The Peter Principle states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was formulated by Dr Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book by the same name.

 

I call them “the brand dead” or “brand spectators” who fur up the organisation’s arteries. Most MDs tolerate a Peter or two. But when conditions change, Peter and pals can very quickly poison your brand from within. When the big battalions are mobilised and change is demanded, the Peter’s, not the market conditions, are your worst enemy.

 

Consider the impact a Peter can have on your recruitment drive.

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it . . . ; Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.” The late David Ogilvy, advertising executive

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.” Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric

 

Ogilvy and Welch point the way towards recruitment nirvana – making the most of the fact that it’s an employer’s market to recruit experienced; challenging; maverick; game changers who will stimulate the innovation you need.

 

But the Peters will desperately cling onto the status quo, recruit in their own image and reinforce the employer brand which failed to spot the issues which have since marched all the way around the corner and into your boardroom.

And if you’ve encouraged Peter-style behaviour within your intermediaries and recruitment agents, you’re in deep trouble as they will doubtless perpetuate a protectionist culture.

 

When you get a moment, just take a look at the various recruitment and blogging forums and consider how many really good people are out there at the moment. Listen to what they’re saying about the recruitment practices of the Peters. Ask yourself whether you know who your Peters are and whether Peter can be motivated to change?

But most of all question whether your recruitment strategy is paying Peter by robbing Paul and the impact this is having and will have on the performance of your brand.

 

 

 

 

 

Never in everyday pursuit of corporate endeavour have so many been force fed by so few.

 

The proliferation of communication channels given the rise of social and technological media means your average employee claims to be nearing communication saturation point. But are they? I would suggest that the appetite for effective communication has never been more keen, yet effective communication is still in very short supply.

 

Lest we forget, communication is essentially an outcome, not an input. As I had to make a point of reminding a group of senior civil servants while running Team Briefing workshops recently, “success isn’t measured by volume, pace or quantity. Good communication is a product of whether the message has been received, understood and has resulted in the necessary action”.

 

For a number of years now, when I’ve conducted communication audits for clients, employees across sectors have complained about being bombarded. Despite the rather trendy discussions about the difference between internal communication and employee engagement, message management and push communication appears to be increasing.The biggest culprit is the dreaded email.

 

The Evils of email Management

 

Having just carried out an audit of internal communication channels for another public sector client currently undergoing major change, I’ve been struck, once again, by a bizarre, and frequently seen contradiction.

 

In answer to the question “How would you prefer to be informed of changes”, a whopping 76% of respondents voted for face to face communication.  Of those 76%, some 68% wanted that communication to come from their immediate line managers.

 

The second preference was for some form of internal social media allowing them the opportunity to provide feedback and debate in an interactive, real time environment.

 

However, when we looked into the Communication Department’s communication method of choice, they prioritised:

 

1. Lunch Meetings with the CEO and senior team
2. email bulletins
3. voicemail
4. publications

 

In fact, as the change programme gathered pace and brought with it “right sizing” and major structure changes, the top two methods fast became the only “official” channels.  Sadly team briefings led by line managers, once a norm, had faded to sporadic bursts.

 

It’s perhaps understandable that a number of line managers and supervisors had taken a backward step when faced with extremely difficult message management.  But in this case, it was soon very clear that abdication on this scale reflected deep-seated leadership issues.  Their CEO, in Hero Leader guise, although well intended, was clearly undermining his leaders. They had also lost faith in their communication function which, disempowered, was simply stepping aside by pressing the forward and cc buttons. 

 

But what’s the problem with push communication?

 

There clearly isn’t a single answer to this question but a glance at this famous learning effectiveness pyramid illustrates the power of face to face interaction with warm-blooded peers. 

 

The simple fact is that top down, cascade bombardments, usually delivered by email these days, are synonymous with lecturing.  They allow the originator to tick an activity box but are largely ineffective and simply reinforce one-way messaging. Cascades create a wider push communication culture as the approach is seen to be sanctioned from the very top.

 

As employee engagement requires:

-         interaction

-         involvement

-         feedback

-         opportunities to check understanding

-         emotional connection

 

by cascading swarms of messages the organisation promises one thing yet delivers another. It’s disingenuous and creates deep seated resentment.

 

Most of us learn much more effectively in interpersonal environments, when we’re involved and can interact with others. This is one of the reasons why line managers and immediate supervisors are increasingly important communicators. When they have the opportunity and take the time to commit to Facetime rather than Facebook, employees are enlightened and reassured by the example being set as well as the opportunity for face-to-face discussion, debate and reflection.

 

We all appreciate the merits of electronic communication. But despite the simple temptation of “compose, click and send” and the sophisticated charms of new-wave social media tools and techniques there really is no replacement for good, old fashioned, face to face, eyeball- to- eyeball communication. This is especially true during testing times when people lose what appetite they may have had for Foie Gras and deeply resent the fact that there’s no comfort food on the menu.

 

Ian Buckingham (ian@by2w.co.uk) is the founder of the Bring Yourself 2 Work Engagement Fellowship www.by2w.co.uk.  He is the author of Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands  http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268. and Brand Champions (due Oct 2010)

 

 

I was at a dinner party thrown by a former HR director friend recently and as I arrived at his house was struck by the number of high performance cars on the driveway and then, once I was introduced to his guests, was equally surprised by the fact that most were from the HR community.

Now, I’m not deriding folk for their success. It just took a little getting used to, especially as most of the conversation revolved around the financial benefits associated with acquiring a reputation as a downsizing expert and “being the last one to turn out the lights” before moving on.

It’s clearly wrong to claim that re-sizing has become the raison d’etre of the modern HRD. But this perception wasn’t helped by the dinner party conversation about what it really means to trust and whether trust has any place at work?  

One premise was that the last two years has seen employees’ trust in their organisations fall dramatically and that organisations need to work at ways of re-engaging and re-establishing the psychological contract. The opposite - and prevailing view - was that there are certain things in business that have to remain secret, that being open and honest is often impossible and people should be mature enough to accept that.

The concensus was that trust has no real place at work any longer and that a healthy scepticism should prevail recognising that the employer/employee relationship is “a marriage of convenience”. Neutrality was seen as preferable but is it possible or even desirable to remain neutral in a vocational environment you devote the largest portion of your life to?

I appreciate that many of the HRDs I seem to meet these days are vassels for the process re-engineers and have become de-sensitised to emotions in a similar way to soldiers on the frontline. But is this a reflection of behaviour born of survival or how they really believe things should be?

Trust is a fairly fundamental emotion. If there’s no trust there’s no psychological contract between employees and the employer. Without that there’s no “extra mile” and no relationship development.

I guess you can have a relationship or marriage of convenience based on neutrality, without passion; empathy and drive. But then you can also join Victorian role playing societies to escape from reality.