Chickenless heads, and the dog ate my Blackberry!

Today we announced our strategic partnership with Tomorrow’s Company.  We’re aiming to explore the theme of Tomorrow’s Adaptive Organisations – through a series of papers/provocations, roundtables and discussions.  The first one out was ‘HR in tough times: Adapting to a Changing World’, authored by Philip Sadler CBE. 

Although it’s got HR in the title, it’s really a call to arms for business leaders to establish sustainable competitive advantage through building employee commitment, and progressive people policies.  Amongst other things, the paper reverses the usual concept of ‘headless chickens’ and explores the concept of ‘chickenless heads’ to describe what happens when leaders lose touch with grass roots reality. 

Philip came at this from a completely different frame of reference – since retiring as CEO of Ashridge Business School, he’s been active as a consultant, researcher and author – so it was a relief that many of his themes reinforced the key insights from our Next Gen HR and Shaping the Future research. 

We’ll be using this one as a ‘trial run’ for a roundtable – cunningly timed for just before our next HR Leaders Network, so we can invite attendees to a ‘BOGOF’ – not that they pay in the first place, except with their time and minds!

Oh yes –dog and Blackberry.  Luckily not mine – either.  But a colleague had visitors – whose dog roamed in the night – and chewed said B’berry until all that was left was the SIM card – causing email with the title of ‘the dog etc’.  It was the combination of person and circumstance that made it so funny.......