Strategic briefings

For many organisations, creativity and innovation are the “holy grail” of business success. However, it is important that these are relevant to the organisation, its customers and its context. Here Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas highlights issues to consider and questions to ask if creativity and resulting innovation are to be relevant, appropriate and effective.

In the wake of current economic and political turbulence, recruitment and retention are already major challenges for many UK organisations and these challenges look set to get tougher, according to recent research from the CIPD/Hays. Authors Claire McCartney and Dianah Worman spell out some of the approaches that organisations could take (and in some cases are taking) in order to strengthen their ability to recruit and retain the people they need in an ever more volatile context.

Hacking and cyber fraud can occur at any time of the day or night, including at weekends and holiday periods. They are of increasing concern to individuals, organisations and Governments and on occasion quick or instant reactions may be required. In many countries, a lot of sensitive and valuable information and important, and at times critical, infrastructure is in the hands of companies. Data theft and denial of service type attacks can have serious consequences for many people. Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas considers the challenges involved in managing cybersecurity.

Leading industrial relations experts Paul Cronin and John Kirkham express concerns about the implications of the Trade Union Act 2016 for effective employee relations, especially in the light of Brexit. They highlight areas at risk with respect to workers’ rights and argue the case for a more inclusive and sustainable approach to employee relations.

Where will tomorrow’s company directors come from? What sort of people might be willing and able to govern the new and diverse forms of organisation and different business models that are emerging? How should they be selected? What governance codes, listing, legal and other requirements are likely to apply? Will future boards of directors operate as they do today? Directors may still be a legal requirement, but are boards and meetings in their current form on the way out? Prof Colin Coulson-Thomas looks at the future of board succession planning.

One of the most vexed questions for HR practitioners is how to prove value added through the HR contribution. Here, Professor Andrew Mayo challenges the assumption that tying HR’s contribution exclusively to bottom line outcomes is either desirable or feasible. He proposes instead an alternative, more realistic way of assessing value added by HR/Training activity to other strategic outcomes for the organisation.

The advent of People Analytical tools that can be helpful in a coaching scenario is to be welcomed, yet for many purchasers and users of coaching tools, navigating one’s way through the rapid explosion of tools to select those that might be most useful is a challenging business. In this second of her mini-series, Executive Coach Carol Braddick provides a helpful roadmap of the range of tools currently available, identifying the benefits of different categories of tools for organisations, coaches and leaders themselves.

What part does, or could, technology play in coaching? In this first article of a mini-series, experienced coach Carol Braddick shows how a wide range of apps can complement conventional coaching and play a valuable role in raising the leader’s awareness, and openness to learning, potentially improving their health and follow-through on agreed coaching actions.

In today’s troubling times for the UK and the rest of Europe, when suspicion of “the other” may be growing, Dianah Worman OBE and Claire McCartney provide a welcome focus on the value of diversity and inclusion. Here they outline how building organisational cultures, leadership and recruitment practices conducive to diversity and inclusion not only helps business, but enables everyone, regardless of age or background, to be treated fairly.

“A prime purpose of leadership is to question the organisation’s prevailing paradigm and make it more fit for tomorrow’s challenges.” This is the assertion made by William Tate in his 2013 White Paper Managing Leadership from a Systemic Perspective1 . Yet I am struck by the numbers of senior executives that I come across who pay little or no attention to the underlying dynamics of their organisation. Those underlying, hidden and often unspoken human dynamics that make the difference between success and failure.