Three cheers for tools and techniques!

Peter Honey | 1 Oct 2008 | 12:39

I’m a fan of techniques but many of my colleagues are dismissive. They see techniques as lowly, mechanical aids that fall well short of authentic skills. I believe that techniques provide invaluable stepping stones that, once practised and internalised, become skills.

Take people skills for example. There is no argument about the eventual end point; we all want people to behave thoughtfully and authentically. The difference is over the most promising way to reach this desired end, via either an attitudinal or behavioural route. The ‘internalists’ assume that attitudes and beliefs must come first. In other words, I’d have to believe something before I could behave it convincingly. The ‘externalists’ assume that behaviour is largely situational and that it is possible to artificially induce behaviour, leaving beliefs and attitudes to follow on behind. This means that I could behave in a particular way without necessarily believing in it.

Now, I am sure that in a perfect world people would be nice to each other, not because they had to, but because they believed it was the right thing to do. But the world isn’t perfect (and it would probably defeat the whole object if it was). Fortunately there are a whole host of tried and tested techniques ready and waiting to come to our aid. It seems such a pity to insist that passionate beliefs are a pre-requisite before they can be employed for the common good.

Have you, for example, come across a technique called the itemised response? This is a technique that ‘forces’ people to search hard for the good in someone else’s idea irrespective of what they really think about it.

Briefly the technique goes like this: in order to counteract the tendency to find fault with other people’s ideas and pull them to pieces, a rule is imposed whereby you have to say three things you like about an idea before you are allowed to state a concern. This guarantees a ratio of three pluses for every minus. There is also a formula for expressing the concern: you have to start with the prefix ‘my concern is how to...?’ The concerns are thus posed as open-ended questions searching for answers, rather than damning condemnations that can too easily bring things to a halt.

I think this is a particularly interesting example because it encapsulates everything that internalists tend to loathe about techniques. The positive behaviour is artificially induced - by no stretch of the imagination could it be claimed to be authentic. Indeed, the technique works best precisely when internal attitudes are hostile to the idea under consideration. But if you want to over-ride negative attitudes and, at a stroke, get people to behave positively, the itemised response is the best short cut I know. Furthermore, my experience has been that when the technique has been imposed, ideas that would have been cast aside with inadequate consideration have survived, even flourished. Best of all, over time (not overnight) other important side effects become evident. Slowly, negative or hostile attitudes towards ideas from other people give way to more positive, enquiring ones where playing with ideas is seen as a good and useful thing to do.

And all this because of the imposition of a mere technique! So please don’t knock techniques; they offer the best hope for bringing about the improvements we crave for. As the saying goes (internalists please skip this bit – it is simply too offensive!), ‘If at first you can’t make it, fake it’.

‘Nothing can stop you’

Iain Mackinnon | 23 Sep 2008 | 15:34

I heard a striking ad on the radio the other evening. Striking not so much for the ad (which in fact I can’t remember at all), but for the call to action at the end that directed listeners to "nothingcanstopyou.co.uk"

It was an ad for LearnDirect, the government’s rather low profile national agency which encourages individuals to learn and employers to train, and I felt rather positive about those cheery words.

In fact I contrasted “nothing can stop you” with an equally striking passage in TM Devine’s hugely popular book The Scottish Nation, in which he tells the story of a privy council committee in the 1890s pondering the prospects for secondary education in Scotland - and deciding that perhaps as many as four or five per cent of the population might benefit from it (and this of the country which decided that it wanted elementary education for all five generations before the English Parliament reached the same conclusion!).

That my father was the first member of his Hebridean family to go to university “for a thousand generations” (as Neil Kinnock once colourfully put it) obviously has rather a lot to do with the opportunity being available – through a crofter’s scholarship in his case – but how much has it to do with ability? Was his father, my grandfather, any less bright? I doubt it very much. Perhaps if he had had a better education he might have become a ship’s Master and not remained a rating all his time at sea, with huge benefits to his family and the economy.

So when I hear “nothing can stop you”, I like the sound of it. And I’d much prefer employers to adopt that as their motto, rather than worrying about whether the blessings of training and education are being spread, perhaps, a little too far.

Information isn’t knowledge

Peter Honey | 19 Sep 2008 | 16:23

I’ve always had an inferiority complex about knowing so little. I can hardly ever, for example, answer any of the questions on University Challenge (and I’m not much better at Who wants to be a millionaire?). I also abhor crossword puzzles - and Trivial Pursuit is sheer hell. The fact that all the things I don’t know are labelled as ‘trivial’ somehow makes it worse.

I have, of course, developed some strategies for appearing more knowledgeable than I am. One of them is to, when in doubt, keep quiet and look thoughtful. Another one is to concentrate on knowing a few things that are pretty much guaranteed no-one else will have bothered to find out or remember. Example: How long would it take to drive from the earth to the sun at exactly 62 miles per hour? Answer: 171 years.

Anyway, the good news is that a couple of things have happened recently that have helped me feel much better about being such an ignoramus.

First, I went to a seminar about the brain where I heard Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, say that there was a difference between information and knowledge. Information is “just facts - which on their own are not at all interesting”. Knowledge, she went on to explain, occurs when disparate facts are linked and turned into ideas. This helped me to see that I lack information, not knowledge, and that I can easily obtain information whenever I want it; the skilful bit, having got it, is turning it into something useful.

Second, I listened to Peter Senge, of Fifth Discipline fame, talking about the explosive growth in available knowledge (he meant information - but it seemed churlish to correct him!) and the absurdity of anyone thinking that they could keep up with it. He went so far as to proclaim that, “if you are into organisational learning, you’re into incompetence, ignorance and not knowing the answers”.

Knowledgeable people in the audience looked threatened, not to say worried. But I became more and more cheerful that the ignorance I had always imagined as shameful and sought to hide was being hailed as appropriate for the so-called knowledge age. (What a fascinating paradox - that ignorance is a required competence for the knowledge age!)

So all that stuff on University Challenge is merely information - and I only need to know how to find it as and when I need it. (Clearly, I would be in trouble if I was faced with an impatient Jeremy Paxman saying “Come on, come on!” but it is a risk I am prepared to take!).

A Blackberry and a pack of fags

Lou Burrows | 8 Sep 2008 | 10:54

I’ve just spent two fabulous weeks in China (we have a small but quickly growing office in Shanghai). It was mind-blowingly stimulating and I keep thinking about the cultural differences and similarities.

The last time I was asked about my age this much in a two week period would have been when I was kid. Even the simple act of buying an ice cream at a street stall can lead to an attempt to find out your age. Excitedly the woman serving me pointed at me and brought out the calculator; she tapped out 60 and smiled eagerly. Being 48, I was not best pleased!

Back at the office I asked the guys: “What’s with asking your age when you’re shopping? Do I really look that knackered?”

“Yes, they’re very keen on talking about age and that was politely her way of saying you look intelligent and wise.” Ah ha!

And then there was the smoking. Cigarettes are displayed in shops under glass like luxury brands (unlike the UK where they are now going under the counter). And my colleagues tell me that having a cigarette with a new client is seen as an excellent way to build rapport.

Conversations about cigarettes, favourite brands and different flavours are used to get to know each other before the serious business conversations begin. No surprise then that most of our people in Shanghai has a Blackberry, an iPod and a pack of fags on their desks.

I suppose that at least when the smoking starts to prematurely age them they will just be perceived as wiser!

But for a company like ours, with in-house GP, physiologist and all manner of fitness drives in the UK, it was a bit of a surprise.


Lou Burrows will be speaking at the CIPD annual conference and exhibition in Harrogate, on 16-18 September.

Young people today...

Lou Burrows | 4 Sep 2008 | 16:42

One of things I adore about my job is the fact that you are constantly reminded of exactly what young people are like and how different they are from you! Take last week when I was talking to a PA about her arrangements for leaving the company. We were just running through the final details of her leaving date, when to return her mobile and blackberry and I asked her if there was anything we had not covered.

At this point I was expecting a question about references, or maybe a question about continuing a benefit beyond her leaving date. I offered that she might like to keep her mobile phone number for her next phone. She found that faintly amusing: “I always have my two phones – one for mates and music and one for going abroad. But thanks anyway.”

There was something that mattered hugely to her though - her Facebook account. Would it be okay if she told all her mates that we’d agreed that the company was not really her thing and she was looking for somewhere more creative? She wanted to tell everyone that she was going to focus on her music and singing career and the work was just getting in the way of rehearsals. Could she post all the photos from her leaving lunch with “the girls”?

What on earth was I thinking?

Economic population

John Philpott | 28 Aug 2008 | 12:14

Britain is booming. Not the economy, of course, but the population. According to new projections just published by Eurostat (the EU’s very own army of statistical data crunchers) the number of people living in the UK will grow by a quarter in the next 50 years. By then some 77 million people will be crammed together on this sceptred isle – making us easily the largest EU nation in terms of headcount, accounting for 1 in 6 of half a billion European comrades.

I’m almost relieved to know that I probably won’t still be around to experience this – there’s already barely room to swing a cat with just 60 million poor souls vying for available space. No need to get too bothered yet though. Population projections are simply that – projections, based on current trends plus assumptions about what will happen in the future. Eurostat itself calls them ‘what-if scenarios’ which “aim to provide information about the likely size and structure of the population”. There is no guarantee things will pan out exactly as assumed. All manner of things might happen. War, climate change or pestilence could make a big difference to the outlook (fortunately famine isn’t on the cards, we Brits being too prone to binge eating and drinking for that).

The big ‘what if’ is the outlook for immigration. Net migration (statisticians love to talk complex) accounts for at least half the projected rise in UK population (more when you note that immigrants, being younger than the average person, are also more active when it comes to driving up the birth rate). Yet we also know that immigrants are fickle. As UK Home Office figures published last week show, the number of people from Eastern Europe crossing our shores in search of work has started to dwindle. Half those who have arrived since 2004 have since gone back home. All of a sudden dinner party talk of a proliferation of Poles is being replaced by wonderment at their apparent rarity.

The only real demographic certainty we can look forward to is population ageing. Even if immigration continues at a high rate Britain will be getting greyer. By 2060 1 in 4 Brits are projected to be aged 64 or above and 1 in 10 aged over 80 (roughly double the current proportions). Without immigration the ‘oldie rate’ will be higher. We all know this. We talk about it as much as we do about immigration. But I’m still not convinced that we – organisations, the HR community or society at large – have fully woken up to the implications.


John Philpott will be speaking at the CIPD annual conference and exhibition in Harrogate, on 16-18 September.

Timely reflections

Peter Honey | 28 Aug 2008 | 11:41

My first job as a graduate taught me many things about the world of work - one of them was to be busy and, if I wasn’t busy, to look as if I was!

So deeply is ‘look busy’ ingrained in me, I find it difficult to pause for reflection, even though I know that reflecting is a legitimate and useful activity. The other day, I was gazing out of my study window in deep thought about something entirely laudable (just take my word for it!) when I heard my wife approaching. I immediately pretended that I was doing something else! I busied myself with papers on my desk, signed a couple of letters and generally puffed myself up to look important and, above all, busy. After my wife had left the room, I thought to myself, “This is crazy. I am in my own house, that was my own wife who has known me, warts and all, for over 44 years. Reflecting is a perfectly respectable activity, why pretend not to be doing it?”

It seems that I am not alone in having a ‘look busy’ default position. When I ask people when and with whom they do their reflecting, the vast majority indicate that they do it outside working hours when, for example, taking a bath (the favourite place) or when travelling (driving was next favourite) or when out walking. Typically reflecting is a solitary pursuit, but when other people are involved they tend to be partners and trusted friends or acquaintances. Colleagues at work get very few mentions.

So, finding space and time for reflection at work is clearly an uphill struggle. There are, however, a number of things that we can do to get it to happen more often and more effectively. First, make periods of reflection the equivalent of a date in the diary, a commitment to do it in a designated slot of time each week, month or whatever. Treat this as sacrosanct; ring-fenced reflection time.

Second, make it a purposeful activity by structuring the way you go about it and producing some written notes rather than just thinking. The act of writing crystallises the thinking and produces something tangible as an outcome (often useful for CPD records).

Third, find a colleague (or colleagues if you want to experiment with a ‘reflection circle’) you can use as a sounding board for your reflections and vice versa. This person will, preferably, have a different learning style to your own.

Finally, resist attempts to sabotage reflection time at work. Campaign to get reflecting accepted as a legitimate process with useful outcomes.

Training for Olympic glory

Iain Mackinnon | 22 Aug 2008 | 16:08

Every other journal has found an Olympics link – and PM should be no different! I’ve seen way too little of the Olympics action this time round as so much of it is screened during the day when I’m working, so I was particularly pleased that the women’s quad sculls was shown on Sunday morning when I could watch it.

Why that race in particular? I couldn’t know in advance what a thrilling race it would turn out to be, and what a disappointment for the rowers who just missed gold. No, my interest was that the eight members of the British women’s rowing team, including Annie Vernon in the quad sculls, had trained at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, which I chair. They trained not in rowing, you understand – but in car maintenance. Yes, car maintenance.

Using a small grant they get from the Sports Council for wider education, they came to us every Wednesday evening to learn car maintenance so that they could service their own cars, which they use to travel to training and competitions. Our course is designed especially for women and we offered them the flexibility they needed to rearrange classes at short notice.

And, just as Peter Honey advocated in his blog a few weeks ago, the rowers made the most of their opportunity, working closely as a team, and when opportunity arose competing with each other like crazy - for example, seeing who could jack up a car fastest! The tutor that taught them, Steven Williams, was clearly thrilled to have worked with them, and I’m sure that he, like me and every reader, would like to congratulate all the team for their tremendous performances.

Feeling the chill

John Philpott | 13 Aug 2008 | 16:46

I’m beginning to forget which season we’re in. I know it's August, but the view from my window – a mix of sunshine, showers and blustery wind - is more reminiscent of April or September.

Bank of England governor Mervyn King is in a meteorological mood today too. I’ve just been watching the quarterly inflation report press conference. The governor opened by saying, “It may still – just – be summer, but there is a feeling of chill in the economic air.” You bet there is, Mervyn – and there was little else in what he had to say to warm me up.

According to the governor the economy is going through a painful adjustment that cannot be avoided. Economic growth is likely to stagnate over the next year with the rate of inflation set to reach five per cent before falling back again. And just how much pain is to be expected also became clearer today in the latest labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). These show a 60,000 rise in the number of people out of work and looking for a job in the three months to June. There were also 20,000 more people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in July – the biggest monthly increase since 1992.

This is easily the weakest set of labour market data since the credit crunch began. Employment growth has ebbed to a trickle – indeed, employment has fallen in several regions of the country - while the rise in unemployment is gaining momentum. The impact of the economic slowdown is also becoming more widespread. Nearly every sector of the economy is posting fewer job vacancies. This is particularly evident in those parts of the private sector that, until recently, were major centres of job creation such as shops, hotels and restaurants, finance and business services, and construction. And there is a clear sign that redundancies are on the rise as well.

Moreover, these figures only tell us what was happening to the jobs market until mid-summer. Worryingly, the latest CIPD/KPMG/Ipsos MORI Labour Market Outlook survey – published earlier this week - indicates that the situation will continue to deteriorate in the coming quarter. By the end of the year it is likely that the level of employment will be falling across the country and unemployment rising at an accelerating pace as the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance climbs back toward 1 million for the first time this decade. Chillier times indeed.

Simple as ABC

Peter Honey | 12 Aug 2008 | 09:54

I have always been attracted to simple memory jogs. In the far off days when I used to have to revise for exams, I was totally dependent on a whole string of mnemonics that I invented for myself and hurriedly jotted down in the margin of set papers - even before I had read the questions! Those particular mnemonics have faded (probably a good thing because some of them were rather rude!) but today I still find mnemonics very useful.

Take ABC for example. These three letters sum up just about everything behaviourists have to say about human behaviour. A is for antecedent, B for behaviour and C for consequence. Any piece of behaviour (yes, any) is triggered by a preceding event (the antecedent) and is followed by a consequence that is either nice or nasty. Thus an itch (A) triggers scratching (B) and the itch is alleviated (C).

As and Cs are the key to understanding behaviour. If, for example, you notice that people often interrupt you before you have finished what you want to say, you could use ABC to discover the pattern and solve the problem. You might find that they interrupt you (B) when you disagree with them (A) and that this causes you to capitulate (C). The solution, assuming that you want people to hear you out, is to change the way you disagree. Instead of explicitly disagreeing, you could ask a searching question (questions trigger answers) or suggest an alternative course of action without actually disagreeing with whatever they have said.

Of course, the actual antecedents and consequences differ from case to case, but, whatever they are, they will always be present. No behaviour ever happens in a vacuum. This is why it is worth thinking about human behaviour in the context of the circumstances that surround it. The circumstances (in other words, the As and Cs) throw light on why people behave as they do. Despite this, I find that the influence of external factors on human behaviour is underestimated and often completely ignored.

If you keep ABC in mind, especially with any behaviour you find puzzling, why people behave as they do will become clearer. You might even be able to predict the way people are likely to react to events and reduce unintended consequences.