5 actions to avoid if you want a Self-Driven Culture
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Some years ago, I asked a client what she saw as T&P’s most important contribution, expecting her to comment on the research that underpinned our work, or the quality of our tools. She surprised me by saying that the thing she prized about T&P was that we changed people by giving them a self-driven attitude. I also remember one person at the start of a talent programme talking about why he’d applied, and saying “I looked at the change in people who are coming off this programme, and thought “I don’t know what they are doing on Aspire! – but I want some of it!”
This is the first of 2 articles looking at the mechanics of how we do it. So – how do you shift attitudes and create a culture where people drive their own success?
Well, first of all you have to look at what to STOP doing, and this is what we’ll explore in this first article. Are there things you are currently doing, that may be promoting a disconnected, passive culture? HR says it wants a self-driven culture – but all too often our actions undermine the message. All 5 things are very commonly done, without thought about how this impacts on a self-driven culture.
What should we stop doing?
- Relying on managers to spot talent
The most important way to create a self-driven culture is to ensure that self-driven effort is visible and rewarded. Most companies want to invest more in the people who have the capacity to develop fastest and contribute most. This is a reasonable objective, which should be shared with everyone. But the way that most companies identify who to invest in is by working through their managers. This immediately disempowers people because it cuts the connection between their drive and hard work and the result. They have to work through an intermediary. What if your manager is new to the role and doesn’t know you? Or is not as persuasive as other managers, so doesn’t make a good case for you? Or is a low performer themselves and wants to keep you rather than share you? A basic requirement of a self-driven culture is to allow anyone delivering good performance to earn the right for extra investment. Companies are frightened about self-nomination because they think it will raise expectations, and generate too much interest. But you can’t create a self-driven culture by making it impossible for people to put their hands up. And self-nomination is a very powerful start to the self-driven message. - Talking about high potential, without being really clear what it looks like
If you want more of something, you’ve got to explain to people what it looks like. Most people don’t know what attracts the attention of senior managers and HR. Is it working longer hours? Well, maybe – but only if you are doing stuff that isn’t part of your normal job, and is adding real value. Does everyone know that? You need to spell out the behaviour and get people to focus on how they would demonstrate that. You can’t take self-driven action to prove you have potential, if you don’t have a very concrete, behavioural understanding of what ‘potential’ looks like. If HR wants a self-driven culture – and is committed to social mobility – we have to stop assuming that people have learned from their parents or have somehow otherwise absorbed the key behaviours for success. - Sending helpful reminders
In some ways, a self-driven culture is quite harsh. You’re given an opportunity and told that it is down to you to seize that opportunity. It’s an opportunity not a process, and you shouldn’t expect people to hold your hand. If you need help, you are totally encouraged to come to HR. But don’t expect HR to come to you, make sure that you set your alarm and woke up when it went off, and have your clothes ready so you’re in time to catch the bus. Sometimes our HR customer service ethos undermines the self-directed culture. “I had 100 people self-nominate, but only 20 have sent in their entry form!” “Good. Now we know who the most driven 20 are.” We tend to favour sending one notice of impending doom, at least 2 weeks ahead – “The deadline for X is in 2 weeks” – because it’s easy to make mistakes with email. But once is enough. (In fact, it’s quite a good idea to make it easy for people to select themselves out of the fast stream, by establishing “There will be another one in 6 months” – this reduces urgency, and sorts out who has the ambition and drive to get into the first cohort.) - Asking people to rate us
HR is very good at asking for feedback; it’s a behaviour we want to role model. But asking people to rate something you’ve bust a gut to deliver for them undermines a self-driven culture. A classic example is graduate induction. We spend ages getting senior managers to talk at induction, arranging the logistics of site visits and organising IT induction. Then we invite the graduates to give us 7 out of 10 because the bus didn’t turn up when expected, and the IT guy was a bit boring. The feedback is one-way, and creates a consumer attitude. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t seek feedback and learn how to improve. But if you want to create a self-driven culture, you need two-way feedback where both parties self-analyse and take responsibility for problem-solving. “What didn’t work as well as we would have liked today? Is that the sort of glitch that could be expected to happen? How could we as a whole group have handled it better when it did?” - Creating Talent Pools
Now there’s a controversial statement. How can creating Talent Pools undermine a self-driven culture? It requires a bit of understanding to work out why. Traditional talent pools and talent programmes typically involve a point of selection (with winners and losers). Once ‘in’, the winners are guaranteed a range of investments in them – e.g. they all attend a series of workshops, or get the opportunity to shadow or have overseas assignments, or to work with a Director as a mentor. Can you see how comfortable this is? All I have to do now that I’m in is turn up. It can encourage people to sit back and say “OK, so you’ve spotted that I’m one of your most talented people. How will you develop and keep me?” The key point is that if you want to invest differentially in your top talent, this should continue AFTER they’ve been selected for special attention. Instead of a traditional Talent Pool where everyone gets everything automatically, we’ve coined the phrase Talent Stream – think of a salmon race, with salmon exerting themselves to leap upstream and take advantage of each opportunity. (We know you were wondering why there were salmon in the picture with this article. More on this next time!)
If you want to create a self-driven culture it will involve examining EVERYTHING that you normally do, to see whether it promotes a self-directed attitude. When we consult on this, we find a big part of the work is to re-engineer the small things – processes, wording of emails and document – to reinforce a single consistent message. This requires a very strong hold on what you are aiming to achieve, and it’s remarkable how easily traditionally wording and processes gradually undermine the message. And the message is “whatever your starting point, you can earn the right for us to invest in you”.