Waving Goodbye to Wedgewood’s Factory in HR

I was doing it well before then and there’s clips of me online going back as far as 2010 or so, railing against the idea of human resources as a label and the insistence by HR managers or CEOs that only people who work ‘in the office’ are going to be productive. It Is A Lie. And even more research is proving it

 

As more research questioning the assumptions of serendipity of human interactions and workplaces occurs, we start to see a very different view of productive workplaces and the superior outcomes of ‘alone’. In fact one of the approaches that the Accelerated Scenario Process I designed with Maree Conway​ back in 2004 uses the very model this research now refers to as ‘bursty’. In that process a period of intense close contact communication and thinking is broken up with around a fortnight of nothingness before another final day of intense group thinking and activity. The results are excellent.

The outcome of all this is to hopefully put a sword to the reliance/insistence on the 1760’s Wedgewood model of factory overseer that still infests our HR and management approaches. What this last year has shown en masse is that your work teams CAN and should be trusted to work from home, that productivity is often improved, and that adaptation to this idea is not as difficult as claimed.

It also ties into the ‘whole pf person’ model I’m writing about at the moment. It’s time for HR managers to drop the ‘R’, move to the ‘C’ and wave good-bye to Wedgewood’s factory in their own workplaces. It should also give comfort to those people who’ve assessed any holding in commercial property trusts and decided to thin their portfolio. It should scare the hell out of Councils that rely on revenue streams inside large cities. NO ONE is coming back. (okay, some will) 🙂

Read the Paradoxes Series for the latest research

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Sep 28, 2024

Or so it may seem. This quarter has seen me interstate facilitating some strategic planning workshops; overseas working with an established Government client, working with CGD, SELLEN, and Hilton Manufacturing among others here in Oz, a couple of weeks holiday down in Tasmania, and also the occasional radio interview looking at the ‘Future of…’. And…

Read More >

Employee Engagement starts with a Deliberate Exploration of Futures

Aug 13, 2024

Some thoughts flowing from my session discussing challenges in Futures Consulting posted by James Balzer: I’d explained to the group that what I do is engage employees in thinking about their own and their organisation’s future potential. My strong view over twenty years of work in this space is that employee engagement is DIRECTLY driven…

Read More >

The Future of Workplaces

Jul 10, 2024

Tomorrow morning (Friday the 12th)  I’ll be joining Elizabeth Kulas on Disrupt Radio discussing the Future Of Workplaces. There’ll be a particular focus on why most organisations choose to struggle because they rely on outdated models of employee management. A 7.15am kick-off where, in about 7 minutes or so, I’ll try to distill 20 years…

Read More >

A New Form of Goal Directed Intelligence

Jun 28, 2024

It’s extremely rare that I post to a specific article and say ‘go read this’, which is what I’m doing today. This article on goal directed intelligence at a micro level is a challenge to read. And I do recommend you read it because it pushes forward our understanding of how our biology and arguably…

Read More >

Looking Up Feeling Good Partners with Steel Chicks

Mar 10, 2024

If you followed my numerous posts over the years you know I like jumping in early on new products or services – not all have been successful, especially on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but you roll the dice sometimes and see what happens. Over the years Looking Up Feeling Good was an early community investor in…

Read More >

Dragging Workplaces back to the 1760s – the Work In Office Dilemma and the Productivity Myth

Feb 16, 2024

In the 1760s Josiah Wedgwood changed forever the nature of workplaces. He expanded his pottery business and constructed a new large scale factory that required two critical elements: a) Systemisation of processes to ensure consistent high-quality outcomes b) Skilled workers on site The systemisation required experimentation, observation, trials, failures and recording of data – what…

Read More >

Dr Kim Hazendonk joins our Speaker’s group

Jan 18, 2024

We’re delighted to announce that Neuro-Psychologist Dr. Kim Hazendonk of Positive Brain has accepted our offer to join our elite speaker’s group. We’re looking forward to bringing her to more groups across Australasia as she discusses effective workplaces, positive mind management, and managing busy lives. If you have a need for an engaging and passionate…

Read More >

Embracing the Hybrid Workspace – are You there yet?

Nov 15, 2023

I flag my bias towards the need for a vastly improved approach to managing staff in the work environments. V A S T L Y improved. I’m still surprised at how clunky, disorganised or naive some senior managers are when it comes to that part of the business that considers ‘people’. And rather than cover…

Read More >

Exploring Strategy Development – the Organisational Evolution model

Oct 17, 2023

An interesting public workshop in Perth in the first week of October introducing a varied group to the Organisational Evolution model. The Org-Ev is the model I developed for the start up of The Australian Strategic Planning Institute in conjunction with Steven Bowman. Given the diversity of the group, there were a number of surprises…

Read More >

Perth workshop 5th October almost fully booked

Sep 18, 2023

A note for those of you in Perth that there are just 4 spaces left for the Introduction to the Organisational Evolution Model workshop at Adina Apartments in Perth.  The Org Ev model has been designed to enhance Strategic Planning and decision making and this introductory workshop is aimed at those looking to attend the…

Read More >