Unplanned Day 3 – Cris Beswick and Perry Timms do more poking and prodding of thoughts, creating discussions and getting ideas flowing @CIPD11 – ACE Interactive

So our final day of Unplanned, and the sadness of another year over was tempered by the energy we’d created on the previous 2 days.

With lots of new faces in the audience we recapped on our Unplanned journey so far – our call to be and find intrapreneurs in your business; our need to get more business savvy and our choices we make about the things we need to know about.

So we then got into a blueprint – or “Haynes” manual around The Strategy for becoming Strategic” and what we thought HR would need to know; do and feel for future successes.

The blueprint was a simple one – and it all starts with choice.  Choice to be a really exceptional professional, never satisfied with knowing just enough.  We urged people to draw a line in the sand, and whatever’s gone before, focus on the now and the future.  Choose from this point on to be a different kind of practitioner – a business-focused practitioner.

The model then shows how this approach drives your engagement and your intrapreneurial spirit.  This – we hypothesised – would become a virtuous circle where the choice of action could become bigger and more impactful; the engagement could increase as the feel of individual influence to organisational success was enhanced, which in turn sustains the intrapreneurship way of working.  We concluded – with agreement from our audience – that this is where INNOVATION happens.

Innovation in this sense, helps push the business forward and our desire to show how the specialities we have for people and organisational development, has a direct link to sustainability of the organisation; growth and market share and profitability/operating costs etc.  The HARD measures which CEOs and Boards want and need to know.

Start with this point in mind and then work backwards to the specialist people interventions you are aiming to introduce, will ensure you receive support and buy-in to your proposals.

The other – sometimes softer - measures we know and love like absenteeism, staff turnover, mobility, discretionary effort etc – also need to feature, but we felt we already know these areas and could easily amalgamate the 2 measures for maximum impact and chances of success.  Lots of nods on that point.

This demonstration of effect on the business and not just the people, proves your strategic importance and your journey to being a Business Practitioner with a specialism in People is complete!

One interesting thought on “idea theft” came out – you have a great idea but someone in a more senior position “steals” the idea for their own. Having no direct link to HR interventions which have credible business-improvement is a threat to watch out for.  Some ideas you might let go, as long as you retain control over what and how the idea is implemented and delivered.  An idea which works is sometimes more important than who takes the credit for the idea in the first place.  Another tactic is let the idea out to the wider masses before it is stolen - then everyone knows it’s yours..!  Showing a strong link to your interventions and a business improvement/success is vital to pave the way for more of your ideas and increases your impact with confidence and belief.

We urged our audience to not seek permission to create this “movement” – more seek support.  Get your business connections to run with your ideas and prove the concept before going “overground”.

So overall, we have the LOVE of what we do; the DESIRE to do it with more business edge and then we will be the ENVY of the professional world...

Unplanned rocks – we love it; our audience are so inspiring and we love the CIPD for showcasing how exceptional HR people can be.  Until next year?

Cris and Perry – unplanned and always will be...

If anyone wants a pdf of all musing and modelling (!) email us at

cris@crisbeswick.com

perry.timms@biglotteryfund.org.uk