doing stuff. We don't spend enough time talking about the the why and the how it's going to make a difference and the outcome and the impact. And that's the that's the issue, I think. Yeah. So I think even though that isn't that profound, it's still a big message to you. You know, that's the point. You know, we're 10 years on, and we could have said that 10 years ago. The point is we haven't really resolved that fundamental issue, which is causation, knowing what you're doing, why you're doing it, the impact you HR strategy is about hypothesis. If I so you know, we get in a room, we do big, big room planning, we come up with 30 things we think are great, we test it with the business, we get it down to 15, then we have to prioritize the seven big things we're gonna do this year or over the next two years. And we do that by trying to you know quantify what difference it's gonna make and how big that you know. So we try and get into pounds, shillings, and pence and profitability or customers or MPS, things that we know drive value. Yeah, and I just don't think many HR functions do that. What do you think? You you've been around a profession long enough.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Well, I think you're right. Um, and that that's not to sort of put a downer on to I I I'm often sort of intrigued by it. Um, because I know that, you know, but I mean obviously we we we all know a lot of cheap people officers, and everyone um wants to do that. I mean, I do meet a lot who do understand the drivers in their business. Um, but you're right, they don't necessarily, or the function doesn't necessarily then sort of go, right, well look, these are the drivers in the business, so this is the HR stuff that we're gonna do in direct contribution to those things. Um yeah, finding that link um between uh the drivers of the business which the profession does understand quite often, and then the things that are happening in the function which will support those things. Yeah, I think that's a struggle, but I don't know why.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Can I can I ask? This might be taking it to a very basic level as some a non-HR professional, but I speak to a lot of HR people. And you said earlier, like I understand that understanding the business is the very strategic levels of things, but on just a ground level, you also said learning what to not prioritize or like going, like letting go of the things that are not going to drive impact. But is that is it possible? Because there's always a lot of management pressure to for the BAU, right? All this stuff you have to do on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yeah, I'm not talking about HR operations. You're right, that has to happen. So you've got to get offer letters out, you've got to have job descriptions, you've got to be able to recruit people, you've got to be able to do the core transactional activity. I'm talking about the discretionary stuff. What are the projects? What are the change projects? What are the programs of activity that we know we've got a choice? We can do 10 things, but we've got to be able to prioritize what are the five we're going to do and what are the five we're not going to do. And you need to put business measurement around that. That's the point. You know, I'm a great believer in the customer service profit chain for any service business, you know, measuring your uh people satisfaction or engagement, inclusion, whatever you want, aligning it against MPS, aligning that against more customers, repeat business, and if you get that right, you get improved superior financial results. Now, that's been around since the mid-80s, right? C has started that, and enterprise and Starbucks have used it consistently over a 25-year period to grow their businesses so they're market leaders in their segment. So it's you know, it it's just frustrating. And and and and I suppose your point, Ralph, is why is it not happening? I think there's a bit about education, I think there's a bit about role modelling, I think there's also a bit about as a profession do we really get the best and the brightest in HR? So, what I mean by that is if you went, you know, I do I do occasionally do some guest stuff, uh, an MBA program in London, and I do the strategic HR bit, and I go along and I go, how many people in HR? And there's normally one hand or two, which is says something in itself. And then I go, um, and how many people here want to have a time in HR? And normally the two hands or the one or two hands in HR go down and no hands go up. So why is that? That's interesting, isn't it? So if you're talking about people doing an MBAs or an MSc, clearly you've got right, investing in their own careers, want to progress in organisations, but don't see a HR as a route into that. Is that that sort of worries me? So where where does where does all the talent go? Does it go into IT? Does it go into marketing? Does it go into sales? Does it go into finance? But we've got to we've got to compete to get the best in at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah, but at the same time, I suppose I always go that HR is not rocket science. So um I'm like, I I don't know, does it need sort of the sort of super sort of IQE sort of types? Um I don't know. I mean, I definitely think that there is a it's not a necessarily aspirational professional for people to go into. I mean, something which I try and spend a lot of time um correcting. You know, if any of my sort of adult children sort of friends or whatever sort of go, I was half thinking about HR, you know, actually I jump on it and going, listen, right? Um if you're any good at HR, um you will find it very easy to have a really fulfilling job and be paid really well, probably better than actually if you went into marketing finance, partly because, for whatever reason, they're awash with all the brightest and the best because for some reason, you know, they're the attractive professions. You know, and if you go into HR, you know, maybe you'll sort of stand out if you can make the connection a bit better.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

But the other thing that's really interesting is if you say exactly the same thing, if people come to me and to ask about advice about careers, I'd say the people profession is the place to be. If you think about what's going to create value in our knowledge economy going forward and the way that business is evolving, you know, the people profession's, you know, really exciting. It's the place to be. So I think I feel very optimistic about the impact that the HR profession can have on business and on society, but in reality, we've got to up our game. That's the bit that frustrates me. So we've got to get good people in it, we've got to train people better, give them more opportunities to learn and try stuff. I also think we're a bit cautious. You know, there is a bit, I'm I'm sort of talking in generalizations, but there is a bit of keep your head down, you know. Whereas actually, if you want to innovate, you're gonna have to fail, and you're gonna have to fail fast and learn from it. So that's why I think the whole agile approach of minimum viable product. Yeah, HR people are always looking for perfection, they're always looking for the thing to be as good as it can be, the performance management system or the interview or the assessment or the training. It doesn't need it. Just get MP, get to 8020. Is it good enough? Get it into the business, make it work. If it doesn't work, iterate, learn, go again, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, funny enough, we we had a uh in a client, um, a uh brilliant reward director of a client of ours came up. We were talking about minimal viable product, and she came up with a much better idea, which is minimum lovable product, which I particularly liked because minimal viable is a bit reductionist.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Um minimal lovable is like quite aspirational, so we like that. Absolutely true. Um, but without I don't want to sort of sit here thinking, oh, the brightest and the best, and somehow have sort of people watching this thinking, oh, there's sort of you know, two sort of older white men thinking they're the brightest and the best. Um actually, I just want to get back to one of the other sort of points is um, you know, why can we not do this thing with HR sort of strategy and connecting it to the business on? Funny enough, uh, because I had two minutes to think about the answer to that. Um it's it's a funny thing, right? That the I I some businesses perhaps it's really difficult to understand that. So so if I think about the jobs I've had, um uh most of the businesses I worked in uh actually the business model is quite easy to understand. Uh possibly true of first bus as well, I suppose. Um and the reason that part of the reason that I left BT when I was there is because I didn't understand uh how the business made money, sort of a B2B massive sort of telecoms network, sort of no idea really, didn't have a Scooby how that and I found that quite difficult then. Yeah. Um, because you know, having been at somewhere like Getty, where it's quite easy to understand how you make sort of money out of commercial visual content, um, you know, straightforward. You can imagine a picture and you can imagine it's set into media or an advertising campaign or whatever it might be, you know, it it much more straightforward. Yeah, you go to somewhere that requires quite a lot of almost insider information. And I I think I became less effective actually as an as a leader because I didn't understand it. So, you know, maybe maybe that it's easy for us to sit here going, uh, you know, need to understand the drivers of the business, but maybe that's because we've worked for businesses where it's quite easy to understand it. And maybe it's not really fair to say to other or the profession, you know, for a chief people officer is in a business where it's really complicated that they should find it so easy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

But I think the point is you have to try and get there, don't you? Yeah. Because I think you're right. If you don't really understand the core drivers of value in your organization, your people strategy is not going to be as good as if you do. You know, that's the point. So I think I, you know, I accept the premise. And I think it's about, you know, making sure that we spend enough time working. So, you know, chief people officers have got to be part of the leadership team, you know. And do we spend a lot of time thinking about how we grow their capability to do that role? You know, you're an expert, you're a functional expert, but you're also part of the team that's driving the whole business. And I think the you know, the CPO should have a view on you know everything that's important in that business, just like the chief marketing officer or chief information officer would have a view on everything, you know, the people function. Everyone's got a view on people. They always think that's the easy bit until they're managing a team, and then it's the most difficult thing in the world.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Yeah. So maybe the thing is to go and find a business that you understand and that you care about, I think. And be the chief people officer of that business rather than the one that you don't understand, or don't be Particularly care about because I think it probably is true to say it's hard, it's harder for any human being to develop a strategy in any functional area if they don't understand the business, they're really and if they don't care about it particularly either, it doesn't really float their boat.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

No, and I look, I spend a lot of time talking about HR uh conferences and stuff, and one of the questions you often get from people is the problem is my leadership or my MD or my chief exec just don't get it, they just don't get the people stuff. And you go, Well, why are you still working there? Yeah, because actually reality, you have a choice. And if you but and what happens is you're beating your head against a brick wall and you're never gonna make any impact if you haven't got a leadership team that gets the people agenda and talent and development and a culture that's important, go and work somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

And I guess that's something that comes up a lot speaking to people is you know, they want to be part of a progressive leadership team that gives HR a seat at the table. But I could also say, in my experience, HR leaders are not the best storytellers or the best at selling themselves. And that I think is a huge competency that now in the world we're in, you can't ignore that it's important. Even basic stuff, like speaking to a recruiter, what everyone's CV says exactly the same thing. You are it's very fluffy when you have these conversations, there's not much focus on the result, or like what is the ROI you don't come across as a commercial function. So if you are not storytelling, even in you know the talent process, are you doing it to the board? Is that different? Like it's also the responsibility of the person to get the traction. And is that something? Is that a competency that's missing?

SPEAKER_01 23:32

It is, you know. I think you've got to be able to tell a story. You have got to be able to create a narrative that's compelling. Um, you know, whenever I go out to talk about first bus or first group, I can tell a story where people get interested in buses and trains, and they might not have been interested in buses and trains and tell it in a way, and you talk about change, you talk about this is where we started. Beginning, you talk about all the things we did, that's the middle, and then these are the results, that's the end. So, yeah, you have to be able to articulate things in a narrative and using storytelling to get people to want to come and work in your organisation to attract talent, but also you've got to be able to do it internally to demonstrate back to the organisation the impact you're having. Otherwise, you're a cost, you're not an investment. HR or people is an investment. You know, every year you've got to go and argue for a budget to be able to do things, so you're investing in the organization. So you've got to have an art, you know, have a return on investment.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Yeah, I mean, I think you raise a really, really interesting point here, right? So if we are all agreed, and I reckon anyone listening to this is going to agree that storytelling is kind of critical, assuming you're in a business you understand and that you engage with, and you've got to start that stuff storytelling is really, really important to how much value added the HR function, or any function, but let's focus on the HR function, can add in that business. So, how many of us uh know of storytelling uh development programs, training programs, training people to be really good at storytelling being really rolled out in organizations, particularly for senior managers? Now, I personally have worked in HR for 35 years and I have never seen one. But that's but this is kind of interesting because I don't think we've unearthed some like incredible insight here. Um, I've had conversations about this before, and everyone's in violent agreement about it. And yet we are still doing leadership development programmes and so on, which focus on a load of things where I don't think there's any evidence that those things will make much difference, and yet other things where we know they will make a much bigger difference, like storytelling, the use of evidence to actually, you know, sort of form the basis for those sort of stories and whatever. They're not in leadership development programmes, they're not in HR professional development programmes. What's going on with that? CIPD, how much do they focus on storytelling as a core component of what an HR professional will need to be well equipped with, whatever they do in the profession, to further their career? It's not it's not nothing.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

No, I I think we're getting we're agreeing, aren't we? It's quite odd we're all agreeing about everything. I think I think there is a bit about, you know, so immersive leadership programs should have storytelling as part of the key components, and we did a big program a couple of years ago, ran into last year, and and it was part of it. But people didn't find it easy, they found it quite difficult. Um, and it's also a bit a bit like presentation, it's about being able to articulate and be able to come up with something which resonates with other people. So you the point is it's like one of those things you've got to practice. You don't do it once and you become good at it, it's something you you just work on, and and and and I think there is something that's most probably at the heart of thinking about how do we develop leaders. Because if you talk about how do you inspire and motivate and engage people, it's nearly always about a narrative. Yeah, so in reality, it is most probably at the heart of what we need to do as a profession, and we most probably should be leading the way for other parts of the organization to take that on board. So, yeah, I get it. We should be doing more about that.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

And I guess um pulling that thread slightly because in other episodes we've been speaking about this move into banny eer, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible. And so often you're helping teams to navigate a world which you yourself are not quite familiar with. So you mentioned leadership development. What does leadership development look like today?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Well, you yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a there's there's there's a couple of places I think you have to start. One is um I think you have to think about the organization first and and you know, the how it competes thing, but not just now, but what are the gonna be the key drivers of value in our organization over the next five or ten years? And think about what is that, what capabilities required to be able to, I don't know, scow the organisation in that environment or grow it or yeah, you know, create value. So I think there's a bit about that organizational piece, and then I think there's a bit about people learning and and and uh just looking at the world through different lenses. So I think we've most probably got to be much more open to allowing people to develop in different ways. So I don't think that it's low out, you know, here's our management development programme, it's three two-day workshops and a bit of online learning. I think actually people learn in very different ways, depending on their lens. So I think we've got to find ways which is more adaptive for individuals so that they can learn in a way which suits them. But I think the fundamental driver is we you want people that want are curious, that want to learn. You know, in reality, that's most probably the core competence that anyone that wants to be a leader. Are you constantly learning? Are you constantly trying stuff? Are you reflective? Do you look for feedback? Do you then go again? And for me, that's what you're looking for. Where you know, whatever people's perception of themselves is or their environment, are they curious? Do they want to learn? Do they want to try stuff? Do they want to make an impact? You know, those are the competencies that I think I'm always looking for when I'm looking for leaders. You know, they're pure skills, a tick box. You know, if you're looking for a financial controller, they understand a PL, they've you know, they've done a job of a similar organization, they're professionally qualified. That's the skill, isn't it? Tick. They can do. In reality, though, I want a leader in finance, someone that can be curious, that likes managing change, that likes leading people, you know. Then you're going, oh well, that's quite hard to find. A finance person that's curious or wants to learn, and when you know, so I think that's the whole point. You know, you've got to look at the human qualities that are going to make people successful leaders.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of uh so I'm not gonna keep agreeing with you, but I'll start off by agreeing with you. Um but so I think you're right. But so I I agree that the skill of learning um is a critical component of um, well, anyone succeeding in the environment that we now operate in. Because uh there are fewer and fewer things that we'll we will know for certain. So um if you can rely though on your ability to learn things which keep coming up as new and fresh as the environment changes around you, I mean that that must be a marker of potential and your likelihood to perform. You were sort of going, Oh, I don't know if we can codify. Well, I think you were saying this, you probably tell me you weren't in a second, but um, you can't necessarily codify everything. But I true, you can't codify everything, but I don't think it's that difficult for the profession to codify if you choose five things that might really help leaders thrive and well cope and then thrive in a banny or a VUCA environment. I think you could. So I think you could go, right, learning, skill of learning, because it is a skill. We we we do training on it. It's uh you know, purposeful curiosity and the willful suspension of judgment. And anyone who knows me will have heard me say that way too many times. Um, but that's the skill, right? Suspending your judgment willfully. That is actually the thing that enables you to learn. Um so tick, we just talked about storytelling, right? I I don't think storytelling any ever wears out, right? I don't think it's particularly emerged as a relevant thing now because you know, um, leaders, you know, way back in millennia, um, a lot of the great ones they were just great at telling a story about, you know, is it Alfred the Great telling a story of how England could be one country rather than sort of seven different regions or however many it was at the time. It's only was very successful in telling that story and winning people over to that sort of story and you know what it would take to get there and why it was important. Um, I think we probably would agree that something like self-regulation in a leader in an environment which is um very you know increasingly anxiety. Yeah, yeah, on their own.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Self-regulation, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 31:49

So that would be um your ability to understand why you are feeling anxious. Okay, um, perhaps what the triggers for that are, and what your response to that anxiety is, so you can dial it, dial it down in order to not freak your team to understand yourself.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Understand yourself quite deeply. So that's the point. Know what your triggers are or how you work in different environments, what causes stress, how you then respond to it. So if you've, you know, great leaders know themselves quite well. You know, I've worked with a few that I, you know, there's only one one handful most probably. But what they normally are is people that are pretty reflective and ask for feedback. So, you know, they know that they're not perfect, they know they can show vulnerability. I'm not good at this, or I'm not going to be good in this environment. Can you help me? That's a great leader. That's someone you you're you know, you'll you'll run through walls for them because what they're saying is, I'm great in some circumstances, but I'm not good in others. And you go, okay, that's that's a great trait, you know. In in today's society where people are looking for leaders to be empathetic and understanding, if you understand yourself, you've got a much greater chance of leading others.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

I would agree. Um, but but I think self-regulation goes a little bit further, right? Because I think the the self-knowledge, yeah, which is but that can easily but in leaders that can easily translate into look, I'm good in these situations, but I'm kind of freak out and I get anxious in these situations. So just deal with me as I freak out in that situation. Self-regulation, I think, goes further in going, no, like, no, don't do the freaking out because you're freaking everyone else out around you. Well, don't take the drugs or do the outcome. Yeah, you know, so I I think I think you know, it it demands a bit more of a leader to sort of go, yeah, but your job as a leader is not to say everyone to everyone, I freak out at this point, so just understand me. It's like it's not to it's try and do stuff to not freak out and freak everyone else out around you, you know, to create a feeling of safety for people. Yeah, um, and then I said five things. I mean, I can't think of three, but I'm sure given like literally two minutes, you know, we could think of another two. And you could then build that into a leadership development programme where you know all the evidence and all the science sort of says, you know, there may be other things that you could build into this, but these five things should work in this environment and should be additive and useful. But I don't think those five things, if we could get to all five, I don't think they're very evident in 98% of leadership development programs in the world today. I mean, there's a brilliant podcast, Lori Santos, I think it is, who um uh I think it's uh happiness science. And she's translated that into how that works in leadership and success in work and so on. And it's the most popular course at Harvard or Stanford or wherever it is. So all the evidence, so and oh, and by the way, if you listen to a podcast, it's completely science-based, right? It's all rooted in kind of reality and real evidence. So if you extrapolate that, okay, a lot of those things about self-regulation, about um the pursuit of fulfillment over material wealth, all of those things are well understood, but they are not built into leadership development programs in most large corporates. All the money is being spent on a load of other things where half the time I can't see the evidence that that ever made any difference.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

So we did this immersive leadership program which focused on some of that stuff. It did do storytelling, it did do stuff about understanding yourself, it did do stuff, you know, so you know, some basically psychology-based development program, yeah. And um, there are people in my organisation and leaders that have, you know, given me feedback about the program said it changed their lives. You know, I can remember one guy saying he broke up with his partner. There was another one that basically said he was going to go off and not, you know, do the job anymore and travel. Now, those are most probably negative things in most, but actually, these people felt hugely, you know, that they'd made some big life choices. And I would say there are other people that have just struggled to absorb it and do anything with it. And so I think it's a third, a third, a third. I think third are looking for something and actually grab the opportunity and run with the learning and and really uh you know, absorb it and try stuff. And then there's a third that gets something out, and a third that most people ignore. The point, I suppose, is if you're really thinking about leadership, being able to identify and stratify the third, the third, a third is really quite powerful from a chief learning offer. You know, so I can go, who came out of that program and I could see is learning and applying stuff and trying uh and failing and then going again. You know, those are people we want to really invest in.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

But also, how do you know how you is it just that, oh, they're good at it now?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Like, how do you you you well first of all? It's about a couple of things is one, you've got to get, you know, feedback loops, right? So the whole thing about development is around how do you look at the feedback loop. So creating feedback for themselves, so 360s, getting, you know. So I spend a lot of time, I do full engagement surveys four times a year in the organization, which is a long term, a lot. And that's all about these are your people, this is what they're saying about the environment that you create. You're a leader, they're your people, not my people. There's not a culture in an organisation, they're your people, they work in your depot, your part of the organization, and they're telling you this is how they feel about it. So I want leaders that respond to that. And I can see that the ones that respond, I can see their engagement surveys change, I can see the 360s change, I can see that they are trying things, they're innovating, they're they're trying to push the envelope. And those leaders, if you keep doing that and you're reflective, will you know, it's a it's like sport, you know, it's like strangely enough, if you're gonna be a great pianist or a great footballer or a great athlete, you spend a lot of time doing it and training, right? But also, you're gonna get the feedback loop. You're gonna have a coach that's gonna go, you know, this is how this is how I got into this stuff was through sport. Because I had some great coaches when I was running, and what they used to do is set the goal at the beginning of the season and then give me feedback. Watch my races. Your first 50 metres is not quick enough, Kev, right? So then we'd be working on that, and then they take, you know, round the top bend, you know, your form goes off, you get tired, and you get a bit wobbly. There's most probably half a second in that. So, you know, over season you work on those things, then your times come down, then you go, right, now let's think about the off-season and how we're gonna so that's the same thing, it's exactly the same thing, you know, is that you get leaders to try stuff, to learn, to be as good as they can be, hold up some kind of template of what good looks like, but in reality, what you've got to keep doing is keep trying, practicing, because it's practice. Management and leadership is a is a thing that can be learned and deployed. Right, it's a skill.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

So uh that's my fourth thing that should be. It is definitely um about practice. Yeah, because I don't I don't uh funny enough, we have mutual sort of friend Quentin here. Uh I think he did his master's or PhD or something on behaviour. A doctorate, right? But but it was but his thing he was focusing on is how you only really get behaviour change through habituation, and your habituation comes through repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, because you know, after so many repeats, I've it becomes a more ingrained behaviour and you might stick with it. So his thing was always about enduring behaviour change, wasn't it? But again, I don't I don't think that is particularly well understood. That you know, whatever we've taught you on a leadership development programme, um none of it will make any difference to your effectiveness unless you practice this and try and repeat this enough times to figure out what works for you, what doesn't, and then keep doing and evolving the thing that does.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah, and I think I'll tell you what, I think a lot of it is, right? I think one of the great flaws is our education system. So our the British education system is all built on knowledge, right? Historically, it's about being able to pass exams where you, you know, until you perhaps get to masters and stuff with it. But if you think about the education that, I don't know, 90% of the the population go through, it's about learning the facts, you know. And in reality, what we're saying in leadership, it's about trying stuff, it's about it's about art, isn't it, rather than just facts. So, you know, we focused on the knowledge quantum. And if you think about professional qualifications, so most professional qualifies so when you teach a CIPD course, they're still talking about employment, law, and stats, and they're giving you the the the techniques, the tools, but what they're not doing is working on you as a leader and saying that the fundamental is try stuff. You know, if you're gonna be if you're gonna be a great leader, ask your followers what they think of you. That's the it's like a fundamental thing in life.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

And can I ask on that thread? Because you said earlier you were talking about uh, what did you say, self-regulation? And you said that leaders who have that are great, right? They they could but what I want to ask is if the majority of leaders two things. One, why is it that the majority of leaders don't have that? And two, for the ones that don't, do you think that they can change bearing in mind if we're generalizing, we're talking about white, middle-aged, privileged men, I imagine, and you can argue it. But is it possible for them to start doing it now?

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah, absolutely. Because it, you know, it will take time because it's something that can be learned. If someone goes, look, I want some feedback from my team, I'm gonna do a 360, I'm gonna measure my engagement and I'm gonna take action based on the outcome. Absolutely, it can be learned and it can be deployed. I think it's harder as you get older. So I think some of the some of the leaders that do this naturally have most probably, you know, they've got a trait, they've got that as an approach. Um and I think you know they're good communicators normally. So there's there are some traits. It's like anything, there's some natural inbuilt characteristics that then can be amplified through training and development. But again, I think in most organisations, if you think about organisations, you know, if you think about the finance job I just talked about, we really when we go out to the jobs market, we're looking for the someone that's got the qualification and is very good at that. And do we talk about their change management, how they lead people? Often we don't. I mean, it's getting there, but I mean, look, I think most of this stuff is moving in the right direction. I think our our view is it's moving too slowly and it should be accelerating because the business world is changing so rapidly, and the environment that we operate is so in reality the HR function and leadership development should be accelerating, and I don't feel it is either.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Yeah, I mean, look, uh for sure, and let's we'll come on to that in a sec as to or why, how, and blah blah blah. But um, just to finish on your question, Chess, because I think they're they are um you know, they're very relevant, right? Um, self-regulation, right, which is being talked about more now. Self-optimisation, self-regulation, so particularly in leaders and its importance in an environment where people more and more people are more and more worried, right? Because there are more and more unknown things, there are more and more threats. We've talked about this on other podcasts. You know, we've lived for 80 years without a war in Europe of any meaning. Um, well, not to diminish things like the cost of a sort of conflict and that, but you know, of any real substance and right landing in the national psyche. And now we've got one. Um that's completely new for people. Um, climate change is anxiety provoking, inequality is anxiety provoking, all of that. So, um, to your point about, you know, so self-regulation is becoming a bigger deal. Um, your question, like, well, why don't more leaders have it? Is because most people don't have great self-regulation. I mean, that that's not dissing anyone. Most of us don't have brilliant self-regulation because we're not consciously competent about our regulation. Um, and we just sort of get used to ourselves and we sort of go, yeah, I get a bit sort of weird in certain situations. I'm not even quite sure what the situations are, and I've become so used to myself, I'm not even that aware that I've got weird. So, yeah, so most human beings are not brilliant on this. Um, whether whether you can be given techniques to help you get better, I mean, for sure, right? I mean, cognitive behavioral technique, all those frameworks, they're about just helping you look at yourself, understand your triggers or activating events, and having a rational reaction.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

But you have to want to, and I think that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Why don't you go to leaders? If someone says, you know, how do I become a great leader? And you go, Well, let's send you off and give you a coach or go and do some therapy, they wouldn't perceive that as being the starting point, but it often is.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yeah, now, do they want it's such and it there's a really interesting point here because you were saying you have done some really interesting leadership development at first group on this. So we we did some really similarly interesting and impactful stuff at Sky. And the same thing. A third of the people who went on it, this program called it Better Self, followed by something called Better Teams, reported that it was really quite profound, the impact that it had. About a third sort of said, yeah, it was interesting, whether it was profound or not, was that we're working that out. And maybe a third just paid no attention to it uh at all. But the person that we worked with on Better Self was a, you know, we are in the habit of name-checking people we've come across and stuff like this. Um, a bloke called Martin Newman, uh, and he owns an outfit called Rosh Martin, and they're experts in emotional intelligence. Good outfit. And I remember at Sky when we were trying to find the partner to work with on this better self, the beast a bit about self-regulation. We were checking out different sorts of partners, and Rosh Martin came in and we we thought it was convincing. And we said to Martin Newman, you know, look, our leaders probably don't look that different to quite a lot of leaders. They're sort of middle-aged indexed towards men, indexed towards white, indexed towards privileged. Um, you know, they're notoriously difficult to change, you know, why would they change with this programme? And he made a really interesting point, which we went with on a faith to start with, proved to be true in reality. He said, it's a funny thing, but actually, men or women, but people who are middle-aged and sort of somewhat privileged and have got to a position of seniority, perhaps that's what gives them their sense of privilege, who knows? He said, they're strangely receptive to this stuff. And we were like, why? You know, because surely the cliche is, but what made you successful so far? You know, why change? Because you'll carry on being successful. He said, It wasn't his experience, he just sort of said, Look, I think they've got a bit bored of themselves. So, you know, you get to sort of 50 and you you have maybe achieved many things and it's all good and great. But many human beings get to the point of going, yeah, but I'm sort of a bit bored with myself. Is this it? Like I'm just gonna stay like this for another 50 years until I die at 100 if I'm assuming I make it that far. Crikey, you know, that doesn't actually sound as exciting as the first 30 years that I had starting when I was 20 to now. And he just sort of said, I think people are just in a zone where they are quite receptive. Uh, do you know what is not everyone, but maybe a third. Interesting point. Then someone, I think, made an immediate reaction, you know, only a third will change their behaviour as a result of this. Crazy HRE sort of reaction, because you sort of go, only a third of people will profoundly change their behaviour as a result. That's like amazing. You know, sort of when you do marketing campaigns, you know, do you expect a third of the people you campaign to to convert to be a customer? Like, no, maybe one in a hundred. So, you know, why we all sort of get a bit kind of weird about training, going, you know, anything less than a 70% conversion rate of ingrained behaviour change is a failure. Completely the wrong way of looking at it. 30% actual behaviour change is total success. Yeah, and this was his view, and we ran with it, and uh, he was absolutely right. Um uh it did seem like uh about a third or possibly more were just ready, ready to hear something new and ready to think about this. It seemed relevant to them, and they sort of decided to reinvent themselves a little bit on the back of that in a better way. So, so yeah, so so definitely people can change for sure.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

So, Kevin, you wrote a book called Competitive People Strategy.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Why did you write it?

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Well, I I think there's a couple of things. One is I think businesses are struggling to decide what they need to do from a people perspective to make themselves more successful. And and and I think that's about leaders, all leaders. And then I thought the the actual uh tools to get people to think differently about how you define a people strategy wasn't well developed. So if you look at it, you know, you look at CPD material, you look at even, I don't know, CPO courses and stuff, that the stuff around people strategy is weak. So what I wanted to do was to do some research, and that's what I did. I spent a year interviewing CPOs and trying to get underneath it and doing a lot of reading around the subject. And there was basically a couple of things that I think were really quite important. One is we've already talked a bit about, which is understanding how the business competes, and then trying to think about how you add value to that through the people, your people plan or your people interventions. The second thing though was I think there's a you know, it's about the relationship between activity and outcome. So I'm a great believer in you've got to be able to tell a story about your people strategy. So I think you should be able to do a strategy map which shows what we're doing from a people perspective, the people outcomes we'll get, the impact it has on business results, and the impact on overall financial performance. And I think if you can get that in one diagram, it's easy to describe why you're doing stuff. And also you can show the causation. You can show that this has an impact on this and this has an impact on that, and that changes the game. That radically changes the game. So you don't have to ask for investment, people start giving you investment because they can see that you've delivered results. So again, a lot of the stuff we've done in the business I am now, uh, and even when I was at Raw Matt, was all driven through we know what we need to do to make a difference. And the more that you can show that you can make the difference more successful, they'll invest more in the people stuff. So for me, it's most probably two things. One is I want businesses to be more successful, but I want them to be better places for people to work. And to do that, you've got to get people to invest in the people stuff, but you've got to be able to look at the return. So that's why I didn't wrote the book. Um, and there I I've got lots of great reviews, and and lots of people have told me. I even was at a thing the other day, and someone said, I'm using the strategy map, uh, Kevin. It was someone who worked with me in Raw Mao and went through the process with me, but then got the book and is deploying it. He's doing a big housing association, he's the chief people officer, and he's said, I'm taking my leadership team this week through the whole strategy mapping process. So, you know, that's great to hear. And there are lots of organisations that have been very good for a long time. So, Enterprise Rent A Car and Starbucks. You know, the Starbucks story is fantastic, which is they worked out that what drove repeat business was the length of the queue and whether people smiled. And the the basic skill of the barista to make sure that the queue's really short. The coffee product's got to be good, by the way. You have to know the you have to know the products in the glass case, you've got to take the payment quickly and get people out. And if you can do that and they codified it and measured it, it means that you get customers that come back, you know, instead of coming in once a week, they come in two or three times a week. Their length of duration as a customer goes from sort of 18 months to three years. So you quantify the value, right? Repeat customers coming back more regularly, stay in longer. Big, big number. Now, what do we need to do? So, how do we train our baristas? What do we focus them on? The three things they need to do: product knowledge, making the coffee quickly, as long as it's a good product, smiling at people, getting people's first names, taking the payment, getting them in and out, good quality coffee, queue moving fast. That's it. That's the whole business strategy. That's what they grew on. Enterprise rent a car spent years trying to understand how they differentiated and they worked out the customer service bit. So that whole thing where you're trying to, you know, you hire a car and they try and catch you out, don't they take pictures of it, and then when you bring it back, there's a little scratch on it, and then they start claiming all of that nonsense. They just got rid of all that and said, look, what we're really trying to do is build a relationship with people. So they quantified that, turned it into business results. Then how they hire people, how they train people, what they incentivize is all aligned behind those few things. So the point, I think, is this is all about running great businesses and treating people well and aligning the people activity to the what the customers' requirements are, and getting that right is you know.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

So just quickly on that note, um so so long as it's relevant to the business. Yeah, do you think it is true that HR teams should be trying to be deliberately different?

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Yes, I do. I think the whole point about competitive people strategy is your businesses to be better than their competitors, you know, that's how you win, isn't it? That's how you win market, you get market share, you get greater, you know, value per customer, however you want to measure it. And I think that the people agenda should be aligned to that. Now, there are some fundamentals. People say, Yeah, but isn't it just about treating people well? Isn't it about, well, yeah, I've got no problem with that. But the point is, is you can never spend enough on that. You could just be throwing good money after bat. I'm interested in treating people well, but also focusing on the things that are going to make a difference in the organization. And I think you've got to do both.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

So for me, I think of the HR. So how do I differentiate? So for me, we're spending a lot of time in our talent agenda talking about decarbonisation. Why? Well, who wants to work in a bus company, right? Legacy business. Um depots that aren't great, you know. But you talk about we're investing, we made 105 million profit, we're investing 100 million a year for a decade in electrification. Why? Well, one is we're doing the right thing by air quality in the communities that we serve, social value. Secondly, we'd start to talk about that. Customers like it. We're trying to attract young people, uh, ex uh universities, because university students tend to use buses, then they get a first job, then they buy a car. So what I'm trying to do is say, don't buy a car, just use public transport. These are all the benefits for you and the your community. And right, okay, we get better customers. Then you go, and we're invested in working with local authorities and people and all that. So there's you know, doing good can make real business sense, but you've got to really think that through. So for me, um, I think the key for it for me is is is really always trying to understand the impact that the things that you are doing are gonna have. That's the the fundamental.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

So, because the ESG thing, I mean, we obviously remain big fans of it, um, BB people, uh B court, you'd hope so. Um, but it's sort of it's lost its um sort of uh fashionable sort of uh kind of tone, uh or seems to have done a little bit. Um had quite a lot of companies backing away from their sort of inclusion sort of agenda, and people backing away from their environmental agendas a little bit. I don't I don't think anything like as much as the newspapers might have us believe. But what's your sense of that? Because we we've talked about this as being a great opportunity for the HR profession to fully engage with the ESG agenda and sort of adopt it actually as its own, as another strategic sort of component that it can take responsibility for that is completely new, completely unknown known and interesting. Um, what's your view on that? Because it sounds like you you you you're in agreement with that.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Well, I think that the first thing is about people backing away. That's interesting, isn't it? So, what that really says to me about lots of organisations, they weren't serious about it. Because if you say, look, we're gonna we're gonna champion women and people of colour getting to the top of our organization, and we're we're big advocates for sustainability and we're not gonna use carbon, and then there's a bit of a political backlash, and a few state uh you know shareholders ask a few questions, you go, Well, perhaps we're not really gonna have those targets anymore. Well, then it wasn't so there wasn't any real belief, was there?

SPEAKER_02 56:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

So it was just lip surface, it was a tick in the box to get the cook to get trend, and it was all about making sure we got the right things in our annual report and we perceived as a good organisation. Whereas there are some organisations it goes to the heart of the organisation. Uh and and and for me, both at Royal Mal and at first bust, I mean, I pick those type of organisations, legate organizations, legacy organisations that have got change, but at their heart, there's real people doing real jobs that have a real impact in commun in society and in communities. So, you know, I suppose what I'm saying is it makes sense if the business understands the power of what they're doing and why they're doing it, and it becomes a fundamental belief rather than a tick box or a trend. So, you know, you make your choices about where you work, don't you? You know, if you're a big advocate of your environment or inclusion or diversity, you look for an organization where it isn't just shallow, it isn't a tick box, and you can see that they've actively worked there. You know, to try and get women into senior management, we're working really hard at that, but it takes a long time. It's not, there's no quick fix to it. It's about, you know, getting more women bus drivers and changing the rosters to get them into the business. Then we've got to do development programmes so we can get them to first rug of management. Then we've got to think about helping, you know. So we're trying to do that, and then we're trying to attract female talent into the organisation. But what you know, people will look at the organisation and go, oh, they are trying to change, and I can see it's changing, and there are more women in leadership, and there are role models with MDs that are female. So actually, they're they're serious, they're not just playing at it. It isn't just a tick box, they believe in it and they're doing it over time, sustainably, year in, year out. So I think there's I think there's a a great ability for organisations to differentiate around the ESG agenda, but it's got to be real, it can't just be that shallow tick box stuff.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

And I think that's a nice thought kind of coming to the end. Any kind of final thoughts or new new thoughts, whatever, just to kind of land the plane at the end of a great episode.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

Well, I think there's lots of things that we've said that I suppose if you were sort of summarizing or playing back, there's a big thing we talked about about leadership, the importance of leadership and how we need to do it differently. There's been a lot where we've talked about the HR profession and why they're getting it wrong and what could they do differently. We had a debate around the ESG. So I think we've had a rich conversation, and I suppose there's just I think there's a couple of takeaways. You know, I think the thing I would always try and leave people with is just try and do something different, you know. Don't just keep doing the same thing. Try and innovate, try and do something different. That's you know, try and be radical, try and change something for where, you know. But to do that, you've got to have a hypothesis, you've got to have clarity of thought. Um, and I think that's what we're we're about. You know, the HR profession's about helping organizations adapt, become more agile, more responsive to their environment. And, you know, they're those types of organizations are great places to work. So, you know, there's a there's a virtuous circle in all of this, really, if you think you try and hunt it out. So, yeah, I hope people take something out of the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

Love it. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for your insights, it's been great to have you, and um thanks for listening. And the conversation is to be continued, as always.