Vernacular Building Inspiration...AKA Velour Based Innovation - the 2nd orbit

The energising, edgy fringe sessions as part of ACE Interactive continued today with Cris Beswick and I posing questions around a propensity to celebrate averageness.  I began with my Marvin Gaye story.  He wanted to be a crooner yet the Motown songwriters could see his talent was way beyond that and deliberately wrote songs one octave higher than his "range" to stretch his vocals.  He resisted but went with it and as result we were blessed with "Can I Get A Witness" and "I Heard It Through The Grapevine".  He was initially happy to be average; yet others knew he had so much more to give.  He clearly became iconically exceptional.

Cris then used his contiuum of excellence demonstrating how "good" now, has actually become something quite average and he asked people to rate where their organisations were.  Brave souls gave the near good but not expectional measure and that gave an indication of where many of the places we work were at.  Yet we in HR Practitioners are trying to effect positive, impactful change in that climate and we wonder why we meeting resistance?  And Cris & I said how dangerous a spot that was to occupy.  Dangerous because it exemplified something about a less-than inspiring vision; a patchy penetration of the strategy to the workforce and a lower than desirable engagement level for all staff.

Dianne Hughes - my boss incidentally - attended and articulately put the case in for HR's role in constantly pushing to unleash the potential within the workforce.  A desire and a drive that is way along the scale of aspiring to exceptional.  And recognising the tension in HR practitioners to do so - but a push worth making - and persisting with it and being very forceful about it.  My boss or not, I couldn't agree more. 

We had an insightful comment from the floor around scale and size of the organisation.  Clearly the smaller the place, the more you can implement, quickly and have that desired impact.  There was another view in the room that the impact of doing some HR work which led to a big improvement and strive towards excellence amazingly rewarding.

And rewarding was where Cris picked up an excellent viewpoint.  That it's not necessarily about paying more money - which was one participant's excellently made point.  It's about appreciation and involvement.  And there were nods of approval from - as HR practitioners we are responsible for setting out the frames for reward and recogniton so let's think beyond (Cris's company incidentally www.letsthinkbeyond.com ) cash incentives.  Their are commentators out there who say the Peformance Related Pay model isn't and will not work.  And I believe them.  I've never worked at my best to get a bonus and never will.

We heard from Catherine who felt very alone in her desire to be exceptional, whilst everyone else was settling for average-decent levels.  I went on a bit of a rant about not apologising for being brilliant, I hope it worked..!  I would hate the thought of anyone saying to me that I was acceptable or average.  Not the way I set about doing anything I do.

We then had a really good kick-around on the whole recruit people to BE average and then manage them into a state of (quote Gerry Griffin - thanks Gerry) "satisfactory under-performance".  Our fellow conversationalists seemed to relate to that.  We may have to move that around a little - well a lot.  And it's challenging because maybe the business will not be ready to recruit on potential and knowledge gained thus far rather than purely on a set of tired old competencies.

We talked about competition driving the pursuit of exceptional performance and behaviours - and then if you have no competition, do you need anything other than average?  Of course you do Cris and I said - for a start, you may not have external competitors, but the people you deliver to and employ will have increasing demands that provides a form of competition.  A comment post-VBI in the blogging room fed into this when John McGurk told me about the HCL session - "employees first; customers second".  Employee demands can be a form of competition - channeled well, it will drive improvements and high performance.

Steve Bridger - a who now has his loyalty card stamped twice for 2 VBI sessions attended, gave us an absolute gift.  How important the language we use is to making the difference between

acceptable levels of mediocre performance that is tolerated or even widely supported

outstanding performance fuelled by a desire to be brilliant and infectiously spread across the organisation.

There's a wonderful link into tomorrows VBI session - which is about change but it's more about the role of leaders who are fired up to create and deliver exceptional levels of change and performance.  We all agreed that we could reframe the language we use to remove the perception that we accept, tolerate and even endorse averageness.

I had a VBI 1:1 with a top guy from a local council who said that his whole organisational culture was the high performing, exceptional people were marginalised and even a bit ridiculed for their efforts.  Managers have a part to play in admonishing or outlawing this awful success inhibitor however I suggested he create a talent programme, ring fence all of the brilliant people, and let them loose - brilliance with a licence.

I think the quote of they day came from our Royal Navy colleague - with 35 years experience - "Ordinary People doing Extraordinary Things".

We're loving VBI - Cris and I are chuffed to bits to be able to help our most driven HR practitioners to create conversations and build solutions through peer learning.  We hope you can join us at H65 tomorrow (Thursday) at 12:15.

Perry